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''The King's Pilgrimage'' is a poem and book about the journey made by King George V in May 1922 to visit the World War I cemeteries and memorials being constructed at the time in France and Belgium by the Imperial War Graves Commission.〔(The Letters of Rudyard Kipling V5 1920–30, Volume 5; Volumes 1920–1930 ), Thomas Pinney (Ed, 2004), Note 1, page 120〕 This journey was part of the wider pilgrimage movement that saw tens of thousands of bereaved relatives from the United Kingdom and the Empire visit the battlefields of the Great War in the years that followed the Armistice.〔(Pilgrimage ), Aftermath – when the boys came home, accessed 18 January 2010. This source includes the information that the book sold in "huge numbers", though it is not clear where this information comes from.〕 The poem was written by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling, while the text in the book is attributed to the Australian journalist and author Frank Fox.〔Sir Frank Ignatius Fox (1874–1960) was an Australian journalist and author who was knighted in 1926. Further biographical details are available at (Fox, Sir Frank Ignatius (1874–1960) ) (Australian Dictionary of Biography). The (UK National Register of Archives database entry for Fox ) refers to "misc corresp and papers rel to The King's Pilgrimage" held in the archives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Accessed 26 February 2010.〕 Aspects of the pilgrimage were also described by Kipling within the short story 'The Debt' (1930).〔 ==Poem== The author of the poem, Rudyard Kipling, had lost his only son in the war. Kipling, a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was its literary advisor and wrote many of the inscriptions and other written material produced for the Commission. The first publication of the poem in the UK was in ''The Times'' of 15 May 1922, while the poem also appeared in the USA in the ''New York World''.〔("The King's Pilgrimage" ), Notes on the text of the poem, provided by The Kipling Society, accessed 16 January 2010. The analysis and the interpretation of the poem is from notes by John McGivering of the Kipling Society, "partly based on the ORG", where the ORG is the ''Old Readers' Guide'', fully known as ''Harbord's Readers' Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling''.〕 The text of the poem includes references to Nieuport (a coastal port down-river from Ypres), and "four Red Rivers", said to be the River Somme, the River Marne, the River Oise and the River Yser, which all flow through the World War I battlefields.〔 The poem also talks about "a carven stone" and "a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross", referring to the Stone of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice, architectural motifs being used by the Commission in the cemeteries.〔 Kipling's poem describing the King's journey has been compared to 'The Waste Land' by T. S. Eliot, published later the same year.〔Battlefield cemeteries, pilgrimage, and literature after the First World War, 2009, Joanna Scutts, ''English Literature in Transition 1880–1920''〕 In her 2009 paper, Joanna Scutts draws comparisons between the structure of the poem and that of a chivalric quest.〔 Scutts also considers the pilgrimage as an "interpretive context" for the Eliot poem, stating that "()een through Kipling's poetic lens, the king's exemplary pilgrimage became as much romance quest as religious ritual", and suggests that Kipling's poem blurs the line between "conservative, traditional commemoration" and the "antiestablishment modernism" represented by Eliot.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The King's Pilgrimage」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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