No one approaches him in vivid
descriptive power, in keen character portraiture, in the faculty of
making a strange and alien life as real to us as the life we have
always known. And in some of his more recent work, as in the story of
the two young Romans in _Puck of Pook's Hill_, Kipling reaches rare
heights in reproducing the romance of a bygone age. In these tales of
ancient Britain the poet in Kipling has full sway and his visual power
moves with a freedom that stamps clearly and deeply every image upon
the reader's mind.
The first ten years of Kipling's literary activity were given over to
a wonderful reproduction of East Indian life as seen through
sympathetic English eyes. Yet the sympathy that is revealed in
Kipling's best sketches of native life in India is never tinged with
sentiment. The native is always drawn in his relations to the
Englishman; always the traits of revenge or of gratitude or of
dog-like devotion are brought out. Kipling knows the East Indian
through and through, because in his childhood he had a rare
opportunity to watch the native. The barrier of reserve, which was
always maintained against the native Englishman, was let down in the
case of this precocious child, who was a far keener observer than most
adults. And these early impressions lend an extraordinary life and
vitality to the sketches and stories on which Kipling's fame will
ultimately rest.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128