Rudyard Kipling (post 3): Autonomous, alternate personality (“my Daemon”) was “in charge” of writing, of when “tap turned off,” and Kipling had to “obey.”

Kipling said, “Most men, and some most unlikely, keep him under an alias which varies with their literary or scientific attainments. Mine came to me early when I sat bewildered among other notions, and said: ‘Take this and no other.’ I obeyed and was rewarded…After that I learned to lean upon him and recognize the sign of his approach. If ever I held back…I paid for it by missing what I then knew the tale lacked…My Daemon was with me in the Jungle Books, Kim, and both Puck books, and good care I took to walk delicately, lest he should withdraw. I know that he did not, because when those books were finished they said so themselves with, almost, the water-hammer click of a tap turned off…When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey” (1, pp. 276-277).

Search “daemon” to read a past post about a book that discusses this euphemism for autonomous, alternate personalities in regard to twelve other writers.

1. Rudyard Kipling. Autobiographical quotations in Norton Critical Edition of Kim. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2002.