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Chapter-IV:

Quest for Self in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel is a poet of modern era presenting the authentic crisis of

existence of modern man. His poetry emerges from a self-questioning

attitude. Here is a poet who believed that, “A writer must make life

difficult for himself.” (In an interview with Imtiaz and Anil Dharker,

Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya

Akademi, 2008, p. 46). He treats life “as a journey where poetry is the

source through which he could discover himself. The developing body of

his poems expresses his personal quest for a satisfactory way of living in

the modern world.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur:

Classic Publications, 2001, p. 193). The poet made his intention to search

his real self through writing as early as 1950 when he wrote a letter to his

sister Asha Bhende from London. In the letter Ezekiel reiterated that,

“There was no alternative if I am to live a creative life. There is no other

life for me. In a sense, of course, I am beaten, since I cannot organize my

life as a whole. Nevertheless, fidelity to the poetry of it is a great saving

factor. I do not wish to make excuses nor draw attention to the lives of

the poets and their characteristic shortcomings. I want to be practical too

and to stand on my own feet.” (Bhende, Asha. ‘Remembering Nissim’,

Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya

Akademi, 2008, p. 6)

In a Foreword to Nissim Ezekiel, a publication by Sahitya Akademi, Keki

Daruwalla introduces Ezekiel in the following words: “The contribution

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of Ezekiel becomes all the more stark in comparison ruthless analysis of

ones own motives and passions, the reflection on inner turbulence in

poetry, doubt and self doubt and the questioning of the scriptures, all this

was new. (Daruwalla, Keki. ‘Foreword’, Nissim Ezekiel, Shakuntala

Bharvani. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008. p. x)

In the poem ‘Subconscious’ the poet talks about his divided self:

Consciously, I ask my sub-conscious

To supply me with a poem.

It sends up this harsh message:

You have not turned to me so long,

I shall not speak now. (Collected Poems, p. 271)

According to Geetha Ganapathy-Dore, in this poem Ezekiel refers to the

divided self of psycho-analysis. She writes that, “The self of which

Ezekiel here refers to as a modernist is not the old unitary self of

psychology but the divided self of psychoanalysis. Naturally he pokes

fun at Freud by transposing the id and ego as a married couple living in a

two-storied house.” (Ganapathy-Dore, Geetha. ‘Language as Instrument

of Humor, Irony and Satire in Ezekiel’s Poetry’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. 478).

Amidst so many options available for ‘nirvana’ the persona is as

confused as the modern man, as in ‘Family, from Songs for Nandu

Bhende’:

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Should we take to meditation,

Transcendental, any other?

Should we take to Zen?

We cannot find our roots here,

Don’t know where to go, sir,

Don’t know what to do, sir,

Need a Guru, need a God.

All of us are sick, sir. (CP, p. 243)

The quest of Nissim Ezekiel can best be introduced by quoting the poet

from ‘Transparently’. The poetic statement is both declaration of his

dilemma and the ways through which he wants to solve it:

All I want now

Is the recognition

Of dilemma

And the quickest means

Of resolving it

Within my limits. (CP, p. 150)

Explaining the source and intention of his writing, Ezekiel also

emphasized the ‘introspective’ nature of his writing. He said, ‘And

writing is, for me, a way of copying with the tension between my inner

life and the outer life. Looking back, this from the earliest days seems to

be the main source of my writing. Very other source is somehow related

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to it-even the experience of other people. My poems are often

introspective and, therefore express self-criticism and self-doubt. I also

write about my relationship with other people, love, sex, the individual in

society, etc. (As quoted by Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New

Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 128)

He will not crave for the superhuman or the impossible. He will not

hanker after what he cannot attain. According to Indu Saraiya, “a

‘longing’ to live life on many frontiers on his own terms with the courage

of his own convictions rather than on received wisdom had surfaced quite

early in Nissim’s life.” (Saraiya, Indu. ‘Nissim, Lightly’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. 37) All he desires is resolution and determination and balance.’

(Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p.

15). Havovi Anklesaria mentions the writer’s progress in the following

words: “The LSD trips, the job – trotting and women were part of the

messy business of nurturing the muse by new stimuli, new experience so

as to make it more than the whimsy of the occasional moment, the flash

in the frying pan. And part of this bohemian enterprise was the cold

London basement room, and in later years, the forbidding murkiness of

the retreat. He was not entirely successful in converting this self-enforced

isolation into the ivory tower that he might have liked it to be; he was

fully aware that in order to survive as a writer one had to engage with the

outside world.” (Anklesaria, Havovi. ‘Introduction’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. xxvi).

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Shakuntala Bharvani reads ‘A Time to Change’ as a beginning of poet’s

journey for the meaning of life but regards ‘Sixty Poems’, the poet’s

second volume of poetry, essentially as search for identity. She presents

the case by referring to the comments of Linda Hess: “Whereas ‘A Time

to Change’ , may be read as the beginning of the poets journey, his

expression of commitment to his craft, his firm resolve not to be led

astray into other areas, the second collection ‘Sixty Poems’, may be seen

as a quest for identity and harmony. Linda Hess, a Fulbright scholar in

India, and a close friend of Ezekiel, put this very succinctly, when she

stated in an essay in Quest in 1966 that Ezekiel struck her as “an endless

explorer of the labyrinths of the mind, the devious delving and twisting

of the ego, and the ceaseless attempt of man and poet to define himself,

to find through all the myth and maze a way to honesty and love”.

(Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p.

14)

Keki Daruwalla terms Ezekiel as essentially “a poet of inner conflict, of

love, passion, the constricting role of the mind, social inhibitions, and

mental states. The poet ruminates on privacy; enigmas, quiescence and

this mode don’t easily lend itself to striking imagery.” (Daruwalla, Keki.

‘Nissim Ezekiel: Perched on Hyphens, between Poetry and Prayer, Soul

and Flesh’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New

Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 406) Bruce King rightly introduces

Nissim Ezekiel in the following words: “Ezekiel had his own distinctive

personality, character, and themes which he expressed within the

perspective of a modern intellectual. He brought to Indian English poetry

the skepticism, restlessness, feeling of alienation, openness to experience,

self – consciousness and quest for some meaning to life that is as much a

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part of the modern mind.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets, Second

Edition. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 31)

Nissim Ezekiel is fundamentally a poet who uses poetry as a tool

partially as a vocation and completely as a tool to search the self. From

the first collection of poetry, the poet has made his intention clear: to

seek the real identity by pursuing the art of poetry. Shakuntala Bharvani

rightly comments that: “It is apparent from this first collection that

Ezekiel is attempting to set a pattern of work and literary discipline for

himself. He is determined that he must pursue the path of the man of

letters and not permit worldly distractions and other factors to divert him.

Though still a novice, dissatisfied, frustrated and unhappy, he seeks to be

disciplined so that he can find his own poetic voice.” (Bharvani,

Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 3)

There is also a kind of desperation in the poetic voice in some of the

poetry. Since poem is shaped with the language, it is inevitable tool for

the poet. But at the same time, the poet is not sure if any thing can really

be conveyed through language. The poem titled as ‘Speech and Silence’

speaks volumes on this theme:

Man is alone and can not tell

The simplest thing to any friend.

All speech is to himself, others

Overhear and miss the meaning.

And yet to speak is good, a man

Is purified through speech alone,

Asserting his identity

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In all that people say and do. (CP, p. 53)

The poet seeks release from the established pattern of life which is

predetermined by the conditioned mind, conditioned by religion beliefs

and the structure of society:

But when the mind determines everything

The leap is never made (CP, p. 3)

The poet persona is conscious of the effects of society on him. He doesn’t

crave to sound moralist and puritan while confessing that he can not not

be affected by the corruption of the society. In the words of Shaila

Mahan: “Ezekiel wants to point out that living in a modern city, leads to

loss of vigor and corruption of the essential self. It reduces man to the

level of economic man, one whose psychological motivations are thought

of largely in terms of self – interest.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 53)

The mechanical existence of the modern man is stressed in the following

lines of the poem ‘Encounter’:

The city pressed upon me; shops, cinemas and

Business houses

Spoke in unambiguous accents. Only the people said

Nothing.

They bought the evening papers, hurried to a tube

Station,

Ceasing to exist. (CP, p. 35)

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Dr. Shaila Mahan rightly observes that, “The modern city has its

dehumanizing effect. The place is not necessarily Bombay, but any place

where man loses identity. The bleak picture of the city deprived of

human sensitivity, seething with poverty, dirt, squalor and noise comes

vividly before our eyes by the use of concrete imagery. The images –

‘slums’, ‘seasons’, ‘rains’, ‘hawkers’, ‘beggars’, ‘processions’, ‘drums’,

‘purgatorial lanes’ are seen allied to the image of city. The use of

‘purgatorial lanes’ takes us to the great Italian poet Dante. The notions of

suffering, doom, punishment signified by ‘purgatorial’ adds to the horror

of the city. The city emerges as an image of inferno where the modern

city dweller is placed to suffer and carve his way out.” (Mahan, Shaila.

The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 55).

For Ezekiel, there can not be a phenomenon like existing in isolation. In

the poem ‘Double Horror’, he explicitly narrates the effects of such

reciprocacity:

I am corrupted by the world, continually

Reduced to something less than human by the crowd,

Newspapers, cinemas, radio features, speeches

Demanding peace by men with grim warlike faces,

Posters selling health and happiness in bottles,

Large returns for small investments, in football pools

Or self control, six easy lessons for a pound,

Holidays in Rome for writing praise for toothpastes,

(CP, p. 7)

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And again in the same poem, he confesses:

Corrupted by the world I must infect the world

With my corruption. This double horror holds me

Like a nightmare from which I cannot wake, denounced

Only by myself, to others harmless, hero,

Sage, poet, conversationalist, connoisseur

Of coffee, guide to modern Indian Art

Or Greek antiquities. (CP, p. 8)

Ezekiel treats life as a journey where poetry is the main source of

discovering his identity, his true self, but Geetha Ganapathy-Dore warns

us not to confuse the persona with the poet. She suggests that, “but we

would do well not to confuse the poet with his satirical self which is an

assumed theatrical role to expose the follies and vices of society and

bring contempt and derision upon flouted aesthetic and moral values.

Nissin Ezekiel is at time the indignant whistle blower, at times the

cynical observer and at times the mouthpiece of simple common sense.”

(Ganapathy-Dore, Geetha. ‘Language as Instrument of Humor, Irony and

Satire in Ezekiel’s Poetry’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi

Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 482)

Although he is not a proclaimed romantic, the ‘I’ in his poetry is

constantly referring to the journey of the inner self. The seven volumes of

poems written by him between 1952 and 1988 have attracted

considerable critical attention from scholars both in India and abroad.

The central themes with which he deals are man-woman relationship,

contemporary Indian life and the urban milieu, alienation, search for a

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poetics, personal integration, cross-cultural encounters, a search for

spiritual values and a quest for identity. The search started with the first

volume of poetry ‘Time to Change’. Bruce King remarks: “The way to

live to avoid emptiness and extremes is a concern of ‘A Time of Change’,

the title poem which begins the volume and which is dedicated to

Ezekiel’s mother. It is about having left home and fallen into a mood of

hollowness and sterility… As the title indicates, this is a poem about

choosing, a poem of decision… His ideal in ‘A time to Change’ is a

curious mixture of being a poet and having a fairly conventional life.”

(King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 33)

Dr. Shaila Mohan regards Nissim Ezekiel’s first volume A Time to

Change as a turning point in the history of Indian English poetry. In her

words: “A Time to Change is a turning point in the history of Indian

English poetry. By using contemporary urban images, language and

concerns Ezekiel brought the skepticism, restlessness, feeling of

alienation and quest for some meaning to life that is so much apart of the

modern mind. It expressed for the first time, to use Keki N. Daruwalla’s

words “a modern Indian sensibility in modern idiom”. With Ezekiel,

Indian poetry in English took a new direction moulded by the traditions

of modern poetry, as reformed by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra pound and

W.H. Auden. (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur:

Classic Publications, 2001, p. viii)

The poems written during 1950-1 reveal that Ezekiel was born to write

poetry. The energy and fertility was there from the start; and as stated by

Bruce King, “writing poetry was a central part of his life, he was

producing over twenty worthwhile poems a year, and, unlike later, he had

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a desire to preserve his writings in book-form. The poetry was part of the

growing self and not an adjunct to the self.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian

Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 36)

From the outset Ezekiel is a poet of ‘touch’ and not of ‘theory’. He has

more trust in the follies of common man than in the wisdom of the

uncommon man. That’s why the persona announces:

Give me touch of men and give me smell of

Fornication, pregnancy and spices.

