Ezekiel's Use of Irony in the Poem Background,
Casually:
The use of irony is one of the most outstanding
features of the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. An early poem, Background,
Casually is an excellent example of his use of irony to achieve
comic effects and to hit his targets of criticism. In the very opening line of
this poem, he ironically describes himself as a poet-rascal-clown. The irony
becomes more marked as the poem proceeds. Ezekiel describes himself as a
student in a Roman Catholic school in the following manner:
“A mugging Jew among the wolves.
They told me I had killed the Christ.”
But the irony becomes even more conspicuous
when he writes that, as a student accused of having killed the Christ, he won
the scripture prize in the same year.
Self-Directed Irony in the Same Poem:
Ezekiel is not only ironical while depicting
his school-fellows belonging to the Christian, Muslim, and Hindu communities
but even in depicting himself. He says that, at home, on Friday nights the
prayers were said, and the family felt that his morals had been declining. He
had asked himself if he could grow into a rabbi-saint, but the more he searched
for an answer, the less he found. The irony continues when Ezekiel says that a
friend had to pay the fare for his passage to England, and that Philosophy,
Poverty, and Poetry were the three companions who shared his basement room in
London.
More Irony in that Poem:
The irony becomes more
pungent when he tells us that he returned to India in a cargo-ship which was
English but which carried French guns to be delivered to the authorities in
Indo-China, and when he further tells us that he had felt compelled to take up
a menial job and scrub the decks of that ship in order to pay for his passage
back to India. More irony comes in the lines "Married /Changed jobs, and
saw myself a fool." The irony still continues; and the closing lines are
ironical too. Ezekiel tells us that he is committed to living in India which he
ironically describes as a remote and backward place, adding: “My backward place
is where I am."
Irony in the Poem Night of the Scorpion:
“Night of the Scorpion” contains its full share or irony. Here Ezekiel tells us that the peasants came to his mother's house like swarms of flies and buzzed the name of God a hundred times to paralyze the Evil One, and that they came with candles and with lanterns throwing giant scorpion shadows on the sunbaked walls. Ezekiel goes on to say that these peasants prayed that the scorpion should remain still where it was, that the sins committed by Ezekiel's mother be burned away that night, and that the sum of evil in this unreal world should diminish because of the pain which his mother was suffering as a result of the bite of the scorpion. The irony continues with Ezekiel speaking about his father, who was a sceptic and a rationalist, and who made use of all kinds of powders and herbs to allay the woman's suffering. In this poem Ezekiel has poked fun at the superstitions prevalent among the peasants or the villagers and even at his father's scepticism. And then Ezekiel refers mockingly to the holy man who performed the rites to subdue the scorpion's poison with an incantation. The only serious element in the poem is the conclusion which shows a mother's solicitude about the well-being of her children.
Irony in the Poem Entitled “The Visitor”:
In “The Visitor”, Ezekiel again pokes fun at a superstition; and he does so through the device of irony. Three times a crow cawed at the poet's window, with its baleful (or sinister) eyes fixed on his eyes, with its wings slightly raised in a sinister poise, and its neck craned like a nagging woman's. The crow seemed to fill the poet's room with its voice and its presence. Having heard the crow's cawing three time, the poet prepared himself to deal effectively with the visitor who would come to see him and whose arrival had been conveyed to him in advance by the crow's cawing. He wondered whether his visitor would be an angel in disguise or some devil in disguise. If a devil, the visitor would ruin the poet's sleep. But the reality proved to be altogether different. And then, with an even more conspicuous use of irony, the poet says that, between the visitor's good intentions and the poet's sympathy, the smoke coming from their cigarettes proved to be more substantial than their talk.
Irony in “Good-bye Party for Miss Pushpa”:
The poet has ironically depicted the mistake of tense and other mistakes which most of the Indians make in speaking the English language. The speaker here uses the present continuous tense where a simple present tense is needed. Apart from this frequent mistake, the habit of the Indians to give extravagant praise at farewell parties to the departing persons has also been ridiculed through the device of irony. Ezekiel has used the same weapon, namely irony, in several other poems to emphasize the mistakes which these semi-educated or ill-educated Indians make in the course of their conversation through the medium of the English language. Conspicuous among such poems is “The Railway Clerk”.
Touches of Irony in the “Poem of the Separation”:
There are a few touches of irony even in the “Poem of the Separation”, the general tone of which is one of sadness. There is irony in the speaker's saying that any man may be a whirlwind and any woman lightning, but that they have to be taken to their meeting-place by buses or by trains. The irony here lies in the passion of the lovers being depicted as having been kept in check by the need to take a bus or a train. We have here a comic contrast between the intensity of passion and the necessity to make use of such ordinary means of transport as a bus or a train. Then the speaker also speaks here about the "city of his birth and re-birth" being squalid and crude, while his beloved was a source of comfort to him by her new way of laughing at the truth. And then there is irony in the concluding two lines in which the beloved's decision to play with fire and get burnt has been stated.
Irony in Ezekiel's Love-Poems:
Most of Ezekiel's poems, dealing with the subject of sex and marriage, are written in an ironical vein. There is the poem entitled “The Couple” in which the hypocrisy and the deceitfulness of both the man and the woman engaged in the sexual act have been exposed by the use of irony. In the poem entitled “Two Nights of Love”, the speaker speaks ironically about his craving to make love to his beloved of the moment soon after having already made love to her; and it is in a vein of irony that he speaks about the "threshing thighs" and the "singing breasts" of the woman. In the poem entitled “Marriage”, irony has been employed to expose the fleeting nature of the love which had brought the lovers together in marriage. In the poems collected under the heading of “Nudes", irony is most conspicuous. In one of these poems, for instance, the speaker speaks about the "shy" woman who comes with gifts and who, though pretending never to take the initiative so far as the sex act is concerned, is actually craving for sexual satisfaction. She has assumed a touch-me-not expression on her face indicating that she is not available; and yet she tells the eager lover that she has come because she wanted to know this kind of man (in bed).