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Kristol re Orwell on Kipling

And what they have to do with you.  Great historical prism.  Orwell was a lefty with a brain, who recognized the evil of communist as well as fascist oppression, and the dangers of acquiescence to either. He knew our flawed system was worth defending, setting aside squabbles for later. Kipling is ill-treated by Orwell in the cited essay as “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting,” both overstatements though given Kilping’s status as an unabashed imperialist producer of doggerel and pulp, I’m not going to squawk much.  I like Kipling. Some of his work is transcendant and to this day survives with good reason. He was not simply the “White Man’s Burden” racist empire-boosting Orwell is refering to, but someone who lived among and loved the people of India his entire life, told their stories as well as those of the British, recognized the ironies and shortcomings of the system he defended, and not unlike Orwell recognized the price paid at the lowest levels for policies drawn up on high. 

Topics: pols, Man Who Would Be King, literary, history

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:45 am on Monday, February 18, 2008

5 Responses to “Kristol re Orwell on Kipling”

1. Fatty Bolger Says:
   February 18th, 2008 at 11:38 am

   Heh. That’s sure to throw some people into a tizzy. NYT’ers aren’t accustomed to being spoken to with such frankness!

2. RebeccaH Says:
   February 18th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

   To govern is to choose, a Democrat of an earlier generation, John F. Kennedy, famously remarked. Is this generation of Democrats capable of governing?

   Short answer: not presently, no.

   Irrelevant aside: One of my favorite books when I was growing up was Kipling’s Kim.

3. mojo Says:
   February 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

   I always thought W. Somerset Maugham put together the best collection of “Kipling’s Best”.

4. Michael Lonie Says:
   February 21st, 2008 at 12:45 am

   You can hardly find a stronger paean to the importance of individual character transcending race, class, or culture, than “The Ballad of East and West.”

5. Jules Crittenden » Gunga Din Says:
   February 26th, 2008 at 8:55 am

   […] The widely misunderstood, often ironic Kipling’s Din tribute is a rough but insightful look at wretches at the leading edge of the British Empire, which Kipling saw as a force to civilize and maintain order in a dangerous and imperfect world.  As it ultimately did, if imperfectly and not necessarily for lofty motives, leaving institutional legacies that greatly benefit those former colonies that have chosen and managed to maintain them; in the main, doing a better job of than most of the other western powers involved in the 19th century landgrab. Visit a colonial cemetery in India, see the gravestones where British civil servants buried their children and wives, and you’ll get another tight focus on the complexities of empire. But in Kipling’s tale, no civil insitutions are being built. It’s just about bonds of loyalty and the brutal enlightenment of combat, where race and station in the end are transcended. Kipling’s wretches include the benighted, ill-fated Tommy as well as the benighted ill-fated water carrier. Kipling, who spent much of his life in India, was far more intimate with the concerns and humanity of its subject races than I suspect a lot of his critics were or are. In Din, Kipling is well below the abstract level of  the “audacity of hope,” and has zeroed in on the bleak equality of shared sacrifice, to which racial advancement historically owes no little debt of gratitude. […]

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