Nissim Ezekiel's Treatment of Love and Sex in His Poetry

Nissim's Occupation with Love and Sex:

Ezekiel has dealt with love and sex in all its variety—expression, meeting. indulgence, mating. fulfilment, consummation, fear, possessiveness, passion surrender, misgiving, waiting, separation, wistfulness, yearning, praise, offering, thrill, joy, excitement and impatience. Ezekiel is a poet of the body, an endless explorer into the labyrinths of the flesh and desire. He has a story of poetic talent for delineating picturesquely the feminine physical features in a number of ways.

Sensuous Love-making in His Poems:

His poems are replete with very sensuous and evocative description of the human anatomy and of love-making. He is very candid in his treatment of the act of sex and the enchantment of the female body. This very quality of his, has made critics accuse him of being a poet of body. His poems don't deal only with the physical aspect of love, in fact they strive to reach beyond and elevate themselves above the mere physical love, to the more sublime and esoteric spiritual love.

His Striving to Know the Nature of Love:

The poet feels, the love that is only physical is sinful and this realization of sin makes him unfit for the discovery of cities fresh as brides. He comes to the conclusion that utilization of mind and body, charity and passion, other than the sexual passion is in fact the real commitment. The craving of the poet for a bit of land, a woman and a child or two that follows is an unachievable desire, till such time that one rises above the physical aspects of life and the great woman beast of sex is actually perceived as a myth and dream. The poet does not give in to a love that is sinful or rotten. Rather, he strives to understand the nature of true love and passion by indulging in it himself. Love in its plainest form, both marital and extra-marital, has been the main concern of the poet in his initial poems.

Portraying the Female Features:

He is very deft at, as well as fond of portraying the female features in several ways. He sometimes depicts them as extremely sensual, but a very precious gift from God. To him the woman's body represents a wonder of nature. Though he has explored the physical and sexual love in all its forms, he has always strived to rise beyond the purely physical love and convert it into spiritual love.

Exploring of the Two Distinct Opposite Aspects of Love:

While writing love poetry, Ezekiel explores every facet every nuance and every type of love. With each successive volume his exploration of and for love becomes more profound. It is the exploration of the two distinct opposite aspects of love—the physical and the spiritual. The differing demands of the body and the soul, on the one hand is a love that distorts and discourages and on the other is the one that elevates your mind and spirit and brings contentment, have been deftly explored by the poet.

 

Revelation of the Sheer Lustful Motive:

How ironically the poet reveals the sheer lustful motive, devoid of love. Man's motives are sexual. In sexual union the colour of the skin-white or black or gray, or the size of eyes or breasts does not matter. Only sex matters:

"My motives are sexual,

aesthetic and friendly

in that order, adding up

to bed with you."

Harsh Realities of Married Life:

Ezekiel does not ignore the harsh realities of married life. The initial ecstasy is short-lived. The first flush of marital joy vanishes into nothingness. Sooner than later, the inevitable stage of disillusionment, marked by frequent quarrels, begins. The initial excitement is followed by the feeling of satiation:

"However, many times we came

Apart, we came together. The same

Thing over and over again."

The Importance of Marital Relationship:

Ezekiel forcefully reveals his ideal of man-woman relationship in Sparrows. He suggests through the images of sparrow and nest the importance of marital relationship and the significance of home, the centre of real felicity. In A Time to Change, he yearns:

"To own a singing voice and talking voice,

A bit of land, a woman and a child or two,

Accommodated to their needs and changing moods

And patiently to build a life with these."

Comparing the Lover and the Beloved through Images:

In the poem Poet, Lover, Bird Watcher, the poet strikes a parallel between the poet, the lover and the bird watcher. The bird watcher has to wait patiently, the movement of the fluttering wings of the bird, the lover has to observe patiently the calm and dignified movement of the beloved, and the poet has to wait for the right moment when inspiration dawns on him and right words spontaneously come to him. At the end of this patient wait, the poetic word appears in the concrete form of a woman who knows that she is loved and who surrenders to her lover at once.

The slow movement in the three cases is rewarding. The bird watcher is rewarded when the bird is suddenly caught in the net, the lover is rewarded when the beloved gladly surrenders and the patient poet gets inspiration to compose a fine piece of poetry. In order to watch the rarer birds, the bird watcher has to go along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow in silence near the sources or by a shore, the lover has to explore love in a remote place like the heart's dark floor where the women slowly turn around, not only flesh and bone, but myths of light.

A Typical Pathos on the Loss of Love:

In Poem of Separation, the first three stanzas deal with the intensity of their love. The poet recalls how his love blossomed when bombs blasted in Kashmir. Apt and suggestive words have been used to depict the tenderness, rapidity and intensity of love. They fell in love at first sight during the tumultuous days of Indo-Pak war over Kashmir. The war did not matter to them. There love was a sudden and violent passion, as is suggested by the word 'burst'. Soon they become one soul in two bodies.

Love's Being Everything:

The war had no meaning to them. Season, time and place did not matter to them. Love was their all in all. They lived in the love world of their own making. The beloved had a feeling of fulfilment and one day she said:

"Suddenly I feel

grown up. The price was only

a thousand kisses."

Their love was intense. They made love wherever they went.

The Separation in Love Due to Beloved's Inclining to Other Side:

The poet-lover wanted to love her forever but the beloved was fully satiated with their relationship. It became too cloying for her. So, she swept ahead to hear another music. Reality shatters the dream world of romance. The lady ultimately decided to leave him and to go to some remote place, ten thousand miles away. He remembers her eagerly and with a deep note of anguish he says:

"Ten thousand miles

You became a shower of letters,

A photograph, a newspaper cutting

Underlined, with pencilled comments,

 and a smell at night.”

Extreme Sexuality in Woman:

In the poem, A Woman Observed, the poet graphically depicts the sexuality of a pregnant woman whom he (the poet) observed in an art gallery. She was engrossed in starting at some nude paintings hanging on the wall for the view of the art lovers. The pregnant woman in this poem is a prude who was shocked at the sight of the nudity of the women painted in those pictures. While she stood wandering at the nude paintings before her, her body evinced an erotic sight which she could not hide. Indeed, she gets sexually excited at seeing nude paintings and statues.