thread: 2007-01-19 : The Jungle Books
On 2007-01-22, Brand Robins wrote:
Vincent,
The topic you're wanting to know about is vast and huge and complex. It's also not easily summarized, because doing so tends to leave out huge and important issues.
For example, if I say, "Well Kipling was a white man who was writing based on a lot of local folk animal-traditions without giving a lot of credit to the locals" then I'm not saying the part where "Kipling often said that the English overlooked the vast literary traditions of India." Or if I say, "Kipling was born and lived much of his life in India" I miss the part where "an India that was pacified, controlled, and economically drained by his own class." When we talk about the "Mutiny of 1957" we don't talk about the "First War of Independence." When we talk about "white man's burden" we don't talk about "Gunga Din."
So, really, what I'm going to answer is that when you say "I find what he says about human beings to be very compelling, and astutely observed; that he observed it in his particular context shapes its form, but it's still quite compellingly human in content" I nod in agreement. I just don't end my personal, in my own head, discussion there, because what we mean by human is entirely shaped by context.
Reading Kipling is always fascinating, both for what he says and what he doesn't, and who he was and who he wasn't. Same with reading, well, just about anyone, but due to Kipling's genius its more... all present. You can read endless dreary prose from the ear and write a thesis about it and not get as much of the fucked up, beautiful, contradictory, and human as you can from one of Kip's stories.
Many professors of literature in England agree. Most professors of literature in India don't.
