Editing If— (section)

==Reception==
As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism, the "[[stiff upper lip]]" self-discipline that popular culture rendered into a British national [[virtue]] and character trait, "If—" remains a cultural touchstone.<ref>{{cite web|title=Spartans and Stoics – Stiff Upper Lip |url=http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips |work=Icons of England |publisher=Culture24 |access-date=20 February 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091212030541/http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips |archive-date=12 December 2009 }}</ref> The British cultural-artifact status of the poem is evidenced by the [[parody|parodies]] of the poem, and by its popularity among Britons.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Emma|title=The Literary Companion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WELwa9Sds-EC&pg=PA25|year=2004|publisher=Robson|isbn=978-1861057983|page=25}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=Mike|title=Literature and Tourism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ePsxlk3tTOsC&pg=PA61 |page=61 |year=2002|publisher=The Thomson Corporation|isbn=1844800741}}</ref>

Kipling himself in the last year of his life took wry note of the poem's ubiquity:
<blockquote>Once started, the mechanisation of the age made <nowiki>[the verses]</nowiki> snowball themselves in a way that startled me. Schools, and places where they teach, took them for the suffering Young—which did me no good with the Young when I met them later. ('Why did you write that stuff? I’ve had to write it out twice as an impot.') They were printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologised to weariness. Twenty-seven of the Nations of the Earth translated them into their seven-and-twenty tongues, and printed them on every sort of fabric.<ref name=something/></blockquote>

In 1931, Elizabeth Lincoln Otis wrote "An 'If' for Girls" in response to Kipling's poem. Otis's poem was published in the anthology ''Father: An Anthology of Verse'' (1931).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-09-04 |title=Elizabeth Lincoln Otis |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizabeth-lincoln-otis |access-date=2023-09-04 |website=Poetry Foundation}}</ref>

[[T. S. Eliot]] included the poem in his 1941 collection ''[[A Choice of Kipling's Verse]]''.

In India, a framed copy of the poem was affixed to the wall before the study desk in the cabins of the officer cadets at the [[National Defence Academy]] at [[Pune]] and the [[Indian Naval Academy]] at Ezhimala.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mishra|first1=Piyush|last2=(India Interrupted Blog)|first2=Anshuman|title=If – Rudyard Kipling|url=https://mishrapiyush.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/if-an-inspiration/if-by-rudyard-kipling/|website=mishrapiyush.wordpress.com|date=10 September 2012 |publisher=Word Press|access-date=15 December 2015}}</ref> In Britain, the first verse is set, in granite setts, into the pavement of the promenade in [[Westward Ho!]] in Devon.<ref>{{Citation|url=https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/incredible-drone-footage-reveals-poetry-3388225|title=Incredible drone footage reveals poetry along Devon seafront that's hidden in plain sight|first=Joel|last=Cooper|date=3 October 2019|access-date=4 November 2023|website=devonlive.com}}</ref> The third and fourth lines of the second stanza of the poem: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same" are written on the wall of the players' entrance to the [[Centre Court]] at the [[All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club]], where the [[Wimbledon Championships]] are held.<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/wimbledon/photos/a.94472193731/10153652234698732/?comment_id=10153652439453732 Official Wimbledon page on Facebook]</ref> These same lines appear at the [[West Side Tennis Club]] in [[Forest Hills, Queens|Forest Hills, New York City]], where the [[US Open (tennis)|US Open]] was played until 1977.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Smith|first1=Liz|title=Round One at Forest Hills|volume=25|url=https://www.si.com/vault/1966/08/29/609062/round-one-at-forest-hills|access-date=31 December 2017|work=Sports Illustrated|issue=9|date=29 August 1966}}</ref>

The Indian writer [[Khushwant Singh]] considered the poem "the essence of the message of ''[[Bhagavad Gita|The Gita]]'' in English."<ref>[[Khushwant Singh]], [http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211656 "Review of ''The Book of Prayer'' by Renuka Narayanan"]  {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131213061351/http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211656 |date=13 December 2013 }} , 2001; review and Gita reference cited in [https://indiacurrents.com/if-you-can-keep-your-head-when-all-about-you-are-losing-theirs/ "If – You Can Keep Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs"] by Mukund Acharya, ''[[indiacurrents.com]]'', December 26, 2023 (possibly sourced to Wikipedia).{{Citation needed|date=October 2024}}</ref>

[[Charles McGrath (critic)|Charles McGrath]], a former deputy editor of ''[[The New Yorker]]'' and a former editor of the ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', wrote that when he was in school, "they had to recite Kipling's 'If—' every day, right after the [[Pledge of Allegiance]]."<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/rudyard-kipling-in-america|title=Rudyard Kipling in America|last=McGrath|first=Charles|date=1 July 2019|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2020-04-04}}</ref>

[[Pablo Neruda]]—like Kipling, a Nobel laureate—found a framed ornamental copy of the poem near the [[Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba|Duke of Alba's]] bedside in the [[Palacio de Liria]]. However, his view was not favourable, and he referred to it as "that pedestrian and sanctimonious poetry, precursor of the ''[[Reader's Digest]]'', whose intellectual level seems to me no higher than that of the Duke of Alba's boots."<ref>[[:es:Confieso que he vivido|Confieso que he vivido]], § Los Palacios Reconquistados. The reference to boots is explained by the context.{{Circular reference|date=September 2021}}</ref>

In the [[BBC]]'s 1996 nationwide poll, "If—" was voted the UK's favourite poem, gaining twice as many votes as the runner-up.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Nation's Favourite Poems|page=5|date=1996|publisher=BBC}}</ref>

The boxer [[Muhammad Ali]] was known to carry the poem in his wallet throughout his life as a guiding principle.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Francisco |first=Tony U. |date=2023-03-12 |title=The Poem That Drove Muhammad Ali To Greatness |url=https://medium.com/hpxl/the-poem-that-drove-muhammad-ali-to-greatness-a5d287b6bc07 |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=High-Performance Lifestyle}}</ref>

In 2006, the French philosopher [[Olivier Rey]] called "If—" an example of paternal tyranny, in which the father imposes a list of impossible conditions on his son.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Une folle solitude. Le fantasme de l'homme auto-construit|publisher=Le Seuil|year=2006|isbn=9782020863803|pages=116|language=fr}}</ref>