Rebecca wrote:
> Here, from the man who coined the phrase, and perhaps of interest to those
> who didn't have to take American History, though it is spooky for seeming
> so current...
Funny you should say that. I've been reading Kipling - Plain Tales from the
Hills - and David Gilmour's biography of Kipling just recently, with
something of the same spookiness in mind. Best quote from Gilmour so far is
Conrad on Kipling's belief that the war against the Boers was fought on
behalf of freedom and democracy: "C'est a crever de rire".
Anyway, I thought it was high time I made the acquaintance a real
imperialist, not an anti-imperialist caricature of one - and Kipling at
least can write, and could in his early twenties carry off the most
tremendous impostures. In _Plain Tales from the Hills_ the "knowingness" of
the narration is very stagey in places, but there's also a vein of serious
and untrammelled conviction that takes you to some unexpected places. I will
have to go back and see what Edward Said wrote on Kipling: an imperialist
who can really write wants an anti-imperialist who can really read, and
there are few enough of those.
I believe there's a moment, or a passage in time, where Kipling stops being
a critical exponent of an imperialist ideology and starts to be an apologist
for it instead, defending in spite of himself an Idea and disregarding, in
spite of himself, some rather plain facts. But perhaps the facts will return
to him later - I'm only about halfway through the book.
Both Kipling books were in my local library - the Gilmour biography
alongside books on Gandhi and Jinnar (I've probably spelt both of their
names wrong, alas...). So it seems he is a figure of interest to
(Anglo-)Indians as well.
Dominic
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