|
|
Article: Kipling: The Poet.
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- May 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
As a practising biographer I have long entertained serious misgivings regarding the view held in certain academic quarters that the writer's life and work should be considered entirely separate. Mr. Keating's timeous and perceptive re-assayal of Kipling's poetry reinforces the absolute necessity of setting the achievement against the biographical background.
In the beginning Mr. Kipling was much honoured. Sir Leslie Stephen, his daughter Virginia Woolf tells us, would stomp about repeating his ballads by heart. As the Boer War -- and the jingoists -- raged he was looked to as a new Tyrtaeus. But even thus early there were dissenters. Richard Le Gallienne in his ...