How a Rock Opera Connected me to a WWI Poem: An Analysis of "Gethsemane" by Rudyard Kipling

**Repost from class blog**

Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, the character of Jesus sings a song titled Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say). That song popped into my head immediately upon seeing this title listed in Penguin and refused to leave for several days.  You can see the lyrics by following this link and listen to the song on YouTube here.  I recommend listening to the song (it echoes Jesus's actual sentiments in the Biblical text) while reading Kipling's poem. The similarities are obvious, and I want other people to have it stuck in their heads too. 

Being that Jesus Christ Superstar is one of my favorite musicals and Gethsemane one of my favorite songs from it, I was immediately drawn to this poem. Of course, the canonical basis for Kipling's poem and Webber's musical is the Bible, specifically the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed the night prior to his death.* I am fascinated when people use a well-known story to improve the understanding of a separate event, and because of my love of Jesus Christ Superstar as well as my upbringing in a Christian church, I realized right away that Kipling’s poem is deliberately written to parallel the events leading to the crucifixion of Christ. 

The first stanza sets the scene of soldiers marching through Picardy, perhaps stopping to rest, and being observed by the French people residing there. Picardy was the site of much violent fighting from 1914-1918.* Knowing this gives the line “The English soldiers pass” a sort of double meaning. “[P]ass” could refer to traveling through an area or more morbidly, passing to the next life. 



As I read the next stanza, I picture Kipling’s Garden as the land just before soldiers would reach the fighting and likely death, similar to how in the Bible the Garden is one of the last places Jesus spent time before his death. In Matthew 26.39, Jesus prays “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."* This is shown in the image above**. Like Jesus in Gethsemane, this soldier is also asking for the cup that is representative of death to pass from him. Both men are in a peaceful garden, literal or metaphorical, knowing their inevitable death waits beyond. Not only death but painful death- crucifixion for Jesus, and gas for the man in the poem. In the third stanza that death arrives. Just as the cup didn’t pass from Jesus, nor does it pass from the soldier who dies from gas after leaving his Garden of Gethsemane.

Overall, I was surprised and captivated by Kipling's boldness in comparing a soldier’s sacrifice to the sacrifice of Jesus, a revered figure in Christianity and other major religions. However, rather than interpreting this as trivializing Jesus’s plight, I see this poem as elevating the plight of soldiers’ to the level of Christ. Though not directly, Kipling seems to be saying that a soldier who sacrifices their life, and more than that, does so knowing and resigned to the fact that they must die, is at the same level as the son of God. I think that this is an incredibly powerful sentiment. In Gethsemane, Kipling simultaneously applauds the bravery of soldiers, suggests a tragic necessity to their sacrifice, and reflects on the horror of war and death, all by alluding to the known story of Christ’s crucifixion.

In the early 1900s when this poem was written and published, people would have understood the biblical reference immediately. While I used a song from a rock opera to relate to it, those with any familiarity with the story of Jesus's death would likewise be able to understand and draw their own conclusions about Rudyard Kipling's Gethsemane.

*Radcliffe, J., & McGivering, J. (2011). “Gethsemane.” Retrieved September 9, 2020, from http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_gethsemane1.htm

**Manly Poems – Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling. (2010, October 24). Retrieved September 9, 2020 from https://anirishmanabroad.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/manly-poems-gethsemane-by-rudyard-kipling