Rudyard Kipling

[Extollager]

You tell me! Does it?

Sincere question. Explication de Texte, anyone?

It's fine, Hex or Baylor, if you prefer to decline.

What I'm getting at is that Kipling's "attitudes" are almost always assumed, and assumed to be a great blot on his character and/or his achievement. Yet one almost never sees anyone actually take the trouble to unpack a work with some care, actually getting in there and doing the job of making a case.

Does it matter? I suspect that it matters a lot; that Kipling is read far less than he deserves to be, because people think they already know what they need to know about the man -- who (present company excepted) may actually have been a far shrewder judge of people, whatever their culture or "color," than are those who think they have his measure.

You'll note that I'm not defending him against the charges of racism, or pro-colonialism, etc. That's partly at least because I don't have at hand anything substantial to respond to. Right now, to defend Kipling, supposing I want to do that, I myself would have to mug up the case against him, or rather, I hope, against some particular work.

 

[BAYLOR]

You tell me! Does it?

Sincere question. Explication de Texte, anyone?

It's fine, Hex or Baylor, if you prefer to decline.

What I'm getting at is that Kipling's "attitudes" are almost always assumed, and assumed to be a great blot on his character and/or his achievement. Yet one almost never sees anyone actually take the trouble to unpack a work with some care, actually getting in there and doing the job of making a case.

Does it matter? I suspect that it matters a lot; that Kipling is read far less than he deserves to be, because people think they already know what they need to know about the man -- who (present company excepted) may actually have been a far shrewder judge of people, whatever their culture or "color," than are those who think they have his measure.

You'll note that I'm not defending him against the charges of racism, or pro-colonialism, etc. That's partly at least because I don't have at hand anything substantial to respond to. Right now, to defend Kipling, supposing I want to do that, I myself would have to mug up the case against him, or rather, I hope, against some particular work.

I can't seem to come up with a specific example.

 

[Hex]

I have always loved reading Kipling. I've also read a lot of other literature of that time -- colonial or boy's school novels involving the fundamental superiority of the English public school boy and, although that was a few years ago, I enjoyed them all (I was a child, and I didn't have much concept of the impact of all the exciting ideas).

I am aware that Kipling isn't as clear-cut as some critics like to make out (my mother keeps me right on these things), however it seems to me that The White Man's Burden is a celebration of the responsibility of white men (in this case Americans?) to civilise and look after other peoples who don't have their advantages. I did wonder if it was satire, but I'd like evidence of that.

I don't hate Kipling for what he believed (if he did believe in the 'white man's burden') but I think he was wrong and whether he believed in it or not, colonial beliefs and the colonial period caused much brutality and suffering and are responsible for any number of messes that the world is in now. Perhaps I even admire his sense of responsibility -- if that's what it is. It at least shows a kind of nobility, though I think it is misplaced, and I find it easier to take than modern denial of responsibility for any of the colonial past.

 

[hitmouse]

Kipling was born and bought up in Bombay, where his father was a professor in a Parsi-endowed art college. That city has a complex cultural identity, and I think that Kipling was very well aware of this. He was sent to board in England at the age of about 5, and hated it. He returned to India in his teens, and said that he never really felt British after that. So he certainly was not a home counties armchair jingoist, and neither was he part of the Delhi-based British Raj. His writing does have to be taken in context, but it is certainly not the 2-dimensional racial caricature of most of his contemporary popular novelists. Kiplings work is both accessible, fun, and relevant today.

The stuff I like:
The Jungle Books
Kim
Gunga Din
The Man who would be King
The Just So Stories
Puck of Pook's Hill
With the Night Mail (which is a SF novel)

Kipling was quite prolific and there is a lot of stuff that has become quite obscure.

Re: White Man's Burden. I think that this can be seen as containing a heavy pinch of irony:
Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

@aThenian
If is not tongue in cheek.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

So he certainly was not a home counties armchair jingoist, and neither was he part of the Delhi-based British Raj. His writing does have to be taken in context, but it is certainly not the 2-dimensional racial caricature of most of his contemporary popular novelists.

He's not perfect, and had faults. But which writer is perfect and how many of them would you really like as house guests if you knew them? Neil Gaiman found Terry Pratchett a little difficult at times. Prachett was quite an angry person. I love most of his books, but I'm not sure I could have coped as well as Neil Gaiman.

 

[Extollager]

Any assessment of Kipling's "racial attitudes" should take into account -- maybe begin -- with the short story "Without Benefit of Clergy."

I'd suggest that a profitable way to read the "White Man's Burden" poem is as a poem about vocation at least as much as it is about "race." It is the work that's the "burden," the "harness." See the opening of his very great weird tale "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" for a prose evocation of the weariness of colonial labor, and various other stories for his fascination with the particulars e.g. of engineering.

 

[hitmouse]

Good comments from Ray and Extoll. Of course Kipling was not perfect. He was a rather unusual product of his times. I think anyone who opens with the "attitude" dismissal of Kipling should provide a lucid comparison with the writings of Rider Haggard, John Buchan, Conan Doyle, and Mark Twain.

 

[The Ace]

I love the, "Just So," stories, "Tommy," is as relevant today as when it was written, and who can forget;

"Though I've belted you and flayed you.
By the living Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

"If," was not written ironically, it's a superb inspirational piece, and one of the best definitions of manhood I've ever read, these nice people let you read it in full;

Poems - If--

It shows what strength of character and determination really mean (the British Army actually used it in an advert at one point).

 

[Hex]

Surely if Kipling intended the poem ironically, it backfired rather horribly since it was (apparently) used to support the terrible conflict in the Philippines? Did he ever comment on that? Most of the things I randomly encountered on the internet seem to feel he wasn't being ironic in the poem, and wikipedia (I know!) says he sent Roosevelt the poem and wrote to him:

In September 1898 Kipling wrote to Roosevelt, stating 'Now go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on permanently to the whole Philippines. America has gone and stuck a pickaxe into the foundations of a rotten house and she is morally bound to build the house over again from the foundations or have it fall about her ears'

Which suggests his position was about "The White Man's burden" in a largely unironic way.

I think Kipling was very much a man of his time, and during his time many awful things happened, in part because of an ideology that he could have been seen to promote. I find it hard to read him entirely out of context, which is why I avoid much of his poetry.

 

[Extollager]

I admit I haven't read Kipling's poetry to speak of. For me he's primarily the author of a torrent of impressive short stories.

 

[BigBadBob141]

I love the story "How The Elephant Got His Trunk" from the "Just So Stories".
Also "Riki Tiki Tavi" from "The Jungle Book".
But for me it's his poetry that equaly stands out.
As well as the excellent "If" I like a poem he wrote about the attitude of civilians towards soldiers in peacetime.
It's as true today as it was then.
As I don't have it with me I'm not sure of the title but I think it's "Tommy Atkins".
To misquote a verse of it , it goes something like this:

"I went in to a public house to have myself a drink"
"But the landlord at the bar he said we'll serve no soldiers here"
"Well it's Tommy this and Tommy that"
"And kick him out the brute!"
"But it's thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot"
"When the guns begin to shoot me boys, the guns begin to shoot"
"Yes it's thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot"

Never a truer line written!!!

 

[Hex]

I admit I haven't read Kipling's poetry to speak of. For me he's primarily the author of a torrent of impressive short stories.

There's a treat for me, then, because I haven't read his short stories (except the Just So Stories, of course)

As well as the excellent "If" I like a poem he wrote about the attitude of civilians towards soldiers in peacetime.
It's as true today as it was then.
As I don't have it with me I'm not sure of the title but I think it's "Tommy Atkins".

That's interesting. I didn't know that "Tommy Atkins" was slang for an ordinary soldier -- I only knew "Tommy".

Here's the poem: Poems - Tommy

"Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap."

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I avoid much of his poetry.

I haven't read Kipling's poetry to speak of.

Generally I don't read ANY poetry by anyone. I find READING poetry tedious. I have to have poetry read to me out loud by someone good at it. As a song is good too.

 

[JoanDrake]

Kipling ranged much wider in his poetry than most people think. Read "A Pict's Song" if you think he was just an apologist for colonialism. Read "The Sack of the Gods" if you think he just wrote conventional stuff

 

[The Ace]

I love the story "How The Elephant Got His Trunk" from the "Just So Stories".
Also "Riki Tiki Tavi" from "The Jungle Book".
But for me it's his poetry that equaly stands out.
As well as the excellent "If" I like a poem he wrote about the attitude of civilians towards soldiers in peacetime.
It's as true today as it was then.
As I don't have it with me I'm not sure of the title but I think it's "Tommy Atkins".
To misquote a verse of it , it goes something like this:

"I went in to a public house to have myself a drink"
"But the landlord at the bar he said we'll serve no soldiers here"
"Well it's Tommy this and Tommy that"
"And kick him out the brute!"
"But it's thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot"
"When the guns begin to shoot me boys, the guns begin to shoot"
"Yes it's thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot"

Never a truer line written!!!

