Words are one of the greatest of the unseen
influences that affect our lives.
In February 1923, Rudyard Kipling gave a
speech at the Annual Dinner of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. This well-known
quotation comes from his address:
“I am, by calling, a dealer in
words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind…”
He is right. Words are a supremely powerful
force that can affect people very strongly. Words help people to escape into
another world.
While ‘tool’ would perhaps be a better word
than ‘drug’, I remember reading that Dennis Wheatley got large numbers of
letters from people in hospital who said that his books helped them to forget their
pain.
Some of Kipling’s words are not so much a
drug as a tonic and an inspiration:
“The individual has always had to struggle to
keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard
business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But
no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
This quotation has been attributed to Nietzsche,
but Rudyard Kipling said it at an interview in 1935.
He was right about the price for being an
individual too.
The potion of poetry
In Stalky & Co., Kipling says that a book
of poetry borrowed from the Headmaster’s library makes McTurk completely drunk
for three days. Beetle, who is Kipling himself, reads avidly whenever he gets
the chance. He disappears for days into another world while reading a book that
a master threw at him; it takes some hammering on his head with a spoon and a
threat to drop a pilchard down his neck to make him stop reading and bring him
back down to earth!
Some people don’t use or need alcohol or other
stimulants; words and the images they evoke can inflame their imaginations, induce
trances and intoxicate them. Rudyard Kipling was both a recipient of and a
contributor to this phenomenon.
The weaving of words
I would call Kipling a weaver of words; some
of his poetry is like a spell of enchantment.
Puck's Song from Puck of Pook's Hill, which
demonstrates Kipling’s love of England and English history, is a very good
example of his power to create magical pictures in people’s minds. It mentions Gramarye, which has associations
with magic and occult learning. Isle of
Gramarye has been used as an alternative name for Britain.
The entire poem can be read here here. These are the final two stanzas:
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!
She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.
