Only
some writers who share a year of birth turn out to be similar in their literary
productions: for example, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, both of whom were
born in 1882 and, in a double coincidence, died in 1941. Rather more often,
birth-anniversary celebrations make for strange bed-fellows as in the case of
W. B. Yeats and Rudyard Kipling – whom even the most metaphysical of critics
may find it hard to yoke together.
But
the zeitgeist finds its own subtle manifestations. I argue in this paper that
while Kipling was notoriously a high imperialist, Yeats was an arch Orientalist
too in his own right, especially in how he viewed India, and it may be indeed
be difficult to adjudge whose prejudices were the deeper-seated. Further, both
Kipling and Yeats were in the beginning more of Orientalists in their
observations about India while the attitude of each hardened later into
varieties of imperialism. Again, while India was a late interest of Yeats’s and
remained marginal for him throughout, the pre-eminence of India in Kipling’s
early life and work gave way to his increasing disinterest in the country. On
the whole, while these coevals were like chalk and cheese from every other
point of view, India provided probably the one area of common interest for them,
though not quite a meeting ground. The primary texts to be examined in this
comparative postcolonial evaluation will be Kim,
Life’s Handicap, and some selected
poems by Kipling, and a few poems, the “Introduction” to Gitanjali, and the co-translation of the Upanishads by Yeats.
Prof. Harish Trivedi, is retired from the Department of English, University of Delhi, India. He may be contacted at harish.trivedi@gmail.com.
Prof. Harish Trivedi, is retired from the Department of English, University of Delhi, India. He may be contacted at harish.trivedi@gmail.com.