CHAPTER-ll

EZEKIEL AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

 CHAPTER - II

EZEKIEL AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Nissim Ezekiel occupies a prominent place among the

post-Independence Indian English poets. He is widely

acknowledged as India's most reputed English language poet

who not only taught others how to write poetry in English

but also irrigated the landscape of post-Independence Indian

English poetry with a new sensibility. The pain, the

anguish, the dilemmas of being alive in the twentieth

century with all the burden of the past and its traditional

beliefs and orthodoxies, the ironies and the affirmations of

modern life, the quest for roots and their discovery - in

brief, the vast panorama of the human condition finds a

befitting expression in Ezekiel's poetry. That is why

poetry, to him, is precisely a means to discover truth:

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 flmv
From which a poem comes. 1

Thus, Ezekiel ponders in the beginning of his creative path

and prays for those times which are inspiring and full of

avidity for creation:

Whatever the enigma,

The passion of the blood,
Grant me the metaphor,
To make it human good. 2

19
 Ezekiel keeps an eye on human good even while combining

the passion of the blood- He always dives deep into new

areas of life in order to perceive the inner core of

reality. In his poem 'For William Carlos Williams' he says:

Something comes
Through and through
I hear the music of it
I hear the meaning too.
I feel the flesh
Of the poem
Firm
And the bone hard. 3

In'his famous poem 'Background, Casually', Ezekiel

remarks, "Tbe London seasons passed me by", and his poetry

is replete with such personal utterances. To him the man

who suffers and the mind which creates are one and the same.

And it is precisely because of this that he "feels the flesh

of the poem".

It is not for nothing that Ezekiel's poetry has

elicited considerable critical response in recent years,

especially after the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma

Shri were conferred on him in 1983 and 1988 respectively.

And one of the reasons fer such a focus on his work might be

related to the fact that he considers himself a "good

native" with the firm commitment,

I cannot leave the island

I was born here and belong 4

20
 Ezekiel's poems evince great commitment and confession.

His deep relationship with India is obvious when he says: "I

am not a Hindu, and my background makes me a natural

outsider; circumstances and decisions relate me to India". 5

These two statements point to a conscious decision on

Ezekiel's part to speak from within India. Therefore,

I<
Chetan Karnani's critical study of Ezekiel's work6 is in

some ways a tribute to the above fact. Karnani says,

"Nissim Ezekiel occupies a position of considerable

importance in post-Independence Indian English literature".

The same can be said of a special issue on Nissim Ezekiel in

1976 brought out by Michigan State University (Journal of

South 'Asian Literature). An examination of the criticism

available on Ezekiel points to a recognition among the

critics that in him they have an articulate and authentic

Indian English poet. In his autobiogr~phical poem,

'Background, Casually' Ezekiel declares

"D I.$,.S
0.., II\; lj N 24~~(Y J
I ha '.Te made my commitments now. N7
This is one: to say where I am,
As_others choose to give themselves.
In some remote and backward place
Ky backward place is where I am. 7

This commitment to place and time makes Ezekiel one of the

major poets of our country who takes pride in singing about

India - its cultural, soci~l, artistic and political milieu.

21
He pursues India in all his works and his aim "to do

~omething for India .... ", both as a poet and dramatist, is

admirable.

Nissim Ezekiel, during his stay in England (1948-52),

acquainted himself thoroughly with different poetic trends.

Crit_i~associate his works with the works of T.S. Eliot and

Auden although Ezekiel himself acknowledges that at

different periods he was influenced by Rilke, Yeats and

Pound. The title 'The Unfinished Man, is a borrowing from

W.B. Yeats. Similarly his well-known poem, "Enterprise'

bears distinct echoes of Eliot's The Waste Land and 'Journey

of the Magi'. The last line of the poem "Home is where we

have to earn our grace" is reminiscent of The Four Quartets.

