"The Hyaenas"


(1919)


Notes by John Radcliffe
and John McGivering


the poem
[June 29th 2011]

Publication history

ORG Volume 8, page 5148 lists this poem as Verse No.1101. It was first published in The Years Between in 1919. See also David Alan Richards, p. 252 for further details of publication. It is collected in: Theme and Background

Kipling is using the gruesome image, remembered from the South African War, of hyaenas digging up corpses on the battlefield after the fighting was done, as—in his own words in a letter to his American publisher, Frank Doubleday in March 1918—

A parable of newspaper attacks on dead men who cannot defend themselves. Useful also in America.
[Letters, (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 5. p. 543]
As Kipling would have remembered, in South Africa the corpses were buried in shallow graves as they fell, without coffins. Birds of prey would eat them until driven away by the burial parties. Animals would dig them up after dark. Unlike mankind, however, the creatures would just eat the bodies without making derogatory remarks about them.

There have been reports over the years of dealers in militaria digging up the bodies of dead soldiers for buttons, badges, belt-buckles and helmet-plates etc.

Peter Keating, writing of the savage poems Kipling wrote towards the end of the Great War and after, comments (p. 203):

Most of these poems ... are concerned with people who are either hindering the work at hand or denying its worth. These are "The Hyaenas" whose natural proclivities are transferred to the politicians now carving up Europe and portrayed by Kipling in measured, simple language that just contains his personal fury...

One such "hyaena" was Pope Benedict XV who several times during the war had tried to initiate peace negotiations and is savaged by Kipling, who believed that any such action was really pro-German, in "A Song at Cock-Crow".
"How he hates politicians" wrote Rider Haggard after one of their regular war-time meetings, "Worse than I do even..."
[Quoted by Peter Keating p. 201.]


Notes on the Text


[Title]

Hyaenas animals of the family Hyaenidae Carnivora. Although in some ways close to cats anatomically, they are similar to wild dogs and wolves in habit. They also eat carrion.

[Verse 1]

kites in this context birds of prey of the family Accipitridae, scavengers and hunters.

eve poetic and archaic, evening.

[Verse 2]

whit the least possible amount.

[Verse 4]

worm may sting it might be a snake with a venomous bite

[Verse 5]

tushes long sharp teeth.


[J McG.]

©John McGivering 2011 All rights reserved