But spare me words as cold as print, insidious

Words, dressed in evening clothes for drawing rooms. (CP,

p. 9)

The path he decides for his destination is straight forward. The poet-

persona hates ‘devious routes’ to reach the destination. In ‘The Worm’,

the poet-persona gets inspired by the ways of this tiny creature and

thinks:

It moved so straight! Oh God! To think that I

By such absurd and devious routes should reach

My destination. (CP, p. 10)

But in the complexity of the modern world, the persona finds it’s difficult

to find and follow that path, hence:

Then, in bitterness, I crushed the worm,

Sadly determined not to honor more

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It’s easy mocking victory. So now

It’s dead. Pretty worm, where is your strength?

The god who made you to be wiser than

The cunning subtleties within my brain

Shall know by this the anger of man.

Only in anger can I emulate

The worm’s directness. I’ve killed the worm. (CP, p. 10)

Shirish Chindhade states this tendency in the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel

very clearly: “…the mood is permanently one of self-absorption,

inwardness, introspection: all roads lead to the city within, the city of the

soul. There is a consistent attempt at self-search and self-definition. The

holy grail of the search is hidden within the soul and poetry affords

consolation in such a state of mind. It also helps ‘to shape one’s inner

image silently.” (Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian English Poets. New

Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p. 30)

The persona is observer as well as insider. Once Ezekiel said, “I don’t see

poetry as purely personal expression, separate from its audience.” (In an

interview with Imtiaz and Anil Dharker, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed.

Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 48). There is

an element of attachment as well as detachment in this process of self-

search. The ironic tone of his poetry makes it sometimes impossible to

judge either the persona is really searching the self or making the

mockery of the entire phenomenon called ‘search for self’. Dr. Shaila

Mahan terms the poetry of Ezekiel as complex journey of “restless

rational mind… Ezekiel’s poetry can be characterized as intellectually

complex. It is essentially and ironic, rooted in rationality and common

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sense. It is both the instrument and outcome of his attempt as a man to

come to terms with himself. Being product of restless rational mind

Ezekiel’s poetry is created from paradox, oppositions and contrasts. In

fact his poetry can be seen as the product of contrasting emotions

structured into a balance of tensions and stresses.” (Mahan, Shaila. The

Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. viii)

Shirish Chindhade points out the same impulse. He observes that, “…as

an observer and commentator the poet’s identity remains unaffected. That

is why the tongue-in-cheek way of commentary is possible. This ironic

stance is what singles out Ezekiel as a poet. He says, “it seems to be

rooted in my temperament.” (Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian English

Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p. 34)

But there is no doubt that the persona is keeping even balance between

attachment and detachment. It seems that with the maturity, Ezekiel has

developed a spirit of resignation and detachment towards ‘the kindred

clamor close at hand’. He no longer feels romantically melancholic about

his alienation. He takes calm and clamor in the same stride. As John

Thieme observes that, “…his work is centrally concerned with perception

and his poetic persona is both that of an observer who regards his social

world and his own behavior with a degree of amused detachment, and

that of a complete insider.” (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected

Poems of Nissim Ezekiel. . Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxi)

It’s not easy to live sans accepted beliefs and dogmas. The mass lives

under the cover of religious comfort. But for a creative writer like Nissim

Ezekiel who has shunned all such ‘oppressors’ the ‘self’ becomes an

oppressor. His attempts are to get release from this inner oppressor:

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It’s fantastic

What a slave

A man can be

Who has nobody

To oppress him

Except himself. (CP, p.149)

The depiction of urban milieu is a common theme occurring in the poetry

of many modern poets. Like Eliot and Auden, Ezekiel deals with the life

of metropolis. Like them Ezekiel too highlights the rootless ness of urban

life and the wound and agonies inflicted by modern urban civilization.

However Ezekiel’s approach to the city is somewhat different from these

poets. He is more exclusively concerned with the Indian setting than with

the continental. His ambivalent relationship to city with mixed reactions

of love and hate generates tension in his writing and further contrasts his

attitude to city with the other modern Indian English poets. Although

Nissim Ezekiel is basically a ‘Bombay poet’, at times this poetic persona

seeks release from this city which ‘like a passion burns’:

Do I belong, I wonder,

To the common plain? A bitter thought.

I know that I would rather

Suffer somewhere else

Than be at home

Among the accepted style. (CP, p.153)

And,

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The city like a passion burns.

He dreams of morning walks, alone,

And floating on a wave of sand.

But still his mind its traffic turns

Away from beach and tree and stone

To kindred clamor close at hand. (CP, p.117)

According to Shaila Mahan, in this poem “Ezekiel has endeavored to

explore the chasm between the city dwellers quest for the cherished ideal

of an unfettered and oppression – less existence and his failure to achieve

even a partial realization of it. In this poem the dilemma of the modern

man who desperately tries to shun and run away from urban life is

expressed forcefully and touchingly.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 67). Commenting

on this poem, another critic John Thieme states that, “His passion is

invariably that of an urban Bombayite, but it is a condition from which he

frequently seeks release. In ‘Urban’ (CP, p. 117) the city becomes an

interior landscape, invading his mind with its traffic, while he longs from

a view from the hills and seeks respite from a location where ‘The city

like a passion burns.’” (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected Poems of

Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxiii)

The search for the self is never and can never be a simple process. There

is bound to be a complexity in the process. It’s really a difficult to search

for one’s own religion amidst the corruption of religions; it’s difficult to

decide one’s own morality amidst the heaps of moralities. Gillian Tindall

observes that “his work and his life were informed by several sets of

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tensions, not just between east and west, but between the sense of

separation from India and the sense of belonging, between Judaism and

unbelief, between thinking of himself as a westernized Indian intellectual

(a distinct category in his generation) and knowing himself to be some

one at once more exotic, more isolated and still more obscure.” (Tindall,

Gillian. ‘Gillian Tindall on Nissim Ezekiel’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered.

ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 20)

Nissim Ezekiel attempts this quest through out in his poetry. There is a

declared statement that the persona is not intended ‘to be known’ in the

world. Rather the craving is to ‘know’ the mysteries of the world in the

secular language, as it is said in the poem ‘In the Theatre’:

I act to end the acting

Not to be known but to know,

To be new, to become a form and find

My relevance. (CP, p.151)

Bruce King points out that, “A central concern of Ezekiel’s poems

always has been how, in an era of skepticism and secularity, one can live

with a sense of grace, completeness, morality, truth, and holiness. What

is the way in an age of many ways when none can any longer claim

unique authority and when so many have a history of evil? There was the

early romantic life of a poet, then the somewhat naïve assertion of a

settled conventional married patriarchy, then the need to take decisions,

to create a new map of happiness, and from the late 1960s on, after his

LSD trips, the feeling that there was something divine which although

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unknowable can be recognized in ordinary experience.” (King, Bruce.

Three Indian Poets, Second Edition. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 68)

Although the search ‘frightens’ the poetic persona, the persona is never

tired of the observation and self-analysis. As the poet’s career develops,

he becomes more and more introspective. The Third demonstrates a

deeper and more serious spirit of introspection and reflection. There are

several poems in the confessional mode and some of these are suggestive

of the poet’s dissatisfaction, both with his domestic life and with his

creative work. In the poem ‘Song of Desolation’, the poet urges:

Come, religion, comfort me.

Your lifeless moralists prescribe your laws,

And make me see

My secret flaws. (CP, p.103)

Shakuntala Bharvani is aware of this development in the poet. She notes

that, “it is clear there is trauma and the writing is a cathartic experience

for the poet. The poet is aware that he is responsible for his own actions

and hence an element of guilt is also apparent in some of the poems. This

is particularly pronounced in the poems ‘Wisdom’, ‘Insight’ and most

especially in ‘Song of Desolation”. (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim

Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 27-8) The controlled self-

reflective movement and grammar of the opening lines of the poem

‘What Frightens Me’ contribute to the sense of mirroring and self-

observation:

Myself examined frightens me.

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It is no accident I am what I am.

I saw the image being formed,

I saw it carnal in the arms of love…

I have long watched myself

Remotely doing what I had to do,

At times ashamed but always

Rationalizing all I do.

I have heard the endless silent dialogue

Between the self – protective self

And the self naked. (CP, p.106)

What is more comforting is the fact that Ezekiel not only seeks the self

through his poetry writing, his entire involvement with the activity of

writing poetry, editing the anthologies of poetry, motivating and

introducing new poets, playing the role of a mentor, finding out the

publishers to so called minor poets, playing active role in the literary

circle make him a person who uses poetry as a tool to come in terms with

the self. ‘Poetry’ is a poem that shows the distinction between the

amateur who dashes off a few lyrics and the artist who makes a life of his

or her craft. One pursues a hobby, the other a vocation, a way of life,

which finds expression in the poem itself, although the calm surface may

not reveal the tensions and conflicts which have gone into it:

A poem is an episode, completed

In an hour or two, but poetry

Is something more. It is the why

The how, the what, the flow

From which a poem comes, (CP, p. 13)

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In ‘Something to Pursue’ (dedicated to his brother Joe), the poet hints at

the fact that poetry is a higher and finer way to achieve sublimination and

dedication to life. The intricacies of life can be better understood through

the discipline of poetry:

There is a way

Emerging from the heart of things;

A man may follow it

Through works of poetry,

From works to poetry

Or from poetry to something else.

The end does not matter.

The way is everything,

And guidance comes. (CP, p.14)

Bruce King very rightly acknowledges this aspect of the poet Nissim

Ezekiel. His (Ezekiel’s) “most important contribution was in the idea that

poetry is a discipline which takes a large share of ones life and is not a

hobby for amateurs. His own life is an example. He self-published his

poetry when there were no publishers in India for serious poetry in

English, he started magazines, he advised magazines, he wrote criticism,

he helped and promoted other poets, he kept writing, was part of most of

the significant publication circles, demanded higher and higher standards,

and generally created a cultural space and network of English – language

poets with connections to modern poetry in the other Indian languages

and to the non – establishment political – intellectual scene. As a social

democrat, Ezekiel was often in the forefront of those concerned with

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preserving personal liberties against both reactionary and government

forces.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p, 3)

And again he notes that, “A large proportion of the significant history of

modern Indian poetry in English was made by or has some connection to

Ezekiel. He founded, edited, opened the way to, and had influence with

the better magazines and presses which published poetry. Many of the

best poets were his friends, students, or discoveries. He wrote influential

criticism, book reviews, recommendations; he greatly expanded the

cultural space for modern poetry and for the modern arts.” (King, Bruce.

Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 4)

The poet clearly declares that his search has nothing to do with the false

satisfaction. This may create restlessness for the poet. But it seems

inevitable part and parcel of Ezekiel’s persona and views. This has more

value since the poet likes the contradictions in the ideas of Martin Luther

King. In one of the essays, he wrote: “In the balance and poise of his

ideas, Dr. King seems to me an exemplary thinker. That he is essentially

a man of action makes his sense of proportion and perspective all the

more remarkable. He is singularly free from fads. Brought up as a moral

and theological fundamentalist, he cracked the mould of doctrinal

absolutism, and freely explored the human landscape of complex as well

as contradictory ideas.” (Ezekiel, Nissim. ‘Introduction to A Martin

Luther King Reader’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi

Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 241) He is not ready

to accept anything that is wrapped as sugar coated. That’s why he

declares in ‘Nakedness’ (CP, p. 60) that ‘this longing is for nakedness: /

Soul naked, body naked.’ He is not ready to be pretentious about his

search, because he believes that:

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When I pretend to be happy

I let the intellect

Boisterously propel me on, (CP, p.63)

In whatever the poet does, there is a declared intention that he has

nothing to do with the falsity:

That I must wait and train myself

To recognize the real thing

And in the verse and friends I make

To have no truck with what is false. (CP, p.59)

Generally whenever there is a search for self in literature, search for roots

almost becomes synonym for that. But for that case, Nissim Ezekiel is

rather more interested in the current atmosphere and finding oneself in

that given current background is much more important to him rather than

going back to history and relates oneself. The poet persona seeks the

release from the repetition taking place again and again, albeit in atypical

comic style as in ‘Waking’:

When the politician boasted

How he had made two hundred speeches,

‘No, Tom,’ his wife declared,

‘You made the same speech two hundred times.’

