Letters in Poems: If / Se

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), was an Englishman born in Bombay, India. He was educated in England but returned to India in 1882. After marrying and settling in Battleboro, Vermont, he wrote The Jungle Book (1894) and other works that made him hugely successful. In 1907, he was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, during my Erasmus year in England, it was his poetry that I had the privilege to get to know, thanks to Ben Colbert, an excellent professor that taught us a really interesting subject related to colonial encounters and literature.

This poem I am bringing you today is, without a doubt, Kipling's most beloved poem and, along with "The White Man's Burden", his most famous. T.S. Eliot deemed it only "great verse" and others "jingoistic nonsense", but you can read it and reach your own conclusions.

The poem is addressed to Kipling's son John, and in that way it is a sort of letter. However, it was inspired by a great friend of his, Leander Starr Jameson, the Scots-born colonial politician and adventurer responsible for what has been deemed the Jameson raid that led to the Second Boer War. The raid was intended to start an uprising among the British expatriate workers in the South African Republic, but there were complications and it was a failure. Jameson was arrested and tried, but he was already being hailed a hero by London, which was filled with anti-Boer sentiment. He served only fifteen months in prison and later became Prime Minister of Cape Colony back in South Africa. It appears that Kipling had met Jameson and befriended him through Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony at the time of the raid. 

If

('Brother Square-Toes' – Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, 

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

But make allowance for their doubting too; 

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, 

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; 

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; 

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

And treat those two impostors just the same; 

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings 

And never breathe a word about your loss; 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 

And so hold on when there is nothing in you 

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 

If all men count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, 

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

The poem is a paean (a song of praise) to British stoicism and masculine rectitude; almost every line in each stanza begins with "If". It contains a multitude of characteristics deemed essential to the ideal man, almost all expressing stoicism and reserve – the classic British "stiff upper lip." 

In particular, a man must be humble, patient, rational, truthful, dependable, and persevering. His behavior in response to deleterious events and cruel men is important; he must continue to have faith in himself when others doubt him, he must understand that his words might be twisted and used for evil, he must be able to deal with the highest and lowest echelons of society, and he must be able to withstand the lies and hatred emanating from others. This group of ideal characteristics is similar to those expressed in "The Thousandth Man", another poem dealing with manhood. 

What makes this poem so appealing? Well, the virtues expressed in "If-" are devoid of showiness or glamour; Kipling says nothing of heroic deeds or great wealth or fame. For him the true measure of a man is his humility and his stoicism. Kipling's biographer, Andrew Lycett, considers the poem one of the writer's finest and notes in 2009 that "If-" is absolutely valuable even in the complicated postmodern world: "In these straitened times, the old-fashioned virtues of fortitude, responsibilities and resolution, as articulated in 'If-', become ever more important."

And here is a translation by Miguel Anxo Mouriño:

Se

Se podes conservar cabeza e modos 

No caos do que te han culpar á fin, 

Se cres en ti, así dubiden todos, 

Mais tes tamén en conta o que che din; 

Se podes esperar sen te cansares, 

Ou, sendo ti mentido, non mentir, 

Ou, inda que te odien, non odiares, 

E nin de bo nin sabio presumir. 

Se soñas, sen facer dos soños lastre; 

Se pensas, sen que sexa un fin en si; 

Se ves chegar o Triunfo e o Desastre

E trátalos como algo baladí; 

Se asomes as verdades que dixeras

Cambiadas por tramposos en ichós, 

Ou, véndoo roto, todo o que fixeras 

Con vellas ferramentas recompós. 

Se xuntas nun montón os beneficios 

De toda a vida e xógalos ao chou,

E pérdelos, e volves aos inicios

Sen nunca lamentar o que pasou. 

Se, nervio, corazón e mais carraxe 

Forzados e gastados, segues ti 

Facendo o teu papel sen máis bagaxe 

Que a Vontade que manda: "¡Sigue así!". 

Se entre o vulgo segues inocente, 

Ou entre Reis, con modos naturais, 

Se es invulnerable para a xente,

Se axudas, sen excesos, aos demais; 

Se enches o minuto inexorable

Cos seus segundos íntegros a treu, 

Serás da Terra dono indubidable,

E - o que é máis - serás un Home, meu.