Saturday Snippet: The Truce of the Bear (both of them)

 

Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem "The Truce of the Bear" in 1898.  He apparently always intended it to be an allegory of how untrustworthy the Russian Empire (and, later, the Soviet Union) was in international relations.  According to the Kipling Society, he "wanted it to be read in a political sense from the very start and would have much preferred it to come out in The Times: ’Put it in as “sporting” in the (sic) Times and save 20 quid’, he pleaded. ‘It will be smothered in Literature’. He was intent on making its political meaning clear, deliberately courting controversy: ’Put I wanted the row in The Times, and all the virtuous people who believe Russia to be civilised calling you names’."

His early experience as a young journalist commenting on the Afghan Border Crisis of 1884-5 had left Kipling with a lasting mistrust of Russia and its territorial ambition. (See Neil K. Moran, Kipling and Afghanistan, where these early pieces from the Civil and Military Gazette are reprinted.)

As early as 1890, in the short story “The Man Who Was”, Kipling had described Russia as belonging to Asia and ‘not going to be civilized after the methods of the West.’ In the will drawn up 10 days before he died Kipling stipulated that no investment in Russian stocks should be made by the trustee of his estate.

Though it offers all the pleasures of a gripping yarn, the poem also challenges readers in ways that Kipling might not have predicted; at a certain level the bear and the human hunter whose face he destroyed are disturbingly alike.

In March 2022 Peggy Noonan, in her column in the Wall Street Journal, mindful of the Russian attack on Ukraine, recalled  that in 1903, some 120 years ago, John Hay, the American Secretary of State, had written to President Theodore Roosevelt  about conflicts with Czarist Russia:

“Four years of constant conflict …  have shown me that you cannot let up a minute on them without danger to your midriff.  The bear that talks like a man is more to be watched than Adam Zad”

There's more at the link.

From our perspective on current events, it's worth remembering that the "Bear" refers not just to Russia (the Russian Empire, as it then was) but the Slavic frame of mind, as it was understood to exist at the end of the 19th century.  That perspective was certainly inaccurate in many ways, but then, everybody suffered from their own more or less flawed versions of jingoism and nationalism back then.  (Not much has changed, has it?)  Looking at the war between Ukraine and Russia today, it's clear that both sides have the same state-centric view of the war.  People are there to be used as cannon fodder.  The State is everything, and is embodied in the person of its leader.  I think both Putin and Zelensky are completely untrustworthy, and dishonest to boot.  Sure, Putin's the guilty party in this war, being the aggressor and the invader in defiance of Russia's solemn diplomatic commitments;  but Zelensky is no better, sending hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to their deaths in a war he must know he can't win, and embezzling millions (if not billions) in foreign aid.  As far as I'm concerned, a plague on both their houses.  The same goes for the puppet-masters in the WEF and the State Department and elsewhere, who are exploiting both leaders and both nations to further their own ends and don't care how many people have to die in order to achieve them.

At any rate, "The Truce of the Bear" remains a pointed, poignant warning about who to trust (and not to trust) when it comes to that mindset.  I suggest it might fruitfully be borne in mind today.

Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in—
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin. 

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless - toothless, broken of speech,
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over the story, ending as he began:
"Make ye no truce with Adam-zad - the Bear that walks like a Man! 

"There was a flint in my musket - pricked and primed was the pan,
When I went hunting Adam-zad - the Bear that stands like a Man.
I looked my last on the timber, I looked my last on the snow,
When I went hunting Adam-zad fifty summers ago! 

"I knew his times and his seasons, as he knew mine, that fed
By night in the ripened maizefield and robbed my house of bread.
I knew his strength and cunning, as he knew mine, that crept
At dawn to the crowded goat-pens and plundered while I slept. 

"Up from his stony playground - down from his well-digged lair—
Out on the naked ridges ran Adam-zad the Bear—
Groaning, grunting, and roaring, heavy with stolen meals,
Two long marches to northward, and I was at his heels! 

"Two long marches to northward, at the fall of the second night,
I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight.
There was a charge in the musket - pricked and primed was the pan—
My  finger crooked on the trigger - when he reared up like a man.

"Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer,
Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear!
I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch's swag and swing,
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing. 

"Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then . . .
I have looked no more on women - I have walked no more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray—
From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

"Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow -
Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago.
I heard him grunt and chuckle - I heard him pass to his den.
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little mercy of men.

"Now ye go down in the morning with guns of the newer style,
That load (I have felt) in the middle and range (I have heard) a mile?
Luck to the white man's rifle, that shoots so fast and true,
But - pay, and I lift my bandage and show what the Bear can do!"

(Flesh like slag in the furnace, knobbed and withered and grey—
Matun, the old blind beggar, he gives good worth for his pay.)
"Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard -
Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.

"But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear,
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little, swinish eyes;

"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer
That is the time of peril - the time of the Truce of the Bear!" 

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless, asking a dole at the door,
Matun, the old blind beggar, he tells it o'er and o'er;Fumbling and feeling the rifles, warming his hands at the flame,

Hearing our careless white men talk of the morrow's game; 

Over and over the story, ending as he began:—
"There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a Man!"

Those trying to dictate terms to the combatants in Ukraine, and bring about any sort of settlement there, might do well to keep that in mind - concerning both sides.

Peter