So are we all

Making the same speech over and over again.

And now I hear the first birds

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Spasmodic and repetitive-

I know I shall repeat myself. (CP, p. 89)

And in ‘Insight’ the disguise is a ‘crude surprise’ to the poet:

It always seems a crude surprise

When nothing can be seen or heard

Except the soul’s disguise

Ragged in act and word. (CP, p.101)

In ‘Conclusion’, (CP, p.96) the poet declares ‘one learns/ Over and over

again the same thing.’ Neither does the persona seek the power nor the

success in life. His simple cravings are for ‘A point of view,/ a passion

Like Alexander’s/ And something of a saint/ From these come plentitude/

And prodigality/ In gestures of greatness.’ (CP, p.91) The quest is for the

company of lively men and women, and hates the likes of ‘one absorbed

in himself- I prefer the company of spiders.’ (CP, p. 92) So the quest is

not for something ‘beyond the reach’ as suggested in ‘Declaration’:

Whatever is beyond my reach

I shall not reach for, (CP, p.93)

The destination is almost nowhere. Whatever has to be sought is here and

now. So the persona declares in ‘Midmonsoon Madness’:

I know I will go

From here to anywhere-

Which means nowhere. (CP, p.104)

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The persona assumes the stance of an observer while watching the ‘self’.

From this stance of ‘observer being observed’ comes the true sense of

self to the poet:

I have long watched myself

Remotely doing what I had to do,

At times ashamed but always

Rationalizing all I do.

I have heard the endless silent dialogue

Between the self protective self

And the self naked.

I have seen the mask

And the secret behind the mask.

I have felt the mystery of the image being born.

Establishing its dim but definite

Identity. I have realized its final shape

Is probably uncertainty-

This it is which frightens me. (CP, p.106)

In ‘Theological’ (CP, p.156), the poet accepts, ‘Lord, I am tired of being

wrong.’ Because the poet is tired of disguise, he seeks the release:

Even as myself, my very own

Incontrovertible, unexceptional

Self, I feel I am disguised. (CP, p.157)

And again,

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I am tired

Of irony and paradox

Of the bird in the hand

And the two in the bush

Of poetry direct and oblique

Of statement plain or symbolic

Of doctrine and dogma (CP, p.157)

Shirish Chindhade opines that, “Although the modes of traditions and

beliefs of old have not been totally rejected by Ezekiel, he can identify

himself with modern India with greater authenticity. Most of the poems

in Hymns in Darkness bear out this observation. The journey is not down

the memory lane, though the philosophical reflections of the earlier

poetry are no doubt seen in some of the poems in Hymns in Darkness.

(Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic

Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p. 38)

In ‘A Morning Walk’ (CP, p.119-20) the persona is an ‘active fool’, who

in the Dantean ‘middle of his journey’ again seems umbilically tied to the

‘native place he could not shun’:

Barbaric city sick with slums,

Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains,

Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged,

Processions led by frantic drums,

A million purgatorial lanes,

And child-like masses, many-tongued,

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Whose wages are in words in crumbs. (CP, p.119)

Here Bombay is a ‘barbaric city sick with slums’. Yet it remains the

unavoidable locus, not only of his physical experience, but also of his

imaginative world. Dr. Shaila Mahan observes that, “As an urban poet

Ezekiel has delved into the heart of Bombay in this poem. ‘The city like a

passion burns’, while the helpless citizen gets conditioned to its vulgar

noises. Ezekiel creates a picture of the modern man who desperately tries

to shun and run away from the city’s turmoil but finds himself in a

dilemma:

The urban man yearns for a quiet habitation away from the turmoil and

chaos of the wild city. But his desire to withdraw remains a daydream

against the forceful pull of “kindred clamor close at hand”. Urban reality

becomes a part of Ezekiel’s consciousness.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry

of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 56)

The problem for Ezekiel has always been, as in the words of Bruce King,

“how to avoid the bleakness of a purely scientific materialist view of the

world with its lack of values, spirit, purpose, poetry, and to avoid the

confining, repressive orthodoxies of most religions and their

otherworldliness at the expense of this, probably the only life we have.

This confrontation is seen regularly in the poetry of Ezekiel. How to

seize the day without being a vulture? How to give up your ego without

losing interest in the world and in such basic pleasures as sex, love,

success? Thus in ‘The Egoist’s Prayers III’ the Gita’s advice to be

disinterested is questioned by some one who, we must remember, is an

egoist and therefore a persona or mask, not necessarily Ezekiel:

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No, lord,

Not the fruit of action

Is my motive.

But do you really mind

Half a bite or it? (CP, p. 212)

Is Ezekiel being ironic or is he once more demanding that gods world

give pleasure as well as evil, that life consist of sweetness as well as

obedience and self – discipline? There is always the Ezekiel as the

biblical job wanting to trust god but filled with doubts, questions,

emotions that need either an answer or rewards. There are the spiritual

longings for calm, but there is also the world of the ‘passion poems’

sequence: ‘I have lost my reason -/ let it go.’ And the Sanskrit tradition is

not exactly that of Victorian prudery. In ‘passion poem III’ he comments

that whereas the Sanskrit poets freely mention the attraction of ‘breasts

and buttocks’, he is ‘inhibited’.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New

Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 55)

Under any circumstances, the poet is not going to succumb to the

accepted beliefs and dogmas of self seeking. Constantly attempting the

human ways to ‘acquire balance’, the poet finds out ‘another way’ in the

poem ‘A Small Summit’

Perhaps there is another way

And I will find it:

………………………………….

Refuse the company of priests,

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Professors, commentators, moralists,

Be my own guests in my own

One-man lunatic asylum,

Questioning the Furies, my patron saints,

About their old and new obscurities. (CP, p.153)

There is a clear deny to the ways of the great in the poem ‘The Great’:

The great can never know how much I love them.

Every day they live and die in me but still

They can not make me great. I am alone. (CP, p.121)

Commenting on the poet’s use of paradoxical constructions in the poem

‘The Great’, Shaila Mahan offers that, “Egoistic” and “self –sacrificing”,

“sensual” and “self – controlled”, “unique” and “universal”, “lovable”

and “damnable”, “selfish” and “sympathetic”, “married happily” and

“sex – frustrated” the poet has used these paradoxical constructions to

create a negative picture. They testify the tensions going on in Ezekiel’s

mind. To express the complexities inherent in greatness, Ezekiel has used

these pairs of opposites.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel.

Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 116)

Because, as mentioned in the poem ‘Reading’:

Sometimes I do not want to read anymore, but still I do it,

moving up and down the lines of even print, like a train, and

cease to be a man. (CP, p. 33)

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But the poet persona is also aware of the human tendency to emulate

greatness of others, as said in ‘Poster Poems’:

Subconsciously

We all pray

That what is great in others

May be great in us. (CP, p. 208)

Although Bombay is loved and hated by the poet, although ‘Huge posters

dwarf my thoughts, I am reduced to appetites and godlessness’

(CP, p. 26 Commitment), it becomes clear that Ezekiel has decided to

find his real self amidst the traffic, slums, crowd of Bombay. In the

words of John Thieme, “…although the city continues to serve as a

metonym for modern experience in ‘Urban’ and the group of the city

poems that appeared with it, by this point in Ezekiel’s career the centre of

gravity has moved to a Bombay that is an extension of the poet’s own

inner conflicts.” (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected Poems of

Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxv)

In one of his best known poems ‘Background, Casually’, Ezekiel

documents some of the key formative influences that shaped his

subjectivity:

The Indian landscape sears my eyes.

I have become a part of it

To be observed by foreigners.

…………………………………….

I have made my commitments now.

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This is one: to stay where I am,

As others choose to give themselves

In some remote and backward place.

My background place is where I am. (CP, p.181)

Commenting on this poem, Shirish Chindhade writes that, “He has made

his commitments, chosen his islands, found his people and identified the

five elements of sky, earth, air, water and fire. It is quite gratifying that

God has granted him the human metaphor also to make his song good.

This is not a mood of submission, or of resignation, or of alienation. It is

rather the epiphanic moment of reconciliation, identification, discovery

and achievement. (Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian English Poets. New

Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p. 50) And hence the

ironic warbler sings:

Confiscate my passport, Lord,

I don’t want to go abroad;

Let me find my song

Where I belong. (CP, p. 213)

Commenting on the poem, John Thieme points out that the constant

linking of different phases in his life “seem to be a sense of personality as

a dialogic and a capacity to ‘play/The fool’ that finally brings a limited

form of self knowledge. With this comes a commitment to an Indian

milieu that is harsh and unsentimentalized, but nevertheless recognizably

and unequivocally his own.” He makes the point that, “Yet, even as he is

chronicling this experience, Ezekiel eludes entrapment in the role of

victim by staging his poetic personality as that of a ‘poet-rascal-clown’.

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He adopts his persona in the very first line of the poem and it underlies

the picturesque story of successive disappointments that follows in his

miniature ‘verse autobiography’. These include his inability to find

fulfillment through yoga, Zen, or adopting the role of a ‘rabbi-saint’, his

experience of London- alone and with a woman who has told him he

‘was the Son/Of Man’- which culminates in a sense of failure, travel to

Indo-China, marriage, and various jobs. (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’,

Collected Poems of Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxvi)

Ezekiel’s search has nothing to do with the alienation. Although he does

not belong to the so called ‘main stream’ Indian religious life, he has

always tried to regard himself as a part and parcel of Indian milieu. He

declares in ‘Commitment’:

Truly, I wish to be a man. Alone

Or in the crowd this is my only guide. (CP, p. 26)

Talking to John B. Beston in an interview Ezekiel has confessed to

having to face the identity problem as a Jew: “Yes, it did create a

problem. I did have a feeling of things loaded against myself, with no

prospect of getting strength and confidence. My background did make

me an outsider; but it’s too easy to talk of being outsider. I don’t want to

remain negative: I feel I have to connect, and turn the situation to the

positive.” (Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian English Poets. New Delhi:

Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p. 48). Therefore, the

comments raised by M.K.Naik do not seem valid: “A major shaping

factor in Ezekiel’s poetry is that he belongs to a Bene-Israel family which

migrated to India generations ago. Thus substantially alienated from the

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core of the Indian ethos, Ezekiel is acutely aware of this alienation being

accentuated by the fact that he has spent most of his life in highly

westernized circles in cosmopolitan Bombay. With Marathi as his ‘lost

mother tongue’ and English as his ‘second mother tongue’, Ezekiel’s

quest for integration made for a restless career of quick changes and

experiments.” (Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature. New

Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982, p. 193-4.)

V.M.Madge points out this aspect of Nissim Ezekiel in the following

words: “Just as there is no love of India that inspires Ezekiel’s choice to

stay, but fatalistic acceptance, masquerading a supercilious pride- a

virtue, perhaps, being made out of necessity- there is something phoney

about his so called alienation. This alienation has nothing existential

about it like that of Kafka or Camus. A sense of alienation often conceals

the frustration of the desire to belong.” (Madge, V.M. ‘Pride and

Prejudice in Ezekiel’s Poetry.’ Makers of Indian English Literature. ed.

Narasimhaiha, C.D. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003, p. 187)

In one of the interviews he gave, Ezekiel, discussing the phenomenon of

alienation, said that, “I would like to see some alienation among indo

English writers. However undesirable from moral, Social and other

points of view, it has been aesthetically Very productive provided it is

genuine. You can’t Pretend, you can’t play the game of alienation. If

you are genuinely alienated.... and feel you are hostile towards others and

they are hostile to you, you hate their guts and they hate yours; this can

produce great literature. This genuine alienation is really absent.’ (As

quoted by Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 102). Shaila Mahan notes that, “It is a commonly

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observed phenomenon that the Indians who use the English language

feel, to some extent, alienated. The self-imposed linguistic alienation

coupled with the impact of westernization has estranged Ezekiel from his

age-old culture. Torn between the two worlds to neither of which he

appears fully to belong, Ezekiel is acutely aware of his own cultural

alienation. The impact of westernization has estranged him from his own

age-old culture. Nevertheless, he realizes that his roots cannot lie

elsewhere. The paradox of cultural displacement is trenchantly brought

out in the following declaration: “I am not a Hindu and my background

makes me a natural outsider: circumstances and decisions relate me to

India.”

