The Complexity of the Personal Experience as
Embodied in His Poetry:
The personal element in Ezekiel's poetry is
substantial, though not always obvious. A couple of his poems, like “Background,
Casually”, are evidently autobiographical and, therefore, necessarily
and strongly personal. There are others in which the poet speaks through a
persona, thus assuming a disguise to hide his identity. To this category belong
poems like “Case Study” and “London”. And, then, there are
the poems in which Ezekiel has seemingly given us objective pictures of Indian
life or the life in Bombay but which are a product of his personal experience
as coloured by Ezekiel's personal bias against Indians. Thus, we do perceive
the complex nature of the personal experiences which have gone into the making
of such poems.
The Personal Experiences in “Background, Casually”:
In “Background, Casually”,
Ezekiel has condensed a lot of the material pertaining to his early life and
later life in the compass of a poem which is of moderate length. Here he speaks
of the intolerance of the Christian, Muslim, and Hindu boys towards him when he
was at school where he found himself to be a "mugging Jew among the
wolves", and when he was accused by them of having killed the Christ. The
complexity of his experience comes out clearly in the concluding lines of this
poem in which he says that he has made his commitments now and that one of
these commitments is to stay where he is. Here he speaks about the compulsions
making it necessary for him to continue to live in this country which he
dislikes and the conditions of life in which have always irked and upset him.
Personal Irritation and Resentment in “The Railway Clerk”:
In poems like Good-bye Party for Miss
Pushpa and The Railway Clerk, Ezekiel has given
expression, without any complexity, to his irritation on listening to the kinds
of mistakes which the majority of Indians make when they speak to one another
through the medium of the English language. In these poems, Ezekiel has
particularly ridiculed the semi-literate Indians' use of the continuous present
tense where only simple present tense is required.
Complex Personal Experiences in “Case Study”:
In Case Study, Ezekiel reveals his own nature
but he does so by the use of a device through which he can hide his identity.
Here the speaker (who is Ezekiel himself in disguise) speaks about a man (who
too is Ezekiel himself in disguise), who has proved a failure all round, whose
marriage was the worst mistake made by him, who was damned in his conjugal
life, who had worked at various jobs, and so on. Here is a poem describing
Ezekiel's complex experiences in his personal life.
Personal Elements in the poems “In India” and “London”:
Then there is the poem entitled “In
India” which depicts quite objectively the sights seen by Ezekiel in
the city of Bombay but which also refers to his personal disgust in having to
witness these sights. The same thing happens in the poem entitled “London”
which is a poem of self-exploration by Ezekiel but which also contains
objective pictures of city life.