Nissim Ezekiel's High Rank as an Indo-English Poet:
Ezekiel occupies a very high rank as a writer
of Indo-English poetry; and his contribution to this poetry is very
substantial, weighty, and valuable. In fact, we can regard him as one of the
towering figures among the Indo- English poets though we find it difficult to
accept him as an Indian poet because he is essentially and basically a
foreigner who was born in India and who has lived in India all his life. His
poetry has many facets; and it has certainly enriched Indo-English poetry and
given a new dimension to it by extending its scope and its range. At the same
time, we cannot ignore the critic who says that, although Ezekiel is a poet of
historical importance to Indo-English literature, his actual achievement
remains more limited than it might have been.
His Contribution to Philosophical Poetry:
Ezekiel has made a tangible contribution to the
philosophical poetry produced by Indo-English poets. Indeed, Ezekiel has shown
a certain profundity in his nature; and this profundity has found an expression
in several poems written by him. The poetic self of Ezekiel has experienced two
divergent pulls-the existential enigma on the one hand, and the poetic enigma
on the other. (The poetic enigma implies the need for a correspondence between
art and life). He has the sensibility of a modern poet whose self-confronts the
fallen world and stands in an ironic contrast to the ideal world. He shows that
the culture of the city and the repressive social codes in the modern world
inhibit a man's individuality and his freedom to grow. This culture spreads
perversion in all walks of life. Thus, marriage has become more of a bondage in
which a man and a woman lose their freedom and their identities, with the
result that "a man is damned in that domestic game." He therefore
stresses the need of commitment, sincerity, and integrity as essential
conditions for the completeness of a poet; and without such completeness there
can be no association of sensibilities so that a poet's imagination would
remain fragmented. Ezekiel has illustrated this view of his in the poem entitled
Enterprise. In this poem the pilgrims face a paradox which is due
to their want of commitment, sincerity, and integrity. Towards the end of their
journey, the pilgrims discover, to their dismay, that their destination (namely
the centre of vision) is as unacceptable to them as the city from which they
have tried to run away. In the last line of the poem, Ezekiel points out with
conviction that the grace of fulfilment consists in the identification of the
self with the objective world. If such an identification is achieved, then art,
philosophy, religion, and reality would all appear to be a unified concept. The
poems entitled Philosophy and A Time to Change also
show Ezekiel's philosophical bent of mind, although the former poem shows a
distinct tilt towards poetry as compared to philosophy.
His Contribution to Psychological Poetry or the Poetry of the Human Mind:
Ezekiel is a poet of the mind, He shows a
marked tendency to probe the human mind, and his poems reveal not only the
conscious but also the sub- conscious thoughts and conflicts of human beings
and, more particularly, his own thoughts and conflicts. Indeed, his primary
concern is with man and man's mind. His striving to become a
"finished" man compels him to self- analysis and introspection. The
poem entitled Case Study is one of his several attempts at an
exploration of his own mind. Here he portrays his own personality and his mind,
though he appears here in disguise, making it seem that he is portraying
somebody else. Self-exploration is also very much in evidence in the poem
entitled London. Here the protagonist is searching and probing
the innermost recesses of his self. His personal quest goes on relentlessly. Island
is another of Ezekiel's poems where we find the same search for the self-leading
to a resigned acceptance of his environment. Indeed, Ezekiel may be described
as an endless explorer of the labyrinths of the mind.
His Realism in Depicting City Life:
Ezekiel has made an equally substantial
contribution to Indo-English poetry by having written poems depicting Indian
life, more particularly city life, vividly and realistically. Many are the
poems in which he has depicted the sights which are seen daily in the city of
Bombay, though he has depicted these sights in a witty and satirical vein. The
poem entitled In India is an outstanding example of his realistic
imagery. Here he enumerates the city sights, focussing our attention upon the
poverty of the people as represented by the beggars, hawkers, pavement
sleepers, and the dwellers in slums. Here he also draws our attention to the
burning of women who did not bring enough dowry, and to the virgins who are
frightened of being molested by rogues and ruffians-"burnt-out
mothers", "frightened virgins". The poem entitled The
Truth About the Floods also belongs to the category of realistic poems,
though here he is not particularly speaking about city life.
His Contribution to Humour, Wit, and Irony in Indo-English Poetry:
We have spoken above of Ezekiel's deeply
philosophical nature and his strong interest in human psychology. But there is
another aspect of his poetic genius too. He has a rich sense of humour, and he
has a fertile wit. He has written many poems ridiculing the absurdities and
follies of the Indian people; and his chief weapon of attack is irony. One of
the absurdities which he has ridiculed is the half-educated or semi-educated
Indian committing errors of tense, syntax, and idiom while speaking English. He
has ridiculed this fault of the Indians in the poems entitled Good-bye
Party for Miss Pushpa and The Railway Clerk. Then he has
poked fun at the Indians for their hypocrisy, and their pretense at piety, in
such poems as The Healers and Guru. He has also
ridiculed the Indians, particularly the Hindus, for their practising Yoga to
attain spiritual enlightenment. He seems to be of the view that persons trying
to attain spiritual illumination through such methods continue to remain in
darkness. There is, indeed, a large fund of humour and wit in Ezekiel's poetry.
His Contribution to Love-Poetry and to Nudity in Indo-English Poetry:
Ezekiel has made a fairly large contribution to
the love-poetry written by Indo-English poets. His love-poems are mostly
concerned with physical and sexual relationships between men and women. The
theme of such poems is sensuality and lust, and not true love, or love which
has its basis in the heart and the emotions. Here again the use of irony is
pervasive. The series of poems in the sequence entitled Nudes,
gives us some very interesting and spicy, though very brief and terse, pictures
of sexual relationships between males and females of the human species. The
poem entitled The Couple is another outstanding poem of this category.
His Contribution to the Sense of Form and Structure in Indo-English Poetry:
Ezekiel is not one of those poets who write at
random, giving free reins to their inclinations and using words just as they
come to their minds. Ezekiel has a high sense of his vocation as a poet.
Although some of his poems are certainly loose in their structure, the bulk of
his poetic work shows a keen sense of form and structure, and a special concern
for the use of the right words in the right places. He believes that a poet
should labour to find the right words just as in a well-known poem by W.B.
Yeats, a beautiful woman says: "We must labour to be beautiful." In
his poem entitled, Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher, Ezekiel has written:
"The best poets wait for words/The hunt is not an exercise of will/But
patient love relaxing on a hill." Indeed, Ezekiel has made a valuable
contribution to stylistic felicities in Indo-English poetry. He has also made a
substantial contribution to the use of colloquial English and the
conversational manner and tone in Indo-English poetry. The whole of his
autobiographical poem Background, Casually is written in a
conversational tone; and the poem entitled The Way it Went is a
good example of his use of colloquial English. Furthermore, he is equally at
home in writing metrical and non-metrical verse; and his poems, written in
metrical lines and his poems written in "vers libre" are also a
contribution to the technique of writing poetry.
An Able Seaman, Though Not the Captain of the Ship of Indo-English Poetry:
Finally, we must take into account what a
critic has said about Ezekiel. According to this critic, Ezekiel has tried a
variety of poetic modes in his latest poems which include poster poems, poster
prayers, hymns, psalms, songs, Sanskrit-inspired passion poems, and so on. And
this critic then adds that, in poetry, Ezekiel's dream of becoming captain of
the ship may not have been realized, but that he has certainly been an Able
Seaman on the ocean of poetry.