Abstract

Literature being a specifically human “text” at once generates and reflects the order of views (“the spirit”) of a particular era. I investigate “The Ballade of East and West” by R. Kipling and some relevant texts in order to interpret a relationship between “the East” and “the West”. Contrary to the well-known first line of the poem, the plot is built on the story of turning “foes” - the East and the West, into “friends” within the expanded boundaries of the British Empire. I consider the story as “an offer” of the West to the East over the stable political integration. The farther investigation is founded on the political concept of the legitimacy by M. Weber and the analysis of texts which present a position of the East on “the offer”. In the end, I argue that the traditional and the modern societies have stuck to contrary views over social development as well as put different meanings in keywords of their communication, which both have been causing and accumulating dangerous communications gap between the parties.