Concluding Life's Handicap
Feb. 5th, 2010 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloFinished!
"Little Tobrah": a story about a child of the sort we have learned to call a slumdog. This one has pushed his blind sister down a well because he didn't have anything to feed her with
"Moti Guj- Mutineer": an amusing tale about an elephant- pointing forwards, I suppose, to The Jungle Books.
"Bubbling Well Road": there's something very nasty in the long grass. You would be best advised not to go in.
"The City of Dreadful Night": essentially journalism- a sketch of Lahore by night.
"Georgie Porgie": a selfish bastard deserts his native wife for an English rose. The spurned wife- in her ignorance- searches all over India for him. Kipling's sardonic wit saves it from sentimentality. As an heir to the high Victorians, Kipling was terrified of sentimentality.
"Naboth": a not very likeable "fable" about relations between a sahib and the enterprising native who sets up shop on the outskirts of his property.
"The Dream of Duncan Parrenness": a sort of A Christmas Carol in reverse. Interesting in that it sees Kipling attempting a pastiche- not all that successfully- of an 18th century prose style.
So that's that.
Summing up is tricky. This isn't a unified collection. A very young writer is ranging about, seeing what he can do, testing his limits. He finds that his limits are set very far out. He can do comedy and tragedy- and has a master's ability to mix them up together. The voice- the authorial voice- is very strong- aloof, dry, omniscient, revelling in language- so strong that at times it verges on the annoyingly smug. There are 27 stories, one of which is a dud and five of which are masterpieces.
"Little Tobrah": a story about a child of the sort we have learned to call a slumdog. This one has pushed his blind sister down a well because he didn't have anything to feed her with
"Moti Guj- Mutineer": an amusing tale about an elephant- pointing forwards, I suppose, to The Jungle Books.
"Bubbling Well Road": there's something very nasty in the long grass. You would be best advised not to go in.
"The City of Dreadful Night": essentially journalism- a sketch of Lahore by night.
"Georgie Porgie": a selfish bastard deserts his native wife for an English rose. The spurned wife- in her ignorance- searches all over India for him. Kipling's sardonic wit saves it from sentimentality. As an heir to the high Victorians, Kipling was terrified of sentimentality.
"Naboth": a not very likeable "fable" about relations between a sahib and the enterprising native who sets up shop on the outskirts of his property.
"The Dream of Duncan Parrenness": a sort of A Christmas Carol in reverse. Interesting in that it sees Kipling attempting a pastiche- not all that successfully- of an 18th century prose style.
So that's that.
Summing up is tricky. This isn't a unified collection. A very young writer is ranging about, seeing what he can do, testing his limits. He finds that his limits are set very far out. He can do comedy and tragedy- and has a master's ability to mix them up together. The voice- the authorial voice- is very strong- aloof, dry, omniscient, revelling in language- so strong that at times it verges on the annoyingly smug. There are 27 stories, one of which is a dud and five of which are masterpieces.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 01:20 pm (UTC)I went over to the Kipling Society website and downloaded Proofs of Holy Writ. I suspect it's more about how Kipling crafts his words than about the ostensible subject.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 04:05 pm (UTC)The masterpieces are:
The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney
On Greenhow Hill
Without benefit of Clergy
The Mark of the Beast
Georgie Porgie.
I'm rather hoping you'll disagree :)
You're right about Proofs of Holy Writ.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 05:54 pm (UTC)For masterpieces, what about the one with the sea monsters? Or wasn't that in your version of Life's Handicap? I'd add that to the "masterpiece" collection, given the way it wove a genuinely eerie seamonster piece with one of Kipling's wicked looks at human folly.
(Ooops, Seamonsters may be in _A Kipling Pageant_, which is my mealtime reading. LH is on the second floor and is my bedtime reading.)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 08:04 pm (UTC)A lot of the stories are quite slight- no more than sketches- but the Land Men is the only one I wouldn't defend. I don't think Duncan Parrenness really works- but it's interesting as an exercise in pastiche and as a foretaste of the much more convincing historical fiction Kipling would write later.