It's simply, "Tommy," and as I said before, it's as relevant now as it ever was.

The example of how to fill in a British Army pay-book was in the name of Thomas Atkins (first a private, then a sergeant) - there are actually a couple of Thomas Atkins in real life who may've been the inspiration for this, but British soldiers have been, "Tommy Atkins," or simply, "Tommies," to friend and foe alike since at least the Napoleonic Wars.

 

[Ursa major]

however it seems to me that The White Man's Burden is a celebration of the responsibility of white men (in this case Americans?) to civilise and look after other peoples who don't have their advantages.

A strange version of the White Man's Burden is frequently on view on the Grauniad's website, not from the usual suspects, but from those who believe (seemingly unknown to themselves**) that only Europeans and Americans (those north of the Rio Grande, obviously) have agency, and that anything that goes wrong is, inevitably, entirely the fault of (some or all of the) Europeans and/or Americans.

Note that I'm not saying that certain powerful people and interests -- whoever/whatever they might be -- don't have a baleful influence on all sorts of things, and in all sorts of places. However, believing in their (malevolent) omniscience, and that their ranks are exclusively filled by Europeans or those of European descent, seems downright dubious (not to mention non-PC).


** - In the sense that they hold this view even though they'd almost certainly argue that all people are equal (in terms of their worth).

 

[Extollager]

Hex, when you're ready for Kipling's short stories, here are some that you might look up.

A Bank Fraud

In Flood Time

On Greenhow Hill

At the Pit’s Mouth

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Without Benefit of Clergy

The Man Who Would Be King

Wee Willie Winkie

Courting of Dinah Shadd

The Mark of the Beast

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

The Phantom ’Rickshaw

At the End of the Passage

“Wireless” (but read Keats’s poem “The Eve of St. Agnes” first)

“They”

The House Surgeon

Mary Postgate

Mrs. Bathurst

The Wish House

My Son’s Wife

Dayspring Mishandled

.....I'm going to have to read some of these again myself!

 

[Extollager]

Re: Horror Victorianorum:

The new “Horror Victorianorum” by Michael J. Lewis - The New Criterion

 

[Ray McCarthy]

But it is no easy matter to dismiss the collective achievement of a mighty industrial civilization that had brought the modern world into being. Those same decades that brought forth the detested Pre-Raphaelites and the High Victorian Gothic also brought forth the Crystal Palace, the transatlantic cable, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Electricity, submarines, steamers, Steam/Electric/Diesel/Petrol cars, Telegraph, fax, ballpoint pen, electric flash-light, practical portable rechargeable and disposable batteries (1800 to 1840 batteries were not portable) typewriter, card data mechanical data sorting, measured speed of light, Maxwell & Michael Faraday, electroplating, Electric lamp, water turbine Electric generators, Mechanical TV, CRT, Wireless, The stamp and postage system, importance of sewage/water filtering to avoid disease, Suez Canal, Colour printing, Phonograph, Gramophone, Electric Hearing aid and much much more!

Besides, I LIKE the Pre-Raphaelites* (though they seem to have been nuts).

They created SF, The modern School Story, The modern Detective and Spy stories and Dracula. Very much diverse fiction, much so good stuff and so few of the authors are widely read today (Dickens, Trollope, Verne, Wells, Wilkie Collins, Kipling, Conan Doyle are still read but that is tip of iceberg).


[* What's not to like about photo-realistic images of people dressing up in fantasy mediaeval outfits? Their legacy uses computers and publishes on Deviant Art ]

 

[Extollager]

Bravo, Ray!

To your list of Victorian authors who still are read -- with much pleasure -- today, I'd add Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell (her biography of Charlotte is great! -- and novels such as Wives and Daughters are really good), George MacDonald, Rider Haggard at his best, etc. Maybe Tennyson and Thomas Hardy too? But you're right about authors who aren't as well known as they deserve to be, also, such as George Borrow and the diarist Kilvert.

But would anyone be interested in actually reading and discussing some Kipling here?