Kipling, poesia If...

KIPLING, SE…
Pur non volendo cadere nella banalità, non si può far a meno di mettere in rilievo la figura di Rudyard Kipling, artista figlio di artisti, giornalista e autore di bellissimi racconti che vanno dalla tematica dell’infanzia infelice, al rapporto amoroso fra due culture, fino alle narrazioni per ragazzi. Questo autore per certi versi scettico e disilluso, mantiene sempre il suo rigore e i suoi principi; il suo sguardo ironico e le sue parole incisive vanno dritte all’animo del lettore che è reso parte integrante dei suoi discorsi. Nonostante le sue sofferenze riesce sempre a mantenere il suo contegno, il suo distacco e la sua lucidità.
Esemplificativa è If, poesia che dedica al figlio John, che purtroppo perirà tragicamente in guerra:

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son![1]

[1] Kipling, Rudyard, Complete Verse, definitive edition, Anchor books, New York, 1989.