Kipling was never one to pity the vanquished or cry for the victim. He preferred to praise the victors, fortify the reign of imperialism, legitimize and rationalize colonial order. Having lived in both Bombay and England, Kipling came to see English...
[more]Kipling was never one to pity the vanquished or cry for the victim. He preferred to praise the victors, fortify the reign of imperialism, legitimize and rationalize colonial order. Having lived in both Bombay and England, Kipling came to see English civilization as the only hope for a dirty, barbaric India.
No, Kipling would not be popular with the circles of Post-Colonial theorists presiding over classrooms and dwelling in academic offices these days; it's difficult to imagine him discoursing at length on the Other. Far from feeling guilt for the violence done to traditional ways of life, Kipling saw this violence as the only remedy for an ensuing chaos. He endowed the British Empire with an almost mythical redemptive capacity. For him, imperialism was akin to an act of God, a divine hand that brought order to that which has none. Kipling's is an aesthetics of action, an aesthetics of the deed.
Kipling's poetry is rough-edged, unpolished, and powerful. We get the sense that his words were set down in torrents of virile inspiration and left for the most part unrevised. He praised the brute force of primeval man in "First Chantey" and "Neolithic Age"; saw the beauty of violent creation in "Jungle Tales"; poeticized man's capacity to harness natural forces in modern machines in "McAndrew's Hymn;" sang of national power in "Song of the English," "The Widow at Windsor," and "The Sea Wife;" and celebrated the strength of the individual will in "Plain Tales from the Hills." Throughout his oeuvre, Kipling favored the instincts and ingenuity of humanity over its moral consciousness; he was more interested in propagating the strength of the few than in loving his neighbor.
Kipling also wrote several novels and collections of short stories. "The Jungle Book" is practically synonymous with Kipling in the minds of contemporary readers (thanks to the sweetened animated feature produced by Disney). The tale is based on Mowgli, a human boy raised by wolves who re-enters cilization. In the story, a military officer forces Mowgli to reveal the jungle's hidden treasures -- here again, the joys of British imperialism abound.
Of Kipling's novels, his "Mary Postgate" is most well-known; its dark vision of humanity has been compared to the work of Conrad and Lawrence. The book details the horrid transformation of its protaganist as her humanity slowly withers. The virtue of the book lies in Kipling's ability to charge seemingly trivial details with profound significance; every act, gesture, and spoken word seems to hint at Mary's egregious fate.
Kipling's writing reflects his vast breadth of experience. He was born in Bombay in 1865, educated in England, and traveled in America, Europe, and Asia. He knew the jungle as well as the city, the first world as well as the third. An outsider wherever he went, he nevertheless spoke from the position of a man at the center of events, tightly enbroiled in the torments and struggles of his time.
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