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If poem by rudyard kipling summary5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Hopper’s first recital of “If” came in 1971 during the Johnny Cash Show. Hopper’s free and fluid use of the poem, and his own persona of 1960’s hippy radical, strips away the father’s authoritative voice, the iffy colonial overtones, and the stoicism of British virtues and allows the poem to become an artistic manifesto to oneself. Hopper’s interpretation of Kipling’s “epic evocation of the British virtues of a ‘stiff upper lip’ and stoicism in the face of adversity” reimagines the poem as a declaration of creative intent. ![]() The uprising never happened, but the incident was a slow trigger for the Second Boar War of 1899 to 1902. Kipling’s real inspiration for the poem was Sir Leander Starr Jameson, the British colonial politician, and leader of the botched Jameson Raid of December 1895 which intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers against the South African Republic government of Paul Kruger. The conflict discussed in Kipling’s poem is an external as well as an internal one. In Kipling’s original poem, the voice is that of a father offering prudent advice to the son on how to be a man and remain focused in the grip of conflict. Actor, director, and artist Dennis Hopper staged performances of British poet Rudyard Kipling’s “If” throughout his career. ![]()
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