"General Summary"



(notes by Roberta Baldi)



the poem
[March 18 2003]

Publication

Collected in Departmental Ditties and Other Verses (1st Edition), 1886; E.V., 1900; I.V., 1919; D.V., 1940; Sussex Edition, Vol. 32, page 3; Burwash Edition, Vol. 25 (ORG, nr. 221, page 5148).

Background to the poem

It seems relevant to highlight that "General Summary" opened Departmental Ditties and Other Verses from its very first Indian edition (1886), until the 1st English edition (1890) in which "Prelude" was substituted for it as the opening poem. This original choice, considering the content, the structure and, above all, the title of the poem, supports the picture of a young Kipling “quite knowing in his conduct of publishing arrangements” (Thomas Pinney and David Allan Richards (eds), Kipling and his first publisher, Rivendale Press, 2001: 5) and well aware of what in Neil Fraistat’s words we would call ‘contextural poetics’.


Notes on
the Text

[Lines 2-3] semi-apes .../ India’s prehistoric clay. The nineteenth century was dominated by pioneering theories on the evolution of species and natural selection which suggested a common ancestor for man and apes, contradicting the biblical concept of Creation. Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel can be considered the prominent scientists in this field, the latter, in particular, as far as the link between semi-apes and India is concerned: he postulated, in fact, the existence of an ape-man (Pithecanthropus) on a now sunken continent in the Indian Ocean which the English zoologist Schlater had termed Lemuria, from the primates (“semi-apes”) inhabiting it.

The following quotation of ‘mammoth’ seems to indicate that the cultural period the poet is referring to in the first stanza is the Paleolithic Age (Stone Age) rather than the more recent Neolithic Age (New Stone Age) (see the poem "In the Neolithic Age" for parallelisms).

[Lines 4-5] Whoso drew the longest bow/ Ran his brother down. Much evidence is to be found in literature of the connection between the skill of the best and strongest archer and the power he would inherit by applying it – see ancient Native American fables or Homer's Odyssey (ch. 21 and others on Ulysses’s bow), to quote only two of many relatively different examples.

[Line 7] Dowb Such a name might recall the Hebrew root ‘dowb’ meaning ‘bear’.

[Line 13] reindeer It is interesting to note how quickly Kipling leads the reader from the Indian territory (l.3) to some northern, Eurasian land which is the traditional homeland for (domesticated) reindeers.

[Line 19] the Sphinx Acknowledged studies about the building of the Sphinx in ancient Egypt, date it during the reign of King Khafre (2558-2532 BC, 4th Dynasty). The Sphinx is the first of the two direct references to the Egyptian archeological site of Giza which comprises it and the three pyramids of Khufu (Cheops in Greek), Khafre (Chephren in Greek) and Menkaure (Mycerinus in Latin).

[Line 23] Cheops’ pyramid Cheops’ pyramid is thought to date back to 2589-2566 BC.

[Lines 26-27] Joseph ... /... Comptroller of Supplies. See Genesis 47 for a survey on Joseph’s rise to such an activity (‘Comptroller’ is a variant of ‘Controller’)


[R. B.]