(As quoted from Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur:

Classic Publications, 2001, p. 109)

According to Birje-Patil, Ezekiel’s originality lies in his projection of

Bombay as a metaphor which defines the alienation of the modern Indian

intellectual. He notes that, “brought up in the Judeo-Christian and Greco-

Roman traditions and being forced to come to terms with a culture whose

response to life is controlled by ‘a totally different metaphysics’. Hence

the clash or the conflict is inherent to him, as part of a racial memory, a

legacy of the past.” (As quoted by Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian

English Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p.

48-9)

In the words of Dr. Shaila Mahan, “The acceptance of the Indian reality

adds vitality to Ezekiel’s poetry. He does not squeal or bemoan his lot.

There is a frank representation of facts however grim they are. He relates

himself to modern India in a certain way because not being a Hindu; he

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cannot identify himself with India’s past as a comprehensive heritage nor

reject it. He identifies himself with modern India. (Mahan, Shaila. The

Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 148)

Ezekiel’s persona doesn’t want an upside down change while seeking for

the self through his poetry. In ‘Lamentation’ he declares that ‘The words

of the wise are wasted’ (CP, p.72) on him. The great men only make him

realize his limitations as an ordinary being:

The great provide a patter for our lives,

Illustrates the paradoxes of the real

To which we are exposed, alone. (CP, p.22)

And again in ‘At Fifty’:

I do not want the ashes

Of the old fire but the flame itself. (CP, p.170)

Akshaya Kumar points out to this phenomenon by referring to the poem

‘Blessings’ that “Ezekiel’s vision of change is not fired or sustained by

any compatible revolutionary impulse. The experimental urges of

Ezekiel’s persona give way to pragmatic view of life that instead of

uplifting and elevating his consciousness to great heights delimits his

vision to ordinary human needs or in his own words “normal pursuits”

(‘Blessings’, CP, p.280). Right from the very beginning he does not

harbor any grand, serious or sublime designs to realize his self. Very

modest in his requirements this protagonist does not ask for the moon:

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

Accommodated to their needs and changing moods,

Practicing a singing and talking voice

Is all the creed a man of God requires. (CP, p.4)

(Kumar, Akshaya. ‘Human Urges, Existential fears and Evasive Silences:

A (Comparative) study of the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, A.K.Ramanujan

and Jayant Mahapatra’, Indian Writing in English Volume VI. New Delhi:

Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1999. p.58)

Struggle to connect; this conflict to be one with the scene around and

thus solve the identity crisis has been an old concern in Ezekiel’s poetry.

The longing for certainty in kinship surfaces, for instance, as early as The

Unfinished Man. In ‘A Morning Prayer’ he says:

God grant me certainty

In kinship with sky,

Air, earth, fire, sea

And the fresh inward eye.

Grant me the metaphor

To make it human good. (CP, p.121)

John Thieme rejects any ‘unitary representation of subjectivity’ while

referring to the quest for self in the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. He says

that, “Ezekiel’s poetic persona is virtually always a personality in

process, a figure aptly characterized by the Yeatsian title of The

Unfinished Man; and from an early twenty-first century standpoint the

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modernist label begins to seem increasingly unsatisfactory. This may

simply be an example of the extent to which European categories are ill-

suited to Indian contexts. Arguably, though, Ezekiel’s persona resists

Modernist categorization, because while he shares Modernism’s

preoccupation with subjective mental states and the alienation induced by

urban experience, he resists any unitary representations of subjectivity.

His views of character are more post modern than modern; his poems are

peopled by figures that defy simple classification and none more so than

the poet himself.” (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected Poems of

Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p xxviii)

Studying the stylistics of Ezekiel with reference to the quest for self,

Shaila Mahan offers interesting deliberation. By quoting from ‘Case

Study’, she suggests that there is a mingling of personalized quest into

the depersonalized quest by changing from first person to third person:

His marriage was the worst mistake of all.

Although he loved his children when they came,

He spoilt them too with just that extra doll,

Or discipline which drove them to the wall.

His wife and changing servants did the same. (CP, p.125)

In the words of Mahan, the last two stanzas are an “obvious references to

the poet himself because he frequently changed his jobs. Here the poet

uses the depersonalized third person singular as his mask; while he uses

the first person singular as his projected self. With this stylistic strategy,

he is able to point out precisely his state of mind in clear poetic terms.”

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(Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 97)

One of the predominant themes of Ezekiel’s poetry is on the line that if

any thing that is permanent is change. Somehow, he has been constantly

coming to the conclusions that there can be permanent conclusions.

Ezekiel’s persona is not interested in any absolute option. Expedience

and convenience governs his choices:

May your solitude

Taste good,

And your company

Taste good,

Like food

When you’re hungry.

It’s the hunger that counts. (CP, p.281)

He takes up something, accepts half-heartedly, experiments and finally

rejects. There is a modernist who tries out everything but accepts nothing

as finality. Bruce King also agrees with this view: “Ezekiel recapitulates

the experience of the modern intellectual who is emancipated from

tradition by the optimistic rationality of the enlightenment, but who lives

during a time of rapidly increasing fragmentation when rationality has

come to mean accepting discontinuity, relativity, the truth of conflicting

observations, and the logic of the irrational. But at times, as Ezekiel

adjusts changes, adapts, learns, experiences, and self-creates himself, the

model will still combine the enlightened intellectual with Old Testament

gravity as he considers and orders the world to give purpose and

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justification to his life. Atheism, skepticism, agnosticism, belief, and

experiments with Tao, Buddhism, LSD or yoga, are all similar in that the

essential attitude is religious, a search for the now lost way.” (King,

Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 35) And, “Over

the decades Ezekiel’s poetry recorded various phases of a struggle

between personal desires and the wish to be a responsible, rational

member of society.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP,

2005, p. 7)

The poems- and particularly those first published in the 1960s- portray,

what John Thieme terms, ‘malleable selves’:

The former suffering

Self declined the use

Of woman who were

Willing but unlovable:

Love was high-minded, stable.

Now he wears a thicker

Skin. (CP, p.141)

The extent to which the poet’s self is being staged is even more explicit

in ‘In the Theatre’, a poem in which Ezekiel’s characteristic stance as an

observer is combined with his awareness of the extent to which he is

acting a part, and seeking freedom from the drama:

I act to end the acting,

Not to be known but to know,

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To be new, to become a form and find

My relevance.

Observe and analyze,

Though this is not enough.

It’s not artifice,

It’s the art that finally

Entrances reason

And makes us human.

The actor’s instinct

Metamorphosed,

I am released from drama

With nothing but its scars. (CP, p.151-2)

A poem titled ‘Transparently’ expresses the discontent and insufficiency

of the poet. The poet feels that compared to him, natural objects are

lucky. This sadness is caused by the fact that we are all our own slaves

who succumb to our temptations. A victim of impulses and indecisions

the poet’s worst oppressor is his own self and yet this oppressing self is

also the source of his poetry. This is the paradox, which lies at the centre

of this poem:

Compared to my mind

Rocks are reasonable,

Clouds are clear.

It makes me mad

But that is how it is.

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It’s fantastic

What a slave

A man can be

Who has nobody

To oppress him

Except himself. (CP, p.149)

His poetry reveals that he is neither a saint negating the sensual pleasures

nor a yogi wandering in the thick jungle to attain light, but a man of

parts, a being of the world-participating and belonging. Although the

search is for the calmness of mind, the poet realistically accepts that he is

still a ‘sea and hold within the muffled tumult of a sin’, as declared in the

poem ‘Penitence’:

I will be penitent,

My heart, and crave

No more the impulse

Of a wave.

But I am still a sea

And hold within

The muffled tumult

Of a sin. (CP, p.71)

He takes the unique stance of a modern seeker, liberal in outlook and yet

strong in commitment. For the poet, ‘death’ and ‘perfect peace’ are one

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and the same and ‘life is imperfection’ as described in the poem ‘Sotto

Voce’:

I can not mould the language as desired

Desires are half desires.

Desire for the thing and half desire

To escape from the thing-

Love is partly going to sleep,

I often think of death.

Death or perfect peace,

And life is imperfection. (CP, p.52)

He is quite categorical about his attitudes as he claims he does not get a

sense of religion, sustained from day to day in his life. We do need to

remember that the self and the persona are not always the one and the

same. Although the persona speaks of the self of the poet, it is always not

from the pages of autobiography. Bruce King notes that, “But again one

needs to remember in interpreting the implied narrative of ‘The Third’

that Ezekiel’s construction of a persona, confessional, self – analytical,

distant yet emotional, is art and not pages from a diary. We can suspect

that the feelings in ‘Midmonsoon madness’ are probably Ezekiel’s, but

then many men have at times felt similar:

I know I will go

From here to anywhere

Which means nowhere.

I listen to my own madness

Saying: smash it up and start again.

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I sense the breathing

Of my wife and children

Adding to the chill.” (CP, p.114)

(King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets, Second Edition. New Delhi: OUP,

2005, p. 41)

‘A Conjugation’ (CP, p.146), a poem which foregrounds the extent to

which language mediates the construction of both personality and

relationships:

Pretence, to pretend. I pretend,

You pretend, we pretend,

They pretend,

I pretended, you pretended,

We pretended, they pretended. (CP, p.146)

According to John Thieme, ‘the tension generated by the struggles of this

persona yield much of his best verse’. Writing about this poem, he

comments that, “This poem ends with a plea for ‘An end/To pretension’,

which perhaps suggests a quest for a more stable version of the self and

relationships, but in the poems of Ezekiel’s middle period this quest

remains largely unfulfilled. He remains an ‘unfinished man’ and the

tension generated by the struggles of this persona yield much of his best

verse.” (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected Poems of Nissim

Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxx)

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In a poem such as ‘The Professor’, Ezekiel uses an ironic mode through

which he depicts the process of change and victimization in a comic

mode:

How many issues you have? Three?

That is good. These are days of family planning.

I am not against. We have to change with times.

Whole world is changing. In India also

We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.

Old values are going, new values are coming.

Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.

I am going out rarely, now and then

Only, this is price of old age

But my health is O.K. Usual aches and pains.

No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.

This is because of sound habits in youth.

How is your health keeping?

Nicely? I am happy for that.

This year I am sixty-nine

And hope to score century.

You were so thin, like stick,

Now you are man of weight and consequence.

That is good joke.

If you are coming again this side by chance,

Visit please my humble residence also.

I am living just on opposite house’s backside.

(CP, p.238-9),

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Although Ezekiel’s ‘Very Indian Poems in Indian English’ appear to be

caricature of Indian mentality and way of living, a deeper look suggests

that these are also the poems which to find out oneself amidst one’s real

background. In the words of John Thieme: “These poems (Indian English

ones) may seem to be specific exercises in genre, but they typify

Ezekiel’s method more generally. Characters speak for themselves; the

poet’s persona is that of a skeptical ‘unfinished man’; the poems nudge

readers to respond to particular implications, but resist authoritative

meaning. Ezekiel’s practice of leaving his readers to complete the

meaning of his poems emerges as a matter of both personal politics and

of social attitudes. And this, too, foregrounds the difference between his

India and that of Naipaul’s polemical generalizations. Ezekiel stops short

of judgment, preferring to operate through observation and tentative

suggestion rather than dogmatic assertion. (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’,

Collected Poems of Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxxiv)

Another of Ezekiel’s ‘Indian English’ poems, ‘Goodbye party for Miss

Pushpa T.S.’, also invents a dramatic character through dialogue, but

goes further, creating a sense of scene and occasion as well as a

personality:

Whenever I asked her to do anything,

She was saying, ‘Just now only

I will do it.’ That is showing

Good spirit. I am always

Appreciating the good spirit.

Pushpa Miss is never saying no. (CP, p.191)

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In the words of Bruce King, “The very Indian poems in Indian English

began as experiments in writing speeches for his plays so that the

characters would not always sound like Ezekiel. There are, however,

such clear, if contrasting, tendencies as focus on Indian, especially

Bombay, subject matter, use of autobiography as subject matter and

persona, and sense of having chosen a life which has often been

unsatisfying, fears of ageing, attraction to aspects of the cultural fashions

of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a possible source of rejuvenation,

seeking of some form of mental or spiritual discipline as a secular

substitute for the comforts of religion.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets.

