A Study in Nissim Ezekiel’s Poetic Theme, Approach & Technique

Style is the man

A Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1956), The Third (1958), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Hymns in Darkness (1976), Latter-day Psalms (1982)

Nissim Ezekiel as a poet derives and draws from Elizabethan lyric-writers and sonneteers and modern American poetry-writers and his poetry is no exception to that. The influence of modern poetry can also be marