Kipling: The French Edition

Book Reviews honestly as possible?" As biography moves haltingly into the postmodern age, encouraged by such questions from criticism of biography, the answer may increasingly be "yes." John W. Crowley Syracuse University Kipling: The French Edition Rudyard Kipling. Oeuvres I. Pierre Coustillas, Jean-Paul Hulin, Sylvère Monod, Daniel Nury, and Jean Raimond, eds. Paris: Gallimard, 1988. 486 pp. 390 FF THE BIBLIOTHEQUE DE LA PLEIADE has added another volume to its handsome editions of distinguished writers. This initial volume of the collected works of Rudyard Kipling represents the first major effort in France to publish accurate translations of Kipling's prose and poetry. The undertaking will be all the more welcome to English and American students of Kipling since there exists no complete critical edition of his works in English. The editor of the series, Pierre Coustillas, has relied primarily upon the Uniform Edition for his purpose and has profited from the assistance of the Kipling Society, particularly from their advice on the Reader's Guide to Kipling's Work. Volume I contains works from 1888-1891, along with an introduction, chronology, description of the project, maps, notes, indexes of place names and of Indian and Anglo-Indian terms, and critical essays by each of the five translators. Of special interest is Coustillas's introduction to the first volume, which compares Kipling's fortunes in France to his reception in England. Kipling's francophilia was in large measure responsible for the tendency of the French to depoliticize him, and his success among them was further encouraged by the rapprochement of the two countries at the turn of the century. The first translations of Kipling were by way of adaptations rather than translations, and early French editors conformed to no single principle of organization. Coustillas describes the work of these pioneers, notably their difficulty with Kipling's Indian vocabulary and their misinterpretations of his intentions . Claude Farrère, for one, thought Kipling better understood by the French and found in him a master of escapist adventure who "led his readers into neither the slums nor the clouds," that is, who was neither a naturalist nor a symbolist writer. Coustillas reviews the history of the literary battles in England and the United States that resulted in Kipling's lengthy exile in what 91 ELT: Volume 33:1, 1990 he calls a critical purgatory. The perspective afforded by the passing of time, the availability of new documentation and the adoption of more dispassionate criteria in judging his achievement have all contributed to Kipling's "rehabilitation," and a number of French commentators have helped to bring it about. Robert Escarpit, following Orwell's lead, defended Kipling against those who accused him of fascism. Escarpit, however, failed to address Kipling's penchant for violence and brutality. François Léaud avoided the political issue, and his positivist approach established a balance between opposing critical views, yet Coustillas regards his neutralization of Kipling as Cartesian rather than prophetic. He notes, however, that the controversy regarding Kipling's merits has benefitted from diminished opposition to his political conservatism and that contemporary judgments tend to be, like Léaud's, disinterested. Coustillas's account of Kipling's childhood and early career assesses the development of the writer's sensibilities, which he describes as compartmentalized. He points to a Kipling first spoiled by his parents, then abandoned to the United Services College and schooled in sadism by the mother and son of the family with whom he boarded. Yet he maintains that the violence that characterizes much of Kipling's storytelling—especially his evocations of the United Services College in Stalky & Co.—is less real than imaginary and compensatory. He discerns in that violence Kipling's frustration with being different from others, with being excluded from the rough and tumble of his peers because of his poor eyesight, concluding that he "preached in his works a credo he himself could not obey," and that his cruel facade hid a wealth of tenderness. Coustillas describes at length the complexities of the Anglo-Indian society in which Kipling began his career as a writer for the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore and attributes many of the artist's attitudes to...