The Stranger by Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger

by Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger within my gate,

  He may be true or kind,

 But he does not talk my talk—

  I cannot feel his mind.

 I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,

   But not the soul behind. 

The men of my own stock

  They may do ill or well,

 But they tell the lies I am wonted to,

  They are used to the lies I tell.

 And we do not need interpreters

  When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,

   He may be evil or good,

 But I cannot tell what powers control—

  What reasons sway his mood;

 Nor when the Gods of his far-off land

  Shall repossess his blood. 

The men of my own stock,

   Bitter bad they may be,

 But, at least, they hear the things I hear,

  And see the things I see;

 And whatever I think of them and their likes

  They think of the likes of me. 

This was my father's belief

   And this is also mine:

 Let the corn be all one sheaf—

  And the grapes be all one vine,

 Ere our children's teeth are set on edge

  By bitter bread and wine. 

Another one of those Kipling poems which you would wish not to be true but, inescapably, are. 

It is an age old question - what establishes the bonds of community?  Blood, language, shared experience, shared goals, shared beliefs?  Yes, and more, and less.  Some mix.  

In a world of thin margins, present peril and deep risks, who would you stand with?  Someone you understand, whether you like them or not, or a stranger whom you cannot understand?

Kipling suggests that we choose to stand with those whom we believe we know; the known quantity.  And I suspect he is correct.  Most of us would.

The reality is that most of us would wish to stand with anyone with whom we think we share some minimum set of beliefs and goals.  When given the choice of standing in some peril with 100 random Americans versus standing with 100 random upper middle-class, upper income, highly educated, professional individuals from around the world, which would you choose?  Possibly one might debate the merits and tip one way or another.

But if the question is reposed: With whom would you stand to achieve a specific goal?  Or even more specific: With whom would you stand to face a mortal danger?  All of a sudden, I think, the answer becomes much more clear.  And it is Kipling's answer.  

The gulf of incomprehension is always an existential threat but it is smallest with those with whom we share some common tapestry.  James Baldwin noted this in early 20th century Europe as American literary exiles struggled and enjoyed the differences of Paris or Berlin.

From The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American by James Baldwin.

In my necessity to find the terms on which my experience could be related to that of others, Negroes and whites, writers and non-writers, I proved, to my astonishment, to be as American as any Texas G.I. And I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris. Like me, they had been divorced from their origins and it turned out to make very little difference that the origins of white Americans were European and mine were African — they were no more at home in Europe than I was.

The fact that I was the son of a slave and they were the sons of free men meant less, by the time we confronted each other on European soil, than the fact we were both searching for our separate identities. When we had found these, we seemed to be saying, why, then, we would no longer need to cling to the shame and bitterness which had divided us so long.

It became terribly clear in Europe, as it never had been here, that we knew more about each other than any European ever could. And it also became clear that, no matter where our fathers had been born, or what they had endured, the fact of Europe had formed us both was part of our identity and part of our inheritance.

James Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling - who would think of them as kindred spirits and yet it would seem so.