Biographie de l'auteur
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell called him a "prophet of British imperialism". Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."
Présentation de l'éditeur
(When Germany proposed that England should help her in a naval demonstration to collect debts from Venezuela.) The banked oars fell an hundred strong, And backed and threshed and ground, But bitter was the rowers' song As they brought the war-boat round. They had no heart for the rally and roar That makes the whale-bath smoke— When the great blades cleave and hold and leave As one on the racing stroke. They sang:—'What reckoning do you keep, And steer her by what star, If we come unscathed from the Southern deep To be wrecked on a Baltic bar? 'Last night you swore our voyage was done, But seaward still we go, And you tell us now of a secret vow You have made with an open foe! 'That we must lie off a lightless coast And haul and back and veer, At the will of the breed that have wronged us most For a year and a year and a year! 'There was never a shame in Christendie They laid not to our door— And you say we must take the winter sea And sail with them once more? 'Look South! The gale is scarce o'erpast That stripped and laid us down, When we stood forth but they stood fast And prayed to see us drown 'Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold, Our wounds are bleeding yet— And you tell us now that our strength is sold To help them press for a debt' ''Neath all the flags of all mankind That use upon the seas, Was there no other fleet to find That you strike hands with these? 'Of evil times that men can choose On evil fate to fall, What brooding Judgment let you loose To pick the worst of all? 'In sight of peace—from the Narrow Seas O'er half the world to run— With a cheated crew, to league anew With the Goth and the shameless Hun!'
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
