Mowgli’s Poetic Schooling: On Lyrical Parts of Kipling’s Jungle Books

Abstract

For many decades, Russian-speaking readers of Kipling, keeping in mind the published translations from his two Jungle books (1894; 1895) including the Mowgli cycle, have paid close attention only to the stories and largely overlooked the fact that Kipling’s original prose is punctuated with a great score of poems. As of now, despite the books’ utter popularity, there exists no Russian edition of Kipling’s dilogy which might be considered complete and scholarly. The inset lyrical cycle of the dilogy has drawn attention of the Russian readership only recently (in 2015–2016) thanks to the popular editions enriched with specific book-page designs for the songs, ballads, and imitations of ritual lyrics. Their illustrators Robert Ingpen and Angel Dominguez helped to bring out the prosimetric pattern of the text composed in regularly alternating segments of prose and verse. When transferring these series of illustrations into the Russian-language editions, the publishers had to commission translation of the missing poems, which serve as companion pieces to the stories. This article dwells on the structure of the two “Jungle Books”, on the particularities of pairing prose with verse in this dilogy, making occasional note of many literary allusions. Also, the article pays attention to the series of lyrics accompanying the progress and growth of mind of the famous Mowgli. An earlier version of the present study was delivered at the conference “The Phenomenon of Children’s Literature: Its Genesis, Evolution, and Prospects” (IWL RAS, October 27–28, 2020).

Keywords

• inset poetic cycles
• victorian and neo-romantic conduct book
• panchatantra and its off-shoots
• literary cycles and sequels
• practical issues of scholarly editing.