New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 49-50)

Although it’s easy to mention that the poet is constantly seeking the self

through his poetry, it’s equally important to take into consideration the

poetic process which the poet adopts. Many a times the persona becomes

self dictating, and hence the poem takes its own route and creates its

personality. His comments on the poetic process emphasize

impersonality and the need to surrender one’s sense of identity to the

dictates of a particular poem being written at the time. In an essay on

‘How a Poem is written’ he relates this to Eliot’s stress on the need to

surrender the self, but his comments also suggests the classical notion of

a visitation from the Muse. Nissim Ezekiel in reply to a Questionnaire

sent by Shirish Chindhade states that, “I rarely choose a theme, I’m

aware of the fact or circumstance and the feeling that goes with it. I find

in my poems the theme of love, of personal conflict, of disappointment

and frustration from which insights are obtained, of social and

“philosophical” or “religious” experiences which are limited by my

skeptical temperament. I try to remain within the sphere of my actual

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understanding, avoiding the bigger subjects for fear of sounding

pretentious. But of course I sometimes take the risk hoping the tone will

indicate the nature of the statement.” (Chindhade, Shirish. Five Indian

English Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p.

155)

The greatness of Ezekiel as a poet lies in the fact that in his poetry he is

constantly bringing together opposite concepts and trying to reconcile

and harmonize them. As he declares in ‘Second Theme and Variations’

that ‘I am tired of myself, the mixture as before’ (CP, p.78). In the poem

‘Lamentation’, the poet speaks up the inner confrontation:

Desire postponed is death to me

Pursued it rots the bowels (CP, p.72)

The tension is between the pre-occupation with philosophy and real

surrounding. This awareness prevents the poet from drugging himself

with the narcotic of philosophic abstractions. The two polarities in his

poetry, therefore, are life as pilgrimage, an enterprise involving a

movement away from home and like in the actual milieu of the backward

place, the home, in which he is implicated by ties of the community.

Consequently the personal level on which the feeling of loss and

deprivation are communicated is prevented from sliding into fatal self-

preoccupation. ‘Hymns in Darkness’ poems are also good example of

dialectic based on antithesis. An excellent commentary is provided by

Sudesh Misra about this approach that, “Ezekiel’s poems reveal dialectic

based on antitheses: the polar balancing of humility with pride, youthful

wisdom with adult follies, dubious gain with certain loss, and external

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truths with internal lies. The discrete opposites finally congeal in the last

noise of the ambivalent spirit. A symmetry is established which, though

never conceding a positive resolution, nonetheless leads us to believe that

an insight has been gained”. (As quoted by Daruwalla, Keki. ‘Foreword’,

Nissim Ezekiel, by Shakuntala Bharvani. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p.

xiii)

The quest for a possible metaphysical truth and the harsh empirical

reality jostle with each other in his poetry and give his poetry its peculiar

tang. In the words of M.K.Naik: “Another persistent motif is an obsessive

sense of failure, leading to agonized bouts of self doubt and self-

laceration, revealing the poet ‘in exile from himself”. (Naik, M.K. A

History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982,

p. 195.)

The poet’s own persona does not escape this kind of scrutiny and he

sometimes chides himself for his Prufrock-like inertia, seeing a

commitment to passion, the one area of human behavior that remains

exempt from his skepticism, as the main escape-route from passivity and

detachment:

There’s no other way

Except to burn

Your bridges, bury your dead.

And not in

Alcoholic language

But in some needed flame. (CP, p.173-4)

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Another noteworthy aspect of Ezekiel’s poetic search is that it is an

human endeavor. In the words of Makarand Paranjape, “His quest for

right perception and more generally for god or self-realization is

constantly thwarted by desires that he himself calls petty or of a lower

order.” (Paranjape, Makarand. ‘A Poetry of Proportions: Nissim

Ezekiel’s Quest for the Exact Name’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed.

Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 424). He

never aims superhuman cravings that can be termed mysterious. He is

rather interested in knowing the human dilemma in human metaphor.

With regard to this humanness, the language he adopts is that of common

human beings. He never falls in to ambiguities and abstraction of his

search. It seems that Nissim Ezekiel epitomizes the common man’s

search for common goodness in human soul. The language of mystic

people is not the language of Nissim Ezekiel. That can be one of the

reasons why his poetry appears many times prosaic. He makes a kind of

statement that the common predicament can not be described in

uncommon language. One symbolic example can be the poem ‘The

Second Candle’, where in the persona’s wife lights two candles for two

different wishes which the poet’s non-believing mind fails to recognize:

What’s the second candle for, I asked

…………………………………….

Then she turned to me with a cunning smile:

The first candle is for God’s daily blessings

…………………………………………...

The second candle is for a miracle I need

A special favor, a certain turn of events

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What work alone will never bring, (CP, p.296)

Commenting on the poem and the simplicity of the ‘unfinished man’,

John Thieme offers that, “‘The Second Candle’ moves to a conclusion

with the poet being asked whether he understands this dimension of

experience and for an instant it seems as though he will have to commit

himself one way or the other. Predictably, though, his wife moves away

with the question unanswered and the poem ends with the ‘unfinished

man’ expressing a wonder at the pragmatic simplicity of her faith.”

(Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected Poems of Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi:

OUP, 2005, p. xxx)

Akshaya Kumar rightly suggests that, “Neither the metaphysical ideals

nor the political power enchant the poet persona.” (Kumar, Akshaya.

‘Human Urges, Existential fears and Evasive Silences: A (Comparative)

study of the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, A.K.Ramanujan and Jayant

Mahapatra’, Indian Writing in English Volume VI. New Delhi: Atlantic

Publishers and Distributors, 1999. p.59)

This element of human search useful to tackle day to day confusions of a

modern man is clearly suggested, and what is regarded as the ‘search

statement’ of the poet, by the poet in ‘A Poem of Dedication’:

I do not want the yogi’s concentration,

I do not want the perfect charity

Of saints nor the tyrant’s endless power.

I want a human balance humanly

Acquired, fruitful in the common hour. (CP, p.40)

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Obviously such a persona does not aim very high. The ideals of

meditation, renunciation or asceticism cannot be practiced in human life.

The poet has a high regard for the teaching of the Upanishads, but the

regard doesn’t convince him to be seed which grows into another seed.

He rather out emphasis on his needs:

I don’t want to be

The skin of the fruit

Or the flesh

Or even the seed,

Which only grows into another

Wholesome fruit.

The secret locked within the seed

Becomes my need, and so

I shrink to the nothingness

Within the seed. (CP, p.205)

And in the poem ‘Advice to a Painter’, the poet’s advice explicitly shows

his dissatisfaction with the ‘God created’ world:

Do not be satisfied with the world

That God created. Create your own. (CP, p.205)

Such aspects betray human living. Therefore the very act of staying still

in front of gyrating beauty is a fictional fallacy thus:

Only Shiva, meditating,

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Could be immovable

In her moving presence.

As for me, I hardly meditate at all. (CP, p.216)

Niranjan Mohanty offers the following conclusive remarks about Nissim

Ezekiel’s relationship with God by quoting the poet himself: “Ezekiel

was an unbeliever and then gradually he changed his stance. But his

relationship with God was neither wholly devotional nor mysterious or

mystical. It was human and it depended on his moods. Rather, one can

say that he was a moody believer in god. In his conversation with Ranvir

Rangra, Ezekiel admits: “I do not feel that I have unbroken relationship

with god, though it includes a variety of moods. I am not in any sense an

orthodox believer and I was positively an unbeliever from the age of 18

or 19 or 42 or so. What is unbroken in my relationship to the universe,

the cosmos rather that the god is a sense of mystery and that is not saying

much, I admit, though orthodox unbelievers tend to deny any mystery in

existence.” (Mohanty, Niranjan. ‘Poetics of Prayer: A Study in the Poetry

of A.K.Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel’, Indian English Literature

Volume IV. ed. Basavaraj Naikar. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, 2003. p. 32)

There is a constant quest to find the balance between reason and emotion.

The poem ‘In Emptiness’ goes on to state his resolve ‘to find another

way’ between ‘reason and emotion’:

I would rather suffer when I must.

………………………………

Let reason and emotion fare

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As man and wife; let them quarrel,

Make love or live occasionally

Apart, and then be reconciled,

But let them not, indifferently,

Empty the house of words and music,

Partners of marriage in decay.

Broken by excesses or by

Lack of them, let me always feel

The presence of the golden mean… (CP, p.12)

To Bruce King, Ezekiel is like Auden’s wanderer: “Ezekiel is like

Auden’s wanderer who has crossed the seas to a strange land, seen and

tasted temptation and now is faced by the problem of returning home

when his mind has been ‘corrupted by the things imagined/through the

winter nights, alone’.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi:

OUP, 2005, p. 34)

Keeping in the mind the human urge in the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel, it is

interesting to read his prayer poems and psalms. The prayer-motif in

Ezekiel not only evidences a spiritual growth but also harps on his

identity. Thus, like home or place or rituals, prayer-motif is indicative of

the poet or writer’s identity. It acts as a catalyst to an identity intensifier.

Before going into it in depth, let it be remembered that here is a persona

who is almost a non-believer. That’s why he hesitates by saying ‘if I

could pray’ in the poem ‘Prayer’:

If I could pray, the gist of my

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Demanding would be simply this:

Quietitude. The ordered mind. (CP, p.54)

The prayers of a non-believer can never have a dedication and

supplication of religious poets of the Bhakti Era of Indian literature or the

metaphysics of the English poets like Donne or Spencer. Again the tone

becomes important than the words. In the words of John Thieme, the poet

in ‘Latter-Day Psalms’ appears unfinished man: “The persona of this

poem (‘Latter-Day Psalms’)remains as much an unfinished man as that of

any of the earlier poems, a postmodern figure fumbling his way towards

a provisional sense of identity, who feels obligated to remake his

intertexts in his own image. (Thieme, John. ‘Introduction’, Collected

Poems of Nissim Ezekiel. Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. xxxviii)

Interestingly and typical of Nissim Ezekiel’s temperament, he wrote

‘Latter-Day Psalms’ as a post modern response to real Psalms. Bruce

King offers the much discussed history behind the origination of Ezekiel

Psalms: “The origin of the ‘latter-day Psalms’ has often been told.

Ezekiel was in Rotterdam during June 1978 to do a poetry reading and at

his hotel found only the Gideon Bible to read. Never having ‘accepted’

the psalms, he began to write his own reply first writing nine psalms

loosely in an older style, then a tenth in modern English as a

commentary. The way in which Ezekiel’s psalms answer and invert those

in the Old Testament can be seen by reading them alongside each other.

Here, for example, is the first verse of psalm 1 in the King James

Version:

Blessed is the man that walketh

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Not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor standeth in the way of sinners,

Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

Ezekiel’s reply:

Blessed is the man that walketh

Not in the counsel of the conventional,

And is at home with

Sin as with a wife. He shall

Listen patiently to the scornful,

And understand the sources of their scorn.

Ezekiel’s imitation, or parody, affirm the world of experience, the loss of

innocence; the enjoyment of sin as a means towards tolerance,

understanding, reasons, salvation. The law is replaced by the spirit,

instead of fear of temptation there is involvement in the world. Compare

the second verse of the psalm:

But his delight is the law of the

LORD; and in his law doth he meditate

Day and night.

With Ezekiel’s second verse:

He does not meditate day and

Night on anything; his delight

Is in action.