However, Ezekiel succeeds in discovering his own voice,

shunning imitation and lack of individuality. In an

interview to Suresh Kohli, Ezekiel states; "A clear

influence is no proof of a poem's merit. Quite the contrary

I was not influenced by Yeats after The Unfinished Man, nor

by Eliot and Pound after Sixty Poems .... All this talk

about influences may be of some value only when I write

really good poetry during the next ten years or so, which I

certainly hope to do". 8 Ezekiel, in fact, did write good

poetry in The Exact Name and also in Hymns in Darkness. It

is quite natural, therefore, that Ezekiel combines in

22
himself various traditions; the English poetic traditions,

~ainly in the sphere of form; problems of Indian literature;

the assimilation of modern poetry and the "existential

immersion in the life of cod-analytical disgust". 9

Most of the critics so far have tried to understand

Ezekiel in the light of the poet's personal and variegated

chronology but an objective assessment of the rich human

aspect of his poetry has generally gone unnoticed. The

researchers so far have examined how well Ezekiel has

Indianized English in his works, how Indian his sensibility

is, how Indian his style, themes, setting, language,

attitude, etc. are, besides perceptive studies of the

technique, irony and certain strains in his poetry. This

study aims at a refreshingly original appraisal of Nissim

Ezekiel in terms of his thematic concerns in his poetic

corpus. It seeks to make an incisive analysis of some of

the representative and major poems of Ezekiel in all the

eight volumes of poems, 'A Time to Change' (1952), Sixty

Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960),

The Exact Name (1965), Hymns in Darkness (1976), and

Latter-Day Psalms (1982), together with Collected Poems

1952-88 {1989) in order to take an authentic and

comprehensive view of life and human issues in his poetry.

23
 Dr. M.K. Naik holds him as the "first of the 'new'

~oets" and "one of the most quotable poets of his

generation".'' Dr. Dwivedi rightly calls him "the barometer

of modern India's literary atmosphere". 1 ~ Of late, Bruce

King maintains that Ezekiel "emerged as the leader"la. of the

group of poets attempting to create a modern English poetry

in India. He further observes, "whereas previously Indian

English verse was a hobby, something done in spare moments,

Ezekiel made it central to his life. Others wrote poems, he

wrote p6etry". 1 ~ Christopher Wisemanl; makes an in-depth

study of Ezekiel's craft. He talks about rhyme, metre and

stanza pattern. He examines some of Ezekiel's important

poems and points out his change of style also. This article

is very useful to study the craftsmanship of Ezekiel.

Indernath Kher, too, in his outstanding essay on Ezekiel 1 ~

analyses two important metaphors in his poetry. They are

"pilgrimage", the metaphor of life and the movement towards

its spiritual meaning, and "home" the metaphor of the self.

Kher analyses Ezekiel's poems and opines that the poet in

his progress through pilgrimage gets "released from worldly

things" and apprehends his true identity or being. In

'Poetry Reading'. Ezekiel says "In sin 1 And song he spel t

put what they meant" and Kher rightly concludes fdlat "the

poet's sin constitutes action which brings him close to the

24
awareness of his being and his song constitutes poetry which

))rings us the reverberating •message from another shore' "·

This shore is the abyss of the human heart, which contains

the aesthetic vision of Nissim Ezekiel. Chetan Karnani 1~

attempts to study the writings of Ezekiel and makes certain

interesting observations. In analysing Ezekiel's poems,

Karnani makes a poem the unit of discourse and deals with

volume after volume in separate chapters. He sums up his

views on the achievement of Ezekiel in the last chapter.

The monograph lacks one thing, that is)the growth and

development of the poet has not been perceived in the proper

perspective. Hence Karnani fails to make an integral

approach to Ezekiel's poetry. In his perceptive essay enti-

tled 'Interior Cadences : The Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel 11 e,

J. Birje Patil showers praise on Ezekiel when he asserts,

"Ezekiel's poetry can be vie\ved as reincarnation of English

poetry incorporating aspects of his own country's

intellectual traditions". He further asserts, "Ezekiel's

poetry evolves from English but it constitutes a revolt

against the incipient romanticism and rapid narcissism which

had for long made it impossible for Indian poetry in English

to be a criticism of life." Ezekiel is a good craftsman and

a good poet too. But to say that his poetry is

"reincarnation of English poetry" and "a criticism of life"

25
is to misread him. Nothing on earth can make Ezekiel an

English poet nor is his poetry "a criticism of life" in the

sense Matthew Arnold used the term. Nevertheless Ezekiel

·-
made Indian poetry in English respectable and trained the

whole generation of poets how to write poetry in English

effectively. In that respect he is a great pioneer and

deserves our praise. Birje Patil analyses the different

volumes of Ezekiel's poems and compares some of his passages

with Eliot. Although the echoes of Eliot could be heard in

his poetry, Ezekiel has his distinct voice and originality.

