"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a poem by
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)'' The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
, characterized by biographer Sir
David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour ( ; born 6 March 1946) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and member of the rock band Pink Floyd. He joined as guitarist and co-lead vocalist in 1967, shortly before the departure of founding member Syd Barrett. P ...
as one of several "ferocious post-war eruptions" of Kipling's souring sentiment concerning the state of Anglo-European society. It was first published in the ''
Sunday Pictorial
The ''Sunday Mirror'' is the Sunday sister paper of the ''Daily Mirror''. It began life in 1915 as the ''Sunday Pictorial'' and was renamed the ''Sunday Mirror'' in 1963. In 2016 it had an average weekly circulation of 620,861, dropping marke ...
'' of London on 26 October 1919; in America, it was published as "The Gods of the Copybook Maxims" in ''
Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'' in January 1920.
In the poem, Kipling's narrator counterposes the "Gods" of the title, who embody eternal truths, against "the Gods of the Market-Place", who represent an optimistic self-deception into which it supposes society has fallen in the early 20th century.
The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were
proverbs or
maxims, often drawn from sermons and scripture extolling virtue and wisdom, that were printed at the top of the pages of
copybooks, special notebooks used by 19th-century British schoolchildren. The students had to copy the maxims repeatedly, by hand, down the page. The exercise was thought to serve simultaneously as a form of moral education and penmanship practice.
Modern critical interpretation
Kipling's narrative voice contrasts the purported eternal wisdom of these commonplace texts with the fashionable and (in Kipling's view) naïve modern ideas of "the Market-Place", making oblique reference, by way of puns or poetic references to older
geological time periods, to
Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during ...
and Liberal efforts at disarmament ("the
Cambrian
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago ...
measures"),
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
("the ...
Feminian Sandstones"), and socialist policies advocated by trade-unionists, many of whom were coalminers ("the
Carboniferous
The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carboniferou ...
Epoch").
In a footnote to a philosophical essay, Francis Slade compared Kipling's theme to
Horace's Epistles I.10 ("The Advantages of Country Life"), in which the Roman poet says:
Drive Nature off with a pitchfork, she’ll still press back,
And secretly burst in triumph through your sad disdain.
According to Slade, while the poem's verbosity is "far removed from Horace's elegant succinctness", it does "make the same point with some force".
John C. Bogle
John Clifton "Jack" Bogle (May 8, 1929 – January 16, 2019) was an American investor, business magnate, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive of The Vanguard Group, and is credited with creating the index fund. An avid inve ...
described the poem as "beautifully captur
ngthe thinking of
Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian-born political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at ...
and
Keynes", who espoused, respectively, "entrepreneurship" and "
animal spirits": both ideas of the market place.
included the poem in his 1941 collection ''
A Choice of Kipling's Verse''.
Poem
References
External links
Gods of the Copybook Headings hosted at kipling.org.uk(includes a reading in MP3 format)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gods Of The Copybook Headings, The
Poetry by Rudyard Kipling
1919 poems