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(King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 57-58) In

the words of Shakuntala Bharvani, “Biblical wisdom is juxtaposed along

–side modern mans changed beliefs in a changing world. Ezekiel is

saying that since the world has changed, so must our values and our

norms. Inevitably we encounter sin and crime all the way. Things cannot

remain the same. With the changing times, religious beliefs have to be re

– thought and revised. There has to be a religion which is compatible

with modern mans ethos and nature.” (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim

Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 77-8) Offering a detailed study

of the poet’s prayer motif, Niranjan Mohanty opines that here is a

persona who is ready to shed his ego through his prayers: “Ezekiel’s

prayers…being the instruments of self therapy and refinement…the

prayers, wishes or half-wishes expressed by the poet in his Latter-Day

Psalms and the kind of faith that evolves alludes to the kind of

transformation that has gone into the poet. His egoism, selfishness are all

shed.” (Mohanty, Niranjan. ‘Poetics of Prayer: A Study in the Poetry of

A.K.Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel’, Indian English Literature Volume

IV. ed. Basavaraj Naikar. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, 2003. p. 34). And again, “He (Ezekiel) sheds his ego, and

adheres to humility: “I’m not a man of ample means”. This movement

from ego to its sublimination, from pride to humility marks the end of

cynicism and the beginning of pilgrim’s faith in the lord. His knowledge

of and faith in god get intensified when he comes to realize the fact that

both good and evil co-exist, and that through such harmonized co-

existence life obtains its meaning. The poet learns the distinction between

good and evil, light and darkness, God and Man, the unchanging and the

mutable.” (Mohanty, Niranjan. ‘Poetics of Prayer: A Study in the Poetry

of A.K.Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel’, Indian English Literature

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Volume IV. Ed. Basavaraj Naikar. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, 2003. p. 33)

A. Narayan also sees the identity clashes in the prayer poetry of Ezekiel.

He writes that, “Ezekiel’s best poems show his struggle to come to terms

with himself and India. In the poster poems Ezekiel makes use of both

Judaic-Christian and Hindu traditions to examine his relationship with

God. The irony is directed inward.” (As quoted by Chindhade, Shirish.

Five Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, 2001, p. 49)

Bruce King finds out an identity of a modern secular in the 21st Century

in the persona of Ezekiel’s poetry in the prayer poems: “Ezekiel is similar

to many poets of our secular age in attempting to replace the lost faiths of

the past by new myths of his own.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets,

Second Edition. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 44). And further he says,

“Like many modern writers he has had to discover his own system of

belief. But unlike such writers as Eliot, Yeats, or Robert graves there is

little nostalgia for older, pre-enlightenment systems of thought,

traditions, mythology, mysticisms, or primitivisms.” (King, Bruce. Three

Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 44)

According to Shakuntala Bharvani, ‘Ezekiel’s imitation and inversion of

the psalms so as to overturn and deflate their meaning affirms his

humanity and his tolerance. Where the psalmist sings a song of praise to

his lord, “Thou has broken the teeth of the ungodly”, the poet questions,

“How can I breathe freely if thou breakest the teeth of the ungodly?” in

these psalms the poet recognizes the fact that in a new age, a new way of

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life must be carved out. Also the psalms demonstrate Ezekiel’s efforts to

come to terms with his own Jewish heritage’. (Bharvani, Shakuntala.

Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 81)

A set of poems titled as ‘Poster Poems’ reveal the ironic and indirect way

of the poet towards the realities of the world. In a kind of direct

statement, the poet declares that ‘Life is not as simple as morality. (CP,

p.209) The persona doesn’t have a moralistic desire to be shooting star

which just burns. His human craving is to be a shooting star which is

noticed and taken into account by others:

Suppose I were a shooting star,

I would want to be seen.

That would be my only meaning.

What is there, after all,

In shooting across the sky

and being burnt up?

But being seen!

That would be another thing. (CP, p.210)

And yet the poet is dissatisfied with the quick and readymade recipes of

success and peace offered by the worldly men:

Yoga, Zen, Kabbala,

St John of the Cross, Pelmanism,

Plotinus, Sell Your Way to Success,

Kierkegaard, Pascal,

Think and Grow Rich,

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The Four Quartets.

And How to Change Yourself in Ten Days.

(CP, p.211)

Another set of kind of prayer poems are ‘Hymns in Darkness’. The

identity of the persona of the poet is again situation created in the sense

that when he was writing these set of poems, he was recovering from the

shock of the death of his parents. In the words of Bruce King: “The

sixteen ‘Hymns in Darkness’ were written during a period after Ezekiel’s

mother and father died, and when living in a room alone, he would turn

out the lights and compose poetry in his head related to the Vedic hymns

he was reading in English translation.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets.

New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 55)

The use of word ‘darkness’ in the title with ‘Hymns’ is interesting and

offers us something to learn about the mentality of the persona. In one of

the poems the poet accepts that ‘All his truths are outside him, and mock

his activity’ (CP, p.217). Here also the poet identifies himself with the

city of Bombay by saying that ‘the noise of the city is matched by the

noise in his spirit’ (CP, p.217). The persona ‘lives in the world of desires

and devices (CP, p.217). The poet declares that throughout his existence

‘self-esteem stunts his growth. He has not learnt how to be nobody (CP,

p.217). But again disillusioned by the powers of self esteem and declares:

It’s all of little use.

He’s still a puny self

Hoping to manipulate the universe and all

Its manifest powers for his own advancement,

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Advantages. (CP, p.217)

The tragedy lies in the fact that the persona of ‘Hymns in Darkness’ has

not been able to find the ‘fixed star of his seeking’ and ‘it multiples like a

candle in the eyes of a drunkard (CP, p.218). And in a typical Ezekiel

style, the persona accepts that ‘he looks at the nakedness of truth in the

spirit of a Peeping Tom (CP, p.218). Throughout he has played many

roles:

He has played at being disciple

He has played at being guru. (CP, p.218)

In a full of confession mood, the poet accepts that ‘to his wife an

impossible husband, to his children less than loving’ (CP, p.219). And

yet there is recognition to some mystical powers:

Whose the voice of truth

That spoke through the imperfect words?

(CP, p.219)

Although ‘he has lost faith in himself’ he had ‘found faith at last’ (CP,

p.219) The persona accepts that many of his relationships are result of his

being ‘incapable of quarreling with them’ and thus he ‘maintains the old

Stale unredeemable relationships’ (CP, p.220). He was ‘all attentive’ to

others but was ‘indifferent’ to his own needs. There can be many

references and readings of the word ‘darkness’ in the title. Bruce King

offers three equally interesting reading: “The darkness in the title

obviously has a literal sense as referring to the dark room in which the

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poems are written; but is also has several other significances. The first is

the darkness of the fallen spirit in contrast to those who lived by spiritual

illumination. These are also poems of someone who feels he is living in

the noise, mist, confusion of modern life rather than by any light. There

is, however, a third or contrasting meaning of darkness: it can be the

negative way, a mystic way, or state of salvation. The divine can be

unknowable darkness as well as the light. With Ezekiel’s poems, because

of the use of personae and distance, affirmations of the self can be ironic;

confessions of guilt can be affirmations.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian

Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 55-6)

It is interesting that The Hymns conclude with an affirmation of life as in

itself of value; there is no ‘belief’ that can save. The conclusion does not

lead to any affirmation of ideals but the conclusion to life affirmation as

it is. Rather, reality itself, regardless of how the world was made, is the

only life we have and in the particularities of experience are its miracles;

You are master

Neither of death nor of life.

Belief will not save you,

Nor unbelief.

All you have

Is the sense of reality,

Unfathomable

As it yields its secrets

Slowly

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One

By

One. (CP, p.225)

In ‘Prayer 2’, Ezekiel’s aesthetic attitude gets revealed at once for he

prays for making his life clean and meaningful by living with men and

women and living for them:

Let me dream the dream of Man.

…………………….

Let me not be isolated uninvolved in

Man’s defeat, but know my love reciprocated

Dancing in the neutral street. (CP, p.55-56)

Niranjan Mohanty suggests the direct voice of the poet as a human search

for the meaning of life: “The praying voice is direct, bereft of any

context. This directness, this explicitness even creates an impression of

egotism. Whatever is the motif in these prayers, at least, the poet’s

attitude towards the self and the world is known. One also discovers

changes in the slowly evolving, progressing prayer motifs- the changes

which define a degree of refinement in the poet’s attitude towards life.”

(Mohanty, Niranjan. ‘Poetics of Prayer: A Study in the Poetry of

A.K.Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel’, Indian English Literature Volume

IV. Ed. Basavaraj Naikar. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, 2003. p. 32)

With the help of a declared acceptance by the poet in one of the articles,

Dr. Shaila Mahan terms Ezekiel as a unique secularly religious person by

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saying that there is a ‘a constant conflict between an individuals urge for

spiritual growth and the restraints of the institutionalized religion, his

quest for deeper fulfillments and the iron cast framework of organized

opinion. The fusion of the secular and the religious is a notable feature of

Ezekiel’s verse.’ She writes elaborately about this aspect in the poetry of

Ezekiel: “Ezekiel cannot be labeled a religious poet from the orthodox

point of view. Nonetheless he has always been a religious poet, even

when he was an agnostic or skeptic. He has never been a genuine

materialist. There has always been the assumption that there are values,

good in contrast to evil, and that it is the good that should be ones guide.

His outlook has always been that of liberal humanism, with its belief in

such universals as the individual, justice, equality, freedom, rationality

and skepticism. Ezekiel’s religious philosophical poetry arises out of a

tension within his own personality. It emerges from a conflict between

opposites, an involvement with life and a desire for detachment from it; a

sensuous perception of the physical world and a spiritual abstraction

beyond that world. His own statement recognizes the presence of such

schism in molding his poetry: “I am not a religious or even a moral

person in any conventional sense. Yet, I’ve always felt myself to be

religious and moral in some sense. The gap between these two statements

is the existential sphere of my poetry”. (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 172-3) ‘Minority

Poem’ states a philosophical truth. Man is unable to overcome his

pettiness and selfishness. He does not possess the will “to pass through

the eye of a needle to self-forgetfulness” as Mother Teresa was able to

do. It is for her selflessness that “everyone understands Mother Teresa”.

Man only concentrates on petty unimportant issues “while the city

burns”.

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Anisur Rahman has rightly observed that, “Without any conscious

striving for a philosophical dimension or a religious pattern, Nissim

Ezekiel exhibits a deeper religio – philosophical awareness of the world

and the tortured self. He is neither a saint negating the sensual pleasure

nor a yogi wandering in the thick jungle to attain light, but a man of

parts, a being of the world participating and belonging. He takes a unique

stance of a modern quester: liberal in outlook yet strong in commitment.”

(As quoted by Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur:

Classic Publications, 2001, p. 173)

Whenever a poet takes up poetry as a tool to search his identity and self,

the metaphor of journey is bound to play a crucial role. Since time

immemorial journey or pilgrimage has been described by the authors

across cultures and languages as a kind of tool to symbolize the search of

a persona. Ezekiel also follows this pattern in some of his poetry. The

very first poem of the Collected Poems– ‘A Time to Change’ begins with

the poet’s commitment to the theme of pilgrimage. In this poem Ezekiel

shows the man who accepts the challenge of active life and leaves his

home with a firm resolution to proceed on a voyage of quest. Shakuntala

Bharvani also emphasizes the same view by referring to the Epigraph

quoted by Ezekiel in the book: “The first poem is titled ‘A Time to

Change’. It is dedicated to his mother and the collection takes its title

from this poem. Often considered autobiographical, the predominant

metaphor in this collection is the journey, voyage or venture or the

departure from home. The epigraph from the book of revelation

reinforces the leit motif of a pilgrimage being undertaken with intense

determination and the struggle of the protagonist to avoid a lukewarm

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and half – hearted attitude. (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New

Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 3)

Such a man is impelled by a strong urge of his will and is determined to

face the difficulties and problems involved in the journey. He voluntarily

breaks himself away from the original pattern of life and his motive is to

explore the ways of new life. In the words of Shaila Mahan, “The title of

the poem itself suggests the fact that the poet is dissatisfied with the

existing life and he wishes to change its pattern. The poem reveals the

poets frustration and disillusionment and his quest for identity. It also

points to his faith that this identity is to be sought in life and not outside

it.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 126). The two distinct poems in this sense are

‘Enterprise’ and ‘A Morning Walk’. Here it is a personal quest for

identity, commitment and harmony in life. The image of journey is a

dominant feature in his poetry. It is employed by Ezekiel as a symbolic

pattern that synthesizes idea and poetic expression in his works. With the

help of thoughts expressed by G. Damodar, Shaila Mahan opines the

same view: “The central and persistent metaphor of Ezekiel’s writings is

that of departure, a journey or a venture. Ezekiel may be described as a

pilgrim with a sense of commitment and his poetry as a metaphoric

journey into the heart of existence. G. Damodar characterizes Ezekiel as

“a poet seeking a balance between an almost existential involvement with

life and an intellectual quest”. Ezekiel is concerned with the man engaged

in a progressive journey who is trying to reach out to future destinations.

(Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 125)

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In the poem, ‘Enterprise’ (CP, p.118), the poet takes up the theme of

voyage and expresses a sense of loss and deprivation:

The trip had darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare.

Home is where we have to earn our grace. (CP, p.118)

Commenting on the poem’s theme of quest, Dr. Shaila Mahan observes

by quoting from Inder Nath Kher that, ‘Enterprise’ is a representative

example of Ezekiel’s treatment of the theme of quest. It delineates a

journey in an alien land in search of wisdom. A collective venture

apparently having an ambitious goal passes through several phases and

ends on a skeptic note. Inder Nath Kher’s comment can be quoted here to

elaborate the point...in so far as home is a metaphor for the self;

Redemption has to be won also through the private landscape of ones

psyche or mind. Both these realms, the outer and the inner, are essential

to human growth and fulfillment. Without commitment to life in the

World and without journey into the abyss of ones being, the metaphoric

pilgrimage of Ezekiel’s aesthetic Vision remains incomplete, though an

everlasting possibility”. (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel.

Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 127)

Reading the poem at several levels, Shakuntala Bharvani suggests that,

‘by the time the journey ended they hardly knew why they were there,

what they were doing or the meaning of their actions. The poem is

allegorical and can be read at several levels. It can be seen as symbolic of

the human condition: man strives and struggles through his journey of

life to achieve a goal. When he has achieved what he desires, he loses

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interest. Or, one may take the journey metaphor further. During the

course of this journey more may be lost rather than gained. It is to the

‘home’, to the ‘reality’ that finally one must return and ‘gather grace’. In

whichever way we choose to read it, this poem brings us back to the

epigraph and the metaphor of the journey… But essentially, man is for

ever unfinished, and as Yeats puts it very succinctly in this poem,

“Myself I must remake”, this “foul rag and bone shop of the heart”. Thus

Yeats philosophy stands in good stead for Ezekiel; for he takes it as a

starting point to express his own philosophy life has to be lived with all

its flaws and inadequacies. Ezekiel was influenced by Yeats and as a

teacher he always enjoyed teaching the work of this Irish poet.”

(Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p.

40-1)

Another poem having the same theme is “A Morning walk.” (CP, p.128)

The poem can be described as a metaphoric journey into the ‘self’: a

journey made through introspection. The realization that there is a deep

chasm between the historical world and the world of nature forces him to

make the observation:

His past is like a muddy pool

From which he cannot hope for words. (CP, p.128)

Dr. Shaila Mahan makes the observation that: “He fails to perceive the

unity between the two worlds. His journey enables him to see the

disorder of the city (life around him) in a detached way and comprehend

it in the larger perspective of the history of human civilization. Future

more, he aims at seeing a meaning and order in the existing disorder.”

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(Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 128). Shakuntala Bharvani views The Unfinished

Man essentially a volume of poetry where self-analysis is emphasized.

She says, “the metaphor of the journey gives this volume a greater unity

and Ezekiel’s unfinished man, with all his inadequacies and flaws, must

go through the journey of life. Very often the unfinished man is lost,

lonely, unsure of his goal, staring and seeing little as he “can never see

the sky”. At the end of the journey, as in ‘enterprise’, he has forgotten the

purpose and motive of the journey. David McCutchion expresses this

idea of the journey by referring to this collection as an “examen de midi”,

an examination of a life in the mid – course of its journey. McCutchion

also feels that Ezekiel shows an excessive interest in self analysis in these

poems but the collection ends on a positive note with the short last poem

‘Jamini Roy’.” (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi:

Sahitya Akademi, p. 42-3). ‘Jamini Roy’ is an indication that Ezekiel

believes in the possibility of bringing about some sort of order and

assimilation through art in the urban world of moral chaos and ethical

confusion.

Another set of poems titled as ‘Blessings’ are also indicative of the kind

of life the poet has lived through out his life. His blessings are secular,

modern and practical. The tone and the language suggest a persona who

is seeking the release in the secular way. Bruce King offers the following

studied explanation for these poems: “These fourteen poems (each of

four to nine lines; usually constructed by contrasting halves) epitomize

Ezekiel’s mature vision and how he tried to live most of his life. For all

its romanticism it is also existentialist (remember that in those influential

years in London Ezekiel read the existentialists). Each individuals life is

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a self – creation, you are what you make of yourself. The tension in these

poems between the existential self – made and the given or ‘blessed’ is

seen in the two forms or kinds of poems. There are the real ‘blessings’

expressed by the recurring ‘may you’ found in seven of the

poems.”(King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 68)

It can be easily anticipated the nature of ‘Blessings’ that can be offered

by a kind of persona Ezekiel has. Sans morality and the weight of

religion, the ‘blessings’ offered by the persona may appear caricature of

‘real’ blessings, but nonetheless they express the mood of the poet:

May you read

Wisdom books

In the spirit of the comics,

And the comics

In the spirit of the wisdom books. (CP, p.280)

There is a worldly advice as well:

Remember the time-

There’s never enough time,

Enjoy the time,

There’s plenty of time. (CP, p.281)

Such a persona wishes to find humility by reaching on the top of the

world rather than being at the bottom:

Straighten yourself up

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To your full height

And find humility.

It’s better there

Than lower down. (CP, p.281)

The tone of suggestions appearing in the ‘Blessing’ poems is that of a

modern guru. The perspective is that happiness is not something that can

be pursued, it can be found out in normal activities:

Whatever you pursue,

Let it not be happiness.

May you find it often

Resounding

In your normal pursuits. (CP, p.280)

One need not be necessarily a creative writer to create his life. The poet

emphasizes on creating one’s life rather than creating a piece of

literature:

May you be

Poet, painter, scholar,

Thinker, musician,

Even if you create nothing that matters

Except your life, which too

Has to be created. (CP, p.283)

The poet’s set of ‘The Egoist’s Prayers’ are a curious way indicating the

‘self’. In a typical Ezekiel style the prayers appear parody of real praying

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mood. But nonetheless, the mood of the poet and the confessional mode

is obvious:

The vices I’ve always had

I still have.

The virtues I’ve never had

I still do not have.

From this human way of life

Who can rescue man

If not this maker?

Do thy duty, Lord. (CP, p.212)

Such a persona is not moved by the traditional Indian ethos of believing

only in the action discarding the fruit of it:

No, Lord,

Not the fruit of action

Is my motive.

But do you really mind

Half a bite of it?

It tastes so sweet,

And I’m so hungry. (CP, p.212)

The persona even declares his inability to carry out the mission of the

Lord on the Earth. He rather appeals to Him to make His ‘purposes to

coincide with his’:

Do not choose me, O Lord,

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To carry out thy purposes.

I’m quite worthy, of course,

But I have my own purposes.

You have plenty of volunteers

To choose from, Lord.

Why pick on me, the selfish one?

O well, if you insist,

I’ll do your will.

Please try to make it coincide with mine. (CP, p.213)

No creative writer has ever escaped from describing the journey of the

self sans depicting his relationship with the other sex. Nissim Ezekiel is

no exception. The poet persona seeks comfort and a kind of identity in

his relationship with women. But he is constantly disillusioned in such

relationship. Shaila Mahan highlights this aspect of Ezekiel’s poetry by

saying that in his poetry woman is viewed in many roles: “Ezekiel

positively and unequivocally indicates in his poetry- mans eternal

passionate interest in woman. In the poems written by him woman is

viewed in the usual roles of beloved, wife, mother, whore, sex object and

a seductress. The capacity of woman in arousing mans desire and

focusing all his sensuous reactions on certain areas of the woman’s body

is highlighted in many of his poems. Woman like the city both fascinates

and repels him.” (Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur:

Classic Publications, 2001, p. 74-5)

So the notion that in love happiness comes is opposed by the poet in

‘Report’:

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And those who love are not,

As people think, happy

Because they love, but nearly

Sad because the sea

Of passion is nothing precisely. (CP, p.84)

‘On Bellasis Road’ is a fine example, expressing Ezekiel’s simultaneous

conflicting feeling for the woman. He finds her both captivating and

unattractive and says:

I cannot even say I care or do not care,

Perhaps it is a kind of despair. (CP, p.189)

At the same time he is aware that the concept of love has really taken

away the real charm of love. We are so linguistically driven that in ‘For

Her’ he makes a categorical statement: ‘We can not love without the idea

of love’ (CP, p.88). Although amidst being illusioned and disillusioned in

the relationship with women, the poet persona can not entirely avoid the

other sex:

Certain vases and women, however expensive,

Fill the animal heart with wonder and warmth,

(CP, p.94)

For Ezekiel, the relationship with women is never a simple one. In poem,

‘Tonight’ he describes contrasting feelings by saying ‘tonight I hear my

woman breathing/who loves me till my world is waste’ (CP, p.94). And

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surely ‘a man is damned in that domestic game.’ (CP, p.125) Writing

powerfully in ‘Poem of the Separation’ of the break up of a love affair

with a foreign woman he says to her:

In the squalid, crude

City of my birth and rebirth,

You were a new way

Of laughing at the truth.

I want you back

With the rough happiness you lightly wear,

Supported by your shoulders,

Breasts and thighs.

But you ask to break it up.

Your latest letter says:

‘I am enclosing

Ramanujan’s translation

Of a Kannada religious poem:

“The Lord is playing

With streamers of fire.”

I want to play with fire.

Let me get burnt. (CP, p.196)

His poetry depicting and narrating the man-woman relationship is

interesting document telling about his views and experiences about the

female. For Shakuntala Bharvani, “Ezekiel was not a Victorian prude. All

kinds of women make appearances in his poems (and his plays): there is

the modern sophisticated one who flaunts her wit and her body; the

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conservative, shy woman who waits for the man to take the initiative; the

streetwalker who does it for the money; the girl who wants to

experiment...et al.” (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi:

Sahitya Akademi, p. 3)

One of the glaring aspects of Nissim Ezekiel’s treatment of women in his

poetry is that they are almost referred as third persons. This tendency

suggests that for the persona, the female are merely as something viewed

from male perspectives. Dr. Shaila Mahan also agrees with the notion

that, “The peculiarity of Ezekiel’s treatment of woman is that in his

poems woman are never referred to in the first person. In majority of his

poems they are referred to in the first person. Since in none of his poems

has the woman been given the role of a persona the relationship between

man and woman is explored from the male point of view. Also very

rarely are woman addressed by personal names. They exist as species and

type rather than as individuals. In fact in most of the cases we are given

only one side of the picture. This presentation from the male view point

makes the portrayal lopsided. Moreover she is hardly ever allowed to

speak. It will not be wrong if we say that in Ezekiel’s poems woman

exists not only without mostly without voice too. And in the few poems

where they speak the speech portrays a negative impression:

And then she said: I love you, just like this

As I had seen the yellow blondes declare

Upon the screen me now because i did not kiss.

(CP, p.11)

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(Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic

Publications, 2001, p. 84-5). We can not always say that the persona is

always subjective. At times he assumes the objective stance as well. In

the words of Narendra Lall: “His persona is the protagonist in most of the

poems, but there are some in which the persona is an

observer/commentator. Yet in his relationship with woman, he sees those

filling biological and societal roles, those of mother, wife, mistress,

seductress, whore, and sex object.” (Lall, Emmanuel Narendra. The

Poetry of Encounter, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited,

1983, p. 92)

Not only that, the poetry narrating such relationship is abundant in

volume and the tone is often of confession. Thus we can have a hint of

the development of the ‘self’ in relationship with women. It is a fact that

however much Ezekiel’s persona wants to change his perspective on

woman, his image of woman as sex object remains with him. Narendra

Lall finds the Yeatsian tone in such poetry since Ezekiel too was

influenced by the poetry of Yeats so much so that the title of his one

volume of poetry The Unfinished Man is borrowed from Yeats poetry. He

writes that, “The title of Ezekiel’s fourth book of poems comes from the

second section of Yeats’ ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ (the winding stair

and other poems [1933], and the first stanza of this section is used as

epigraph for The Unfinished Man. Ezekiel’s use of Yeats’ poem has

significance because Yeats too was much concerned with the relationship

between man and woman; his poem about Maud Gonne in “no second

troy” (the green helmet and other poems [1910]) supports my

observation, as does the “Self’s” comment in the third stanza of the

second section of “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” which says that a living

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man should accept the experience of the “unfinished man” within him

even if it means the repetitions of follies such as “the folly that man

does/or must suffer, if he woos/a proud woman not kindred of his soul.”

