Unexplored Territory

At one time, everyone read Kipling. But for “five literary generations,” as George Orwell remarks, “every enlightened person has despised him.” And even the determined efforts of our best, our most influential critics seem unable to regain for him his place in our operative literary tradition. T. S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Randall Jarrell, and, now, J. I. M. Stewart (Rudyard Kipling, Dodd Mead, $5.00), have said, in effect: “Look. Kipling is a very important writer, and quite possibly a great one. He has written a number of stories which are among the best in the language, or any language. Kim is an extraordinary novel. And Kipling’s characteristic concerns are relevant right now. Read him!” But except for our best critics, he scarcely exists just below that level.

As an explanation of this, it is scarcely adequate to refer to Kipling’s conservatism. True enough, as J. I. M. Stewart observes, “Kipling retains the power and will to irritate these ‘liberal’ sentiments which have tended to make the running among English-speaking writers and intellectuals during the present century.” But the point is not quite that Kipling is more conservative than a host of other writers who are perfectly acceptable to “enlightened” opinion. In its political bearing his work is no further from “liberal sentiment” than that of Yeats or Eliot or Hemingway or Faulkner. How could it be? The difficulty is that whereas they operate by indirection, employing, variously, a considerable amount of metaphor, myth, and parable,, Kipling talks directly about issues that have been very much before us. They are figurative; he is blunt and literal. We have, of course, our own sorts of Bowdlerism today, and so, though we now may hear all we wish, and more than we wish, about sex, there are other subjects before which the veil must be discreetly drawn. Kipling insists upon thrusting it aside.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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At one time, everyone read Kipling. But for “five literary generations,” as George Orwell remarks, “every enlightened person has despised him.” And even the determined efforts of our best, our most influential critics seem unable to regain for him his place in our operative literary tradition. T. S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Randall Jarrell, and, now, J. I. M. Stewart (Rudyard Kipling, Dodd Mead, $5.00), have said, in effect: “Look. Kipling is a very important writer, and quite possibly a great one. He has written a number of stories which are among the best in the language, or any language. Kim is an extraordinary novel. And Kipling’s characteristic concerns are relevant right now. Read him!” But except for our best critics, he scarcely exists just below that level.

As an explanation of this, it is scarcely adequate to refer to Kipling’s conservatism. True enough, as J. I. M. Stewart observes, “Kipling retains the power and will to irritate these ‘liberal’ sentiments which have tended to make the running among English-speaking writers and intellectuals during the present century.” But the point is not quite that Kipling is more conservative than a host of other writers who are perfectly acceptable to “enlightened” opinion. In its political bearing his work is no further from “liberal sentiment” than that of Yeats or Eliot or Hemingway or Faulkner. How could it be? The difficulty is that whereas they operate by indirection, employing, variously, a considerable amount of metaphor, myth, and parable,, Kipling talks directly about issues that have been very much before us. They are figurative; he is blunt and literal. We have, of course, our own sorts of Bowdlerism today, and so, though we now may hear all we wish, and more than we wish, about sex, there are other subjects before which the veil must be discreetly drawn. Kipling insists upon thrusting it aside.