Publication First published in A Diversity of Creatures in April 1917, linked to the story "Regulus". Listed in ORG as no. 1048. It is collected in:
The poem The poet takes his cue from a debate in a school Latin class, studying a Horace Ode which raises deep moral issues. From the science lab next door, a chemical stink had wafted through the window. Some, he reflects, study science, creating smells, some medicine to explore the diseases of our bodies. Others are interested in machines and wheels. But he is off to Brundusium on the way to Greece. His inspiration is the great lyric poet Pindar. He takes no more heed of these practical matters than of the logs brought in by a slave as he sits and ponders by the fire. Background ![]() King, an inspired teacher with an acid tongue, gives an impassioned rendering of the ode and the eternal issues it raises - in contrast to the stilted translations of the boys - and the moral of Horace's lines gets through to the class, as we find later in the tale. The science lesson next door has nothing to offer but the smell of chlorine gas. Jan Montefiore, concluding a discussion of "Regulus", comments: King doesn't quite have the last word, for his cherished classical values are playfully undermined in the poem which follows .... it dismisses biology (the cultivation of ‘broths impure’), chemistry (‘whose study is of smells’) and physics (‘the heated wheel’). The incurious poet notices as little whether he travels by the power ‘of wheels or wings’ (i.e. by literal or mythological machinery) as he does the slave bringing ‘logs for my fire’. Kipling and Horace ![]() Kipling encountered him as a schoolboy, and wrote in Something of Myself (p.33) that C----, his classics master ('King' in Stalky & Co.): ...taught me to loath Horace for two years, to forget him for twenty, and then to love him for the rest of my days and through many sleepless nights.He wrote "Donec Gratus Eram" as a schoolboy, and a series of other 'echoes' of Horace in later life. He carried a copy of Horace’s four books of Odes around with him, in which he wrote original epigrams of his own. From 1917 he began to experiment with his own versions of Horace. See Thomas Pinney (Ed.) Letters IV pp. 439-40. In 1920, he and a group of friends published Q. Horatii Flacci Carminum Liber Quintus (Horace, Book V) a collection of parodies in English and Latin, which included "A Translation". "Lollius" was specially written for the book, which also included "The Pro-Consuls". See also three later poems linked to stories in Debits and Credits (1926); “The Portent”, “The Survival” and “The Last Ode.”. For further background see Susan Treggiari’s essay "Kipling and the Classical World". For a summary of useful sources, see "Kipling and Horace", written by David Page for The Kipling Journal in June 2003. See also the excellent chapter ‘Horace’s Kipling’ in Horace Made new: Horation Influences on British Writing from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century by Charles Martindale, Cambridge University Press 1993. ![]() Notes on the text [Verse 1] There are whose study is of smells In Kipling's day, Latin and Greek were seen as the bedrock of a sound education. The elite Indian Civil Service was full of classicists from Oxford and Cambridge, and Science was not greatly valued by many educators. When this Editor was at school in the 1950s Science was commonly referred to as 'Stinks'. [Verse 2] broths impure Bacteria. Kipling knew and respected many doctors. and had even once considered studying medicine, but only briefly. He wrote a number of stories about medical matters, including "Unprofessional". and "The Tender Acnilles", both to be found in his last collection, Limits and Renewals (1932). [Verse 3] the heated wheel Engineering, particularly in relation to cars. Kipling was a keen early motorist, but only as a passenger, though he wrote a number of stories about the behaviour and misbehaviour of motor-cars: "Steam Tactics" (1905), "The Vortex" (1917), The Muse among the Motors (1904-1929), and "Aunt Ellen" (1932), He had, of course, been highly interested in engineers and engineering in earlier years, witness "The Bridge-Builders" (1893). [Verse 4] Brundusium Kipling is probably referring here to Brindisium, modern day Brindisi, at the southern end of the Appian Way. It was the chief port of embarkation for Greece and the East. The poet Virgil died there in 19 BC. [Verse 5] Pindar Pindaros (Πινδαροσ) (c.522-443 BCE) was a Greek lyric poet from Thebes, much admired in ancient Rome, and regarded by Horace as inimitable. He wrote: Creatures of a day! What is anyone? [JR] ©John Radcliffe 2018 All rights reserved |