As the unfinished man progresses, he learns through experience the

complexity of the man – woman relationship, and in this learning process

he images “woman” in the roles categorized earlier.” (Lall, Emmanuel

Narendra. The Poetry of Encounter, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers

Private Limited, 1983, p. 75)

The important document in depicting the man-woman relationship is a

series of nine lyrics grouped under “Passion Poems.” Here the poet-

persona continues to probe the relationship between man and woman. In

writing about this theme he adopts the subjective as well as the objective

point of view, and discusses the secular and religious aspects of love

within this man-woman relationship. Ezekiel in a letter to his sister Asha

Bhende from London on 9th May, 1950 emphasized the importance of

true happiness in marriage when the latter decided to marry. He wrote:

“Remember always that the relationship is more important than you or

your future husband. It is wisest to treat it as a third entity which has to

be reared slowly and carefully, like a tender plant. Giving all to the

marriage you will find that marriage in its turn will give you all it has to

offer. And what any relationship offers to us when treated in this way is

nothing less than a plentitude of happiness.” (Bhende, Asha.

‘Remembering Nissim’, Nissim Ezekiel Remembered. ed. Havovi

Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008, p. 6). Bruce King

observes that the poems narrating the man-woman relationship is the

protagonist’s attempt to observe him in ‘the bad faith’: “Part of the

achievement of the volume results from the creation of a persona of

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someone watching himself as if he were a case study in bad faith, as if all

the philosophizing of the early poems were self-deception. He is aware

that the image of a woman to love eternally and faithfully was such an

idea.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 40)

An important aspect of the persona’s relationship with women is that of

love-hate. Like the characters of D.H.Lawrence, the poet-persona is

constantly illusion and disillusioned by his relationships with the women.

‘Progress’ is an important poem in this regard since it shows the

conclusive wisdom of the poet-persona that the truth can not only be

obtained through the sexual relationship with the women:

The former suffering

Self declined to use

Of women who were

Willing but unlovable:

Love was high minded, stable.

Now he wears a thicker

Skin, upgraded from

The goddesses of virtue

To mocking, sexual eyes

Whose hunger makes him wise. (CP, p.141)

Commenting on the poem, Bruce King opines the same: ‘Progress’

contrasts a high minded former self, which would not bed willing women

he did not love, with a present tougher self ‘whose hunger makes him

wise’. Ezekiel had traveled a long way since the romantic idealism of ‘a

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time to change’.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP,

2005, p. 47)

Love, sex, and the attraction of women seem Ezekiel’s main way to hold

off despair and find interest in life. So one cannot regard Ezekiel as male

chauvinist. Shakuntala Bharvani clarifies it by referring to the poem ‘At

the Hotel’ (CP, 112): ‘It cannot be concluded that Ezekiel was a male

chauvinist who thought of woman as sex objects, carving to caress and be

caressed. The more plausible explanation is that he enjoyed, like most

men, indulging in the voyeuristic, and this finds expressions in his poetry.

Several of his poems deal with hips, breasts, legs and thrusts:

At the hotel

Our motives were concealed but clear,

Not coffee but the Cuban dancer rooks us there,

The naked Cuban dancer.

On the dot she came and shook her breasts....

Our motives were concealed but clear. (CP, p.112)

(Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p.

18)

In one of his love poems, ‘The Couple’, the two lie to gain sexual

conquests but only in making love does ‘false love’ become ‘infused with

truest love’:

You’re a wonderful woman, he said,

……………………………………..

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He knew he was lying,

But then how else

Could he hope to win her?

The flattery and the bold advances

Were necessary after all,

The minimum politics of survival and success.

And how charmingly she took it all!

What could a man do?

Her false love become infused

With truest love only in making love.

To love her was impossible,

To abandon her unthinkable. (CP, p.183-4)

And amidst all the description of the persona’s relationship with the

women, there is a constant search for self even with color the of religion

in it. Bruce King refers to Ezekiel’s ‘Tribute to the Upanishads’ in this

regard: “Along with whatever decisions Ezekiel made, or did not make

(and a love affair seems to be at the centre), there is an increasing

attraction to the religious, a need for some way to get beyond the self

without giving up the self to traditional religious restrictions and beliefs.

‘Tribute to the Upanishads’ begins:

To feel that one is somebody

Is to drive oneself

In a kind of hearse…

But continues:

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For the present, this is enough,

That I am free

To be the self in me

…the eye of the eye

That is trying to see. (CP, p.205)

(King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 53)

Comparing Ezekiel’s relationship poetry with Kamala Das, King remarks

that his poetry is more ‘quiet’: “Where as most of what is termed

confessional poetry is open and explicit, Ezekiel’s poetry manages to be

open and guarded, personal and yet part of a persona. We are aware of

moods, crises, themes, problems, changes, but the facts of life are seldom

there. Whereas part of the attraction of a Kamala Das poem is in her up-

front, grand self-dramatizing of her emotions and situations, Ezekiel is

more quiet, introverted, protected.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets.

New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 54)

It seems that for Ezekiel physical is more near than abstract. His intense

relationship with the women was more based on the first hand physical

experience than on the abstract concept of love and admiration. In ‘Torso

of a Woman’, which begins Poems 1983-1988 in the Collected Poems,

the poet emphasizes on the ‘form’:

Praise the form,

Praise the modeling,

Praise the dynamic movement

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And the complex synthesis

Of muscular tensions:

The woman plainly needs

Her common arms and legs. (CP, p.265)

According to Bruce King, the tone of the poem is similar to that of

‘Nudes 1978’: “…in the way in which abstract reasoning is used to argue

for the superiority of the physical and therefore, by implication, actual

experience over the abstract beauty if art. A woman is the perfect

example of such a claim for preferring reality to a symbolic image in art.

Art is not pure from abstracted from reality, not pure images; it needs the

‘common’, the normal, the human.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets.

New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 60-61)

There is a notion that Ezekiel has declined as a poet in his later poetry.

But the argument doesn’t seem valid since now the poet is more in the

mood of writing for himself rather than wishing for the accolades which

the poet of Time for Change might have anticipated. Bruce King affirms

this view since there is a greater inclination on finding one’s truer self in

the later poetry: “The notion that Ezekiel has declined as a poet may be

incorrect but was encouraged by a tendency towards less selectivity in

the choice of what he later published. The younger Ezekiel aimed to set

standards in Indian English poetry comparable to the best elsewhere; later

Ezekiel seemed more concerned with writing out of some inner need than

with creating a name or standards. ’Subconscious’, one of the late

Collected Poems (poems 1983-1988), expresses fear of being deserted by

the Muse in what might be felt to be a situation similar to that between a

man and a woman he has loved and now takes for granted…While

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Ezekiel began with a notion of living the life of a poet, his years in

London modified such romanticism with more practical views; regardless

of the fullness of his life, what has made him a poet is his dedication to,

even obsession with, poetry.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New

Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 64)

It becomes clear through the reading of the poetry of Ezekiel that there

can not be attainment of divine. For him the normal is divine, or for that

matter it is a duty of a poet to make normal divine. There is suggestion

not to seek for happiness in something extraordinary, since happiness, if

at all it can be sought; it is only in the ordinary things of life. This is

perhaps the central theme which runs through out the poetry of Ezekiel.

Bruce King sums up in the following words: “Seeing the divine in the

ordinary and vulgar, and by investing common experience with the

religious, Ezekiel has become almost a Blakean romantic, a mystic of the

ordinary. Every drop of water is to be cared for, all creation is valuable. It

is a blessing to be ‘drunk’ with a divinely ordered vocation, but do not

search for happiness, for if you are blessed, it will come from the fullness

of your ‘normal’ life.” (King, Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi:

OUP, 2005, p. 67) And again he says that, “Part of Ezekiel’s new

achievement is the discovery that he can make poetry from the naked self

behind the mask. But the naked face of crisis, of emotional turmoil, of

frustrated desires, of disillusionment and longing, of despair screaming to

escape from its cage, is itself still another persona, another face.” (King,

Bruce. Three Indian Poets. New Delhi: OUP, 2005, p. 41)

It can be summarized that the poet-persona is crazy about his madness.

He loves to be mad among the crowd of so called sensible people. In

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‘Song to be Shouted Out, from Songs for Nandu Bhende’ there is a

declaration that:

The further I move

Away from madness

Towards stability

And a measure of sense,

The closer I seem

To the verge of madness. (CP, p.242)

In his tryst with the religion and morality of the world, the poet

ultimately feels that it is difficult to keep the ‘testimony’ of the God. In

‘Latter-Day Psalms’ he reveals:

It is the story-teller who

Keeps saying that we did not

Keep God’s testimony. He never

Learns that it cannot

Be kept. (CP, p.257)

Somehow the poet feels that ‘nothing I say or do is holy but I no longer

feel it needn’t be (CP, p.271). And so the ultimate reconciliation that is

offered in ‘A Different Way’:

Not exactly penitent-

The claim would be pretence-

But tired of living

In the old dimensions,

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I have begun to imagine

A different way

In which things become holy

As they remain the same. (CP, p.272)

And so ‘At 62’ he wants to learn the ways

To heal

Myself and others,

Before I hear

My last song. (CP, p.274)

So when he imagines his post-death obituaries, the anticipation is that of

being remembered as ‘a poet whose theme was human failure (CP,

p.275) Befitting to the whole life of tumult and confusion, the poet

declares in ‘Ten Poems in the Greek Anthology Mode’:

It’s best to be born,

And being born,

To write verses saying

It’s best not to be born. (CP, p.276)

The poet is still ever ready to start again and again to seek the meaning of

his life in secular language, as stated way back in his first volume of

poetry:

The aspiration

Found Again

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I start again

With secret faults concealed no more .

(CP, p.5)

Vasant A. Shahane feels that there is a very close connection between

Ezekiel’s life and his poetical work. He further writes: “He is primarily a

poet seeking, sometimes in vain, other times successfully, a balance

between an almost existential involvement with life and an intellectual

quest for commitment”. (As quoted by Mahan, Shaila. The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel. Jaipur: Classic Publications, 2001, p. 42). Concluding the

discussion on the poetry of Ezekiel, Shakuntala Bharvani offers that,

‘Ezekiel’s poetry is introspective, pensive and reflective. Even in the

early poems, there is the inward turning, the spirit of contemplation. He

travels within in order to discover his roots. Just as in the poem ‘Jamini

Roy’ this rural artist of Bengal turned inwards to discover his true art and

find his real vocation, so also with Ezekiel, it is in an inward turning that

he finds sustenance.’ (Bharvani, Shakuntala. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi:

Sahitya Akademi, p. 121). Adil Jussawalla paid a true tribute to the

temperament of Ezekiel when he wrote a poem titled ‘Have I heard

Right, I Wonder’ in which he mentioned what ‘mattered’ for Ezekiel:

It wasn’t like that.

What I recall is a branch

Stopped by glass;

Nissim abruptly saying,

“It’s a plant,”

When I asked him its name,

And then, more abruptly,

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“That’s all that matters”.

(Jussawalla, Adil. ‘Have I heard Right, I Wonder’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. xxvi)

As Keki Daruwalla writes, “Ezekiel has made his commitment. He is not

going to be part of the mob or worship ‘snake and cow’. His commitment

is to poetry. Poetry is the instrument through which he wishes to plough

his furrow in life.” (Daruwalla, Keki. ‘Nissim Ezekiel: Perched on

Hyphens, between Poetry and Prayer, Soul and Flesh’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. 392). One might also agree, as rightly put by Makarand

Paranjape, that “Nissim’s view of life lacks the sense of grand narratives

or oracular pronouncements. It is in the everyday, humdrum, even sordid

urban landscape of the postcolonial metropolis that he seeks to realize the

higher truths of life. Even his spirituality is different. It lacks the great

affirmations of Tagore or Sri Aurobindo but is instead marked by a

humility and modesty characterized by a reduced set of circumstances

and a circumscribed quest. No longer is the vision one of saving

humanity or saving a nation, but simply of surviving, following a

vocation, living authentically.” (Paranjape, Makarand. ‘A Poetry of

Proportions: Nissim Ezekiel’s Quest for the Exact Name’, Nissim Ezekiel

Remembered. ed. Havovi Anklesaria. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,

2008, p. 433)