The Light that Failed as a War Novel

30 THE LIGiiT TIIAT FAI LED AS A WAR NOVEL By Eric Solomon (The Ohio State University) In his NEW YORKER profile of Max Beerbohm, S. N. Behrman mentions his own incredulous outrage at Rudyard Kipling's bloodthirsty approach to war. Beerbohm shared this opinion and found particularly distressing Kipling's sentimental tone towards "the men." The ending of THE LIGHT THAT FAILED (1391), which finds the blind Dick Heldar in tearful ecstacy cheering on the soldiers who are machinegunning natives, appalled Beerbohm by the combination of cruelty and nostalgia.' Indeed, nearly every serious commentator on Kipling's work has been embarrassed or disturbed by the author's view of war in this novel. An early critic connected Kipling's imperialist opinions with the book's ending and found it unspeakably jaunty, vulgar, cocksure. "The blind and gibbering maniac at the end of 'THE LIGHT THAT FAILED', who shrieks, 'Give 'em Hell, men, oh give 'em HeI1'....jarred and rang false. His judgment was found to be concerned not with war but with the idea of war."2 From an ethical or political viewpoint, such strictures are obviously just; indeed they apply to all Kipling's pre-1914 war fiction and poetry. Without trying to explain away Kipling's clear indifference to human values in his war passages, I think that Mr. Masterman unknowingly provided a key to an understanding of THE LIGHT THAT FAILED when he said that Kipling was concerned not with war but the idea of war. Here are no descriptions of war in the manner of Zola or Tolstoy; like Stephen Crane a few years later, Rudyard Kipling sought to use the idea of war to represent, metaphorically, a way of life---in this case the life of vigorous action from which the artist-hero strays. The subject of THE LIGHT THAT FAILED is not war but the romantic and artistic life of a hero who gains self-knowledge through the intellectual discipline of art and the emotional discipline of blindness. The war passages, actually, take up only one-eighth of the novel. As in Thackeray's HENRY ESMOND, battle provides a solid point of reference for the quick characterization of Dick Heldar as a man of action. Nevertheless, war does have a large meaning in Kipling's novel; Dick paints war canvases; a wound received in combat causes his later blindness. There is a clear plot connection between the brief war passages and the setting of the art world of late nineteenth-century London. Like Tolstoy's depictions of Moscow drawing rooms, Kipling's views of London studios are never without the shadow of battle; although not the subject, war becomes the controlling theme of THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. In his shorter fiction, Kipling endows the army world with its own masculine virtues of courage, faith, camaraderie, and a special swagger. "The Widow" and work---which for an army is fighting---are sufficient ideals in themselves, so there is no reason for the author or his military protagonists to delve into the causes of war, the reasons for duty. The values that rule Kipling's military world are manifest. The credo calls for a laconic capability and a steady approach to the job of work to be done. "The army, unlike every other profession, cannot be taught through shilling books. First a man must suffer, then he must learn his work, and the self-respect that that knowledge brings."3 31 It is a world apart, wherein the group---the regiment, the company, "the men"— is important. Kipling entitled his collection of army tales SOLDIERS THREE, and the theme connecting all the stories is that of comradeship. In THE LIGHT TIiAT FAILED war provides both the nostalgic, good life of fellowship and manly virtues, and a symbolic life that is cleaner and more honorable than the death-in-life of the Bohemian art world of the city. Kipling raises war to a purifying, quasi-religious symbol. VJar, by bringing Dick his desired death, saves him from a life of quiet desperation. The religious note need not be stressed, but battle provides Dick's salvation, and, according to the Christian paradox, he dies to live. The...