Format: Single
Some day a man will rise up … and he will be coarse, but clearsighted, hard but infinitely and tenderly humorous, speaking the people’s tongue, steeped in their lives and telling them in swinging, urging, dinging verse what it is that their inarticulate lips would express. He will make them songs. Such songs! And all the little poets who pretend to sing to the people will scuttle away like rabbits… |
This is from “My Great and Only” in Abaft the Funnel 1909. The story is of the music-halls in London which Kipling investigated when he arrived there from India in October 1889. It tells of the narrator’s desire and ultimate success, to write a hit-song for one particular hall. The background notes for this story do a very full job in trying to match the fiction to Kipling’s movements and habits at the time – they make an interesting read. |
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