Thus, Ezekiel's contribution to the modern Indian English

poetry has been unanimously and duly acknowledged.

However, none of the researches so far has, most

unfortunately, sought to examine and discern the rich human

ethos of Ezekiel's poetic themes. Thus, the examination of

his poems from one or the other perspective has always

encompassed some and missed the other aspects, especially

the human aspect, resulting in fragmented and lopsided

judgments. This gap in perception stems primarily from the

fact that Ezekiel's poems so far have been scattered here

and there, giving readers and critics little opportunity of

viewing th~m as the product of an origifial and inquiring

mind consistent in the belief that there are no easy answers

to the questions of life; that each individual must seek his

26
own anew, every time on every issue. The second obvious

,reason seems to be the critics' preoccupation with single

objectives on the thematic level. For example, Rajeev

Taranath and Meena Belliappa hold him as a poet of

metropolis 1 ' Mr. Lall as a·poet of woman.~~ Mr.M.K. Naik

has noted some similaritiel1 ~ between Ezekiel and Ted Hughes

on account of a number of bird and animal poems, etc. Some

of the critics have made only a passing survey of Ezekiel's

major themes throughout his poetic volumes. The publication

of his Collected Poems 1952-1988 2 ~ has, indeed, provided me

an opportunity to have a unified approach to his poetry.

Ezekiel reflects and comments on the contemporary human

condition with a complex sense of commitment to it. His own

prosaic and poetic statement~ definitely suggest that right

from the beginning his aim has been to present a unified

vision of contemporary Indian life.

His justification of the inclusion of his unpublished

poems in sixty Poems (1953), on the plea that it provides

him a sense of continuity, is significant. Despite the

technical and thematic bankruptcy of these poems, he

includes them. His poetic statement in the same volume fur

ther adds force to his prosaic statement. Ezekiel's poetry

evinces his search for a deeper meaning in our very

existence. It is not for nothing that in an interview with

27
 Dr. Frank Birbal Singh (York University, Ontario, Canada;
•
1986) Ezekiel said, "···· I would prefer to claim that nine

times out of ten my being human is more important than

anything ~lse in the whole world." How far is Ezekiel's

poetry a testimony to his statement? This study attempts to

find an answer 'to this question.

This study aims at an incisive and in-depth analysis of

Ezekiel's poems in terms of their thematic concerns. The

images of woman, city and the moral self are explored to

locate the heart of Ezekiel's world views and convictions.

Working synergically, they lead towards a realisation of the

ultimate vision and testify how Ezekiel has become an

authentic voice of both the contemporary and the human

situation.

Ezekiel believes that poetry is crucial to an

understanding of ourselves and the "deepest truths". This

belief in poetry is central to his thinking and practice as

a poet. He rejects the search for "pure poetry" since, in

such cases, "the human ethos of poetry is sacrifj_ced to mere

method~. The art of poetry is purified at the expense of

its wide significance as total communication". 'l'hus, for

. Ezekiel, the ends of poetry .are "meaning, knowledge and

truth", with knowledge at the centre of the trinity. It is

the source of strength for the other two. Ezekiel holds

28
that very few poets or critics of literature have attempted
I

defending poetry as a mode of knowledge. His essay 'Poetry

as Knowledge' is a seminal one, both in terms of

understanding Ezekiel's practice as a poet and as a uniquely

compelling defence of poetry. He uses an Upanishadic

yardstick in the process of his defence to knock some

worth~s off their stands. Poetry is not what they say it

is, not "knowledge of a certain mood", as C. Day Lewis

believes, for that is no knowledge at all; not an advanced

guard for scientific knowledge, as the poet Charles Madge

believes, since that is a purely egotistical claim that

cannot be proved; and not pseudo-statements as opposed to

the "true" statements of science as I.A. Richards believes

since Ezekiel rests his entire faith and practice on the

"truth'' of poetry. He takes on T.S. Eliot for his remark

that "neither Shakespeare nor Dante did any :teal thinking",

and attacks the pretensions behind the remark that only

critics, presumably, can do some real thinking on passages

of major poetry which lack real thought.

Ezekiel's approach to poetry is prag~atic. And he is

well aware that poetry and philosophy are two distinct modes

of knowledge, often opposed to one another, and too much

philosophy can injure the poet. Ezekiel clearly knows how

much is enough for him. He rejects that "clarity of sight"

29
which the language of philosophy brings for "the mundane

language of the senses", the area in which his poetry

flourishes.

He sometimes goes to great lengths to say "Out with

philosophy". But it should not be misconstrued that by

rejecting philosophy Ezekiel rejects clear thinking. In one

of his essays he says, "If an idea can be made clear it

should be". What he does say is that poets think very

differently from the way philosophers do. He agrees with

Valery that every true poet is capable of reasoning and

abstract thought, except that "the nature and quality of the

poet's abstract thought and philosophy is in the whole

poetry". And poetry, for Ezekiel, is a supremely important

mode of knowledge or it is worth nothing at all. He chucks

out whatever interferes with the writing of his poetry. He

agrees with Shelley that "a poem is the very image of life

expressed in its eternal truth". And quoting Wallace

Stevens, Ezekiel believes that the role of poetry is "of

the utmost seriousness. It is, for one thing, a spiritual

role". Ezekiel is sharply aware of the aspects apart from

the spiritual that allow poetry its role of utmost

seriousness in human affairs. The present thesis is an

attempt to locate the human issues in Ezekiel's poetry which

are central to his practice as a poet. Perhaps the secret

30
of the peculiarity of Ezekiel's poetry lies in a certain

synthesis of contradictory and at times incompatible

principles. His aesthetic position is similar to it, and

his vision of the world is aptly described as an attempt to

restrict himself to wearing "a Cezanne around his neck as he

rides improbably through the discordant world that he has

not yet reconciled: this is his declaration that

assimilation will be achieved in the new style; that a focus

will be put on life without the rejection or alteration of

any part'" . 2 ~

What accounts for Ezekiel's development as a poet of

the human condition is the response to his experience and

its execution in his poetry. The publication of Ezekiel's

first book of poems A Time to Change (1952) brought him into

limelight and the themes which he has endeared since then

are the themes of love and human relationship, life in the

city, solitude, necessary prayer and some of the later

themes are, parody of Indian colloquial English idiom, the

search for 'self', philosophy, a shift towards morality and

the search after "reality". But underneath lies a th.eme

which runs through the whole poetic corpus of Ezekiel, that

is, an idea about incomplete, unfinished man. The poet

longs for the perfection of human personality and hence life

31
~s viewed as a quest for wholeness, for integration in his

poetry.

Ezekiel has variously emphasized the humanitarian value

of literature. The poet according to him, should be

"authentically a creator and not merely a cultural

imitator". 2 ~ That is why he prays for those times which are

inspiring and full of avidity for creation: "Whatever the

enigma,/The passion of the blood,/Grant me the metaphor,fTo

make it.human good."

Ezekiel takes a realistic and human view even of love

and sex and covers various moods and situations in his

treatment of man-woman relationship. Love is of vital

importance to him both as man and poet:

And let my leaf be green with love,

And let me love".
('Lamentation', Sixty Poems)

Like love the call of passion is also for the poet, an

integral ingredient of the nature of homosapiens :

"the anger of loins,

shapes the human face,"
and
No moral law can fill the void
Deaf and blind to all is appetite.
('Declaration' The Third)

Ezekiel's genuine concern for the welfare of the people

suffering from various kinds of ills and injustice is well

expressed in such poems as 'Night of the Scorpion' and 'The

Truth about the Floods'. In 'Night of the Scorpion' the

32
poet identifies himself with the simple-minded superstitious
•
village youth whose mother was stung by a scorpion on a

rainy night. But even in this superstition-ridden world of

meagre human existence, Ezekiel perceives a beautiful

humanism guiding the poor peasants' lives. This humanism is

articulated when the mother, after the poison in her blood

had "lost its sting", says:

Thank God, the scorpion picked on me

And spared my children.

And when th~ poet reports on the hunger and misery of

flood-affected people in a certain village in Orissa, he

tells the truth:

All the houses had collapsed

Many were washed away
The men, women and children were silent
They gazed at the sky
The poet
heard the children
wail with hunger,

and he found that an "atmosphere of despair/pervaded the

village". It is this concern of the po~t for the pervasive

despair on the humanscape or what he calls "the sense of

reality'' that has escaped the critical attention so far. In

his last hymn in darkness Ezekiel says:

Belief will not save you,

nor unbelief
All you have
is the sense of reality
unfathomable
as it yields the secrets
slowly
one
by
one

33
 In reading Ezekiel's poems one discerns a keen and

an~lytical mind trying to explore the roots of human

existence. For example, his poem 'Enterprise' shows how the

enterprise which was started as a pilgrimage ultimately

filled a sense of loss and deprivation in the group members.

Ezekiel says, "Some were broken, some merely bent". The

concluding stanza throws light on the whole event:

When finally, we reached the place,

We hardly knew why we were there
The trip had darkened every face
Our deeds were neither great nor rare,
Horne is where we have to earn our grace.

This is the tragedy of modern humanity where every

enterprise ends in futility. The Vedic man moved from

darkness to light because his declared motto was Tarnso Ma

Jyotirgarnaya. Hence his enterprise was meaningful. But the

modern man is simply a misfit for noble missions. Like

prufrock he measures out his life with coffee-spoons.

"Ignoring what the thunder meant", refers to the thunder of

the Brhadkaranyaka Upanishad - Da Da Da, meaning thereby

Datta, Dayadhvarn and Damayatta. The group of the

'Enterprise' ignores the call of thunder and consequently

some are broken, some merely bent. The poet concludes,

"Home is where we have to earn our grace". Thus, like a

Frost poem, an Ezekiel poem begins in delight and ends in

wisdom. The delight is in taking up the enterprise, in

34
taking up the action. Without action, human beings cannot
•
live. The poem can be meaningfully related to Lord

Krishna's conception df Karma Yoga which expects us to

remain active and to submit ourselves to law and duty. Man

must do the right action, for action is superior to

inaction. Man is born alone. He lives alone and dies

alone. A straggling crowd cannot achieve anything. It is

aimless and purposeless. This is the message of the poem.

Ezekiel's poetry emanates from life and that is why his

poetry patterns itself around life's ordure. He is sharply

aware of the poverty, squalor and superstition that

motivates the poor man's thoughts, while sex an essential

part of life does not occupy sole predominance. Sexuality

is treated by him as part of the human condition.

Ezekiel has been in multiple role - social critic,

deflator of cant, an unabashed apologist for the highest

standards in art and culture. Reacting quickly to what he

views as situations of gross political or social injustice,

he has tilted at both sacred cows and windmills, the

self-confessed 11
active poo]_n of one of his poems. This

reactive, activist aspect of the poet is the reflection of a

more comprehensive view of human issues and life, making

penetrating analyses. In an article entitled ''The Writer as

Historical Witness : Culture, Colonialism and Indo-English

35
Poetry• 23 Ezekiel maintains that "the bulk of Indo-En~lish

poetry is necessarily remote from historical witnessing".

He is of the opinion that, "whenever there is vitality in

poetry there will be variety as well, and much of it will

seem, superficially, to be only self-regarding until we see

it in a full human perspective. In that perspective, the

personal-private has a curious tendency to become

everybody 1 s experience".

Ezekiel's poetry provides fascinating insights into his

world-view and convictions. His major concerns are: Poetry

and its many functions including poetry as a mode of

knowledge; the practice of poetry and the temptations to

philosophize, the need to question received wisdom

especially when it is received through religious texts; the

need for certitude and its necessary rejection when it

stands in the way of "human" growth; and the value of

constant self-enquiry through the use of words.

Ezekiel has a cast of mind that sometimes turns on its

own propositions, questions its deepest conclusions so that,

at the end of the argument the reader is left wondering

which way he faces. In other words, Ezekiel goes to the

limit of his argument and then testa it. He questions his

own argument a.t various pauses and sometimes at its end,

"can what I am saying be true?" He uses words forcefully to

36
convey the force of his argument and says, "The proper use
•
of words is to get· beyond words 11 • If this statement, coming

as it does from a writer who has often stressed the primacy

of the written word, seems at variance with some of his

thinking, it is still integral to his thinking and does not

contradict it. "It is the very nature of things to be

unpredictable as far as human life is concerned", he says.

It is true that Ezekiel is a sceptic {he has confessed to

being an incurable' one) and his sceptical thinking continues

'

to refresh. But at the heart of that sceptical cast of mind

is something which occasionally reveals itself. It delights

in its own contradictions and owes a great deal to the

writing of poetry, an experience of its 'dance', as it were,

and something to Zen. In the writing of poetry words can

lead to unexpected combinations of other words which are, in

fact, unexpected combinations of thought. These, with

Ezekiel, are always addressed to someone, an audience or a

reader, and sometimes, in his poetry, to God. He never

gives the impression of talking to himself as some poets do.

In an interview to Dr. Frank Birbal Singh of the

University of York, Ont~rio, Ezekiel provides fascinating

insights into his world-view and convictions.

Some critics use the word 'cynical' about Ezekiel's

writing, but Ezekiel represents Indian ways ironically. He

37
ridicules various things - mimicry, ignorance, the modern

Indian ethic - as in 'Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T~s.'

Some Indians react defensively, and sometimes angrily to

that poem. There may even be a streak of malice in

mimicking Western habits and manners but such accurate

observations display a faithfulness of temperament on the

part of Ezekiel. And the temperament is a configuration of

many factors including his Jewish background and the Hindu

environment. But other people have reacted differently to

the same situation in which he is. Scores of people in his

community or in allied communities in India do not respond

in the same way as he does.

On being asked, "what has been your attitude to

Hinduism?" Ezekiel replied, ''I don't think I have ever sat

down to completely define my attitude to Hinduism, Judaism,

Christianity or any other set of beliefs. Although people

who are critical might apply the word 'cynicism' to me, I

think 'scepticism' would be more accurate".

There are characteristic themes in his poems

evanescence, separation, loss. Throughout his poetic

corpus, human experience is described as inadequate or

limited. It is difficult to point out exactly where that

comes from. But his poetry evinces a feeling of absolute

honesty, as if his only aim is to get at the truth - the

38
exact thing. This encourages self-questioning. The

argument of the man·of faith against the sceptical person is

that the latter does not understand the mystery of life at

all. That scepticism, or distrust of settled views, the

questioning of certainties, is represented fairly

consistently throughout his writing. Though he has been

writing for more than half a century, his scepticism has not

changed completely over the years. It develops or may be

modified as he goes along but he has not abandoned it

completely at any point of time and jumped to final

conclusions about the nature of existence, life and the

cosmos.

Ezekiel has always distrusted certainties of any kind -

political, economic and religious. He believes that

distrust does not cancel out trust. It is a strengthening

of trust by saying to oneself that if it is really trust,

then it must stand up to the most acute cross-questioning,

not only by other people, but by oneself. Ezekiel says, "I

do not have to sit in front of an opponent and hear him

demolish my views. .I can be my own opponent. Yet I cannot

destroy everything. I know I must work out values and basic

attitudes, without assuming that these constitute a general

truth which I can sell to everybody". His poetry reflects

this tension between opposites. Hoever we define the

3·9
opposites, whether as physical 1 spiritual, or as immersiion

/.detachment, there is a fundamental pattern of statement

and counter-statement which works against confident

revealatibns in his poetry. But it does not lead him to

despair. It leads him often enough to irony and humour, to

statements of paradox and so on. If occasionally there is a

sense of despair, it is merely a passing phase for him.

There is an appreciation of transience and

contradiction in, his poems, but there are sustaining

elements like humour and irony, which suggest that, whereas

Ezekiel observes contradictions, his attitude to them is not

passive.

Ezekiel started reading the Gita and the Upanishads at

a very early age, when he was iri a Roman Catholic school.

He has always felt that substantial truths about life are

expressed in Hinduism, Islam, Judaism 1-ndianism,

Christianity.

The failure to grasp the historical situation 1 which

makes writing in the mother tongue impossible for Ezekiel 1

has led a large number of Indian writers and critics to

consider the relationship of Ezekiel's work to the tradition

of Indian writing as a whole and allege that they miss

something of India and the Indian reality in his work which

they get from even second-order writers in Punjabi or Tamil

40
or Bengali because they use their mother tongue. For those

cr i t i c s , not w r it in g in Eng 1 i s h me an s that the i r

environment, their setting, their normal sensibilities are

more Indian than those of an Indian writer writing in

English. They tend to have a basically negative view of the

whole enterprise of Indian writing in English. But Ezekiel

has never really accepted this and prefers to go on writing

in the language which happens to be the one in which he

feels and thinks and lives. Ezekiel holds that exceptional

decisions have been made by individual writers, their

historical situation, the kind of education they had, their

parents, whether English was spoken at home or whether they

went to an Indian ( 1 anguage) medium schoo 1 or an

English-medium school.

Ezekiel's subject has often been described and

dismissed as largely "urban". Most of the critics, who use

this phr~se in the sense of condemnation or limitation~ live

in the cities. An objective examination of his poems

reveals that Ezekiel takes a very comprehensive view of

human issues and life 1 making penetrating analyses. It is

the failure to recognize this most dominant note in his

poems which has led critics to remark that Ezekiel's subject

is too severely circumscribed by being restricted to the

.
educated, urban environment of modern India. In Ezekiel's

41
view a writer's subject is only the starting point. Many

outstanding Indian writers have gone back to the village

e.
they have lived in, and written a whole nov~l about life in
"
that village. But that is not circumscribed. It is rather

wonderful. They did not write about life in the big town,

because they did not know it. They knew life in their own

v~llage; they were more at home there, and their characters

are more real.

Here we are faced with political questions. Following

colonialism and the subjugation of one nation by another,

people tend to have a natural sympathy for the oppressed

nation whose peasants toiling on the land appear more

desirable as a subject of art than the concerns of the

oppressor. But that is sentimentality and hypocrisy. In

Ezekiel's confirmed opinion we have the equivalent of the

rural masses even in the big cities. It is wrong to assume

that everyone living in the urban centres is rich, educated

and speaks English. A real urban area in India is a very

composite (mixed) place. First of all, the proletariat

cannot be left out, and then from that class to the

bourgeoisie, we get various other classes and groups,

including the poorest of the poor as the rural masses. They

also work hard and struggle for survival. They have

responses which can be very human. Ezekiel finds it really

42
amazing to see people living on the pavement, laughing

trequently and enjoying life. One may draw false

conclusions from that but it does suggest one mode of

survival.

Ezekiel does not write poems about the suffering of the

proletariat and calls for political reforms though there are

references and allusions to such suffering. But his own

observations of poverty and human suffering do not seem to

evoke political solutions. He is of the opinion that in a

lot of things we say and do, there is some justification

which comes from the kind of life we live. He alerts others

to be careful about this, otherwise a number of voices would

be pleading on behalf of the poor giving the impression of a

meaningless kind of chorus.

"Alienation" has become a code word in European

literature since World War II, with Camus and Sartre and

Beckett - the existentialist school. And many critics have

tried to examine Ezekiel's poetry from that angle. In the

case of Ez'ekiel we find that 11

alienation 11 represents a

characteristic, rather than a malaise as it gives him a

chance to perceive things in a particular way which others

cannot.

Ezekiel's study of Indian thought makes him feel that

it heavily stresses the positive and ultimate faith in the

43
cosmic scheme of things, and the powers which are beyond

comprehension,
.. which are also accessible to anyone .if he
. '

follows a certain way of life. He holds that it is a

philosophy-which would have flourished tremendously if there

had not been the modern world at all. But today it has a

great appeal to people throughout the world because, in

their world, the negative predominates, and then they hear

the voice of faith in the distance, the guru and his

explanation, yoga, transce~ental meditation, and the rest of

it. That accounts for the kind of "malaise" from which they

are suffering.

One of the remarkable qualities of Ezekiel's poetry is

its conversational lucidity which gives the impression of

talking informally and with clarity. He does not delve into

legends, myths, and other forms of dense, complex or obscure

writing. He can only use clarity and believes that clarity

is also profound. If it is not, the poet is at least clear,

and that is enough. Yet critics have accused Ezekiel of not

being profound, and if the conversational tone is obvious

and clear, then they say it is over-simplification. There.

is a need to take such criticism seriously and to read the

poem again. The question arises: Is the poem as bad as it

seems, or has the critic prejudices of his own which lead

44
him to consider the poem bad because it is simple? Some of
•
Blake's poems, too, are simple, yet profound.

An objective assessment of Ezekiel's poems reveals that

there is-mockery without malice. And here one is

immediately reminded of Chaucer who successfully indicts

almost the whole of fourteenth century English society and

appears to enjoy it. Human foibles and frailties seem to

delight him. The preoccupation with the human condition

pervades all through Ezekiel's poetry. It is not for

nothing that in an interview to Dr. Frank Birbal Singh (York

University, Ontario, Canada, 1986) Ezekiel said, "I don't

think everything I write or say or do should absolutely and

unconditionally have what I have discovered to be my

identity ..... I would prefer to claim that nine times out of

ten my being human is more important than anything else in

the who 1 e wor 1 d" . In the subsequent chapters such a

scrutiny and evaluation of his representative poems will be

attempted to locate his views about human issues and life.

45
 NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Gieve Patel (ed.), Nissim Ezekiel, Collected Poems

(1952~1988) (Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1989), p.
13 ..

2. ibid.

3. ibid. 1 pp. 45-46.

4. ibid. 1 p. 182.

L, 5. R. Parthasarathy, "Indo-Anglian Attitudes", TLS, March

10, 1978, p. 285.

6. Chetan Karnani, Nissim Ezekiel (New Delhi Arnold

Heinemann, 1974)

7. Gieve Patel (ed.) Nissim Ezekiel, 1989, p. 182.

8. Mahfil, a quarterly of South Asian Literature, Winter

1972, vol. VIII, no. 4, p. 10.

9. Dom Moraes, John Nobody (London, 1965), p. 15.

10. Michael Garman, 'Nissim Ezekiel - Pilgrimage and Myth'

Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English, ed. M.K.
Naik, p. 106.

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

Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 1982), pp. 193-94.

12. A.N. Dwivedi, 'Modernity in Nissim Ezekiel's poetry',

Perspectives on Nissim Ezekiel ed. S.C. Dwivedi (New
Delhi : Kitab Mahal, 1989}, p. 107.

13. Bruce King, Modern Indian Poetry___j_n English (Delhi

Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 91.

14. ibid., p. 91.

15. Christopher Wiseman, 'The Development of Technique in

the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel', Consideiations, ed.
Meenakshi Mukherjee, Allied Publishers, 1977, pp.
137-50.

46
16. Inder Nath Kher, " 'The Message from Another Shore'
The Aesthetic Vision of Nissim Ezekiel", Mahfil, 8, 4
{Winter 1972), p. 17.

17. Chetan Karnani, op. cit.

I I A. I

18. J. B1rJe Pat~l, .'Inter1or Cadences : The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel' The Literary Criterion, vol. XII, nos.
2-3, 1976, pp. 198-212.

19. Rajeev Taranath and Meena Belliappa, The Poetry of

Nissim Ezekiel {Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1966).

20. E.N. Lall, The Poetry of Encounter (New Delhi

Sterling Publishers Pvt Ltd, 1983), p. 67.

21. M.K. Naik : 1982; p. 195.

22. Gieve Patel (ed.) Nissim Ezekiel, 1989.

23. Nissim Ezekiel, "Poetry as Knowledge', Quest, 76

{1972}, p. 44.

2~. This paper was read by Ezekiel at Commonwealth

Literature Conference in Singapore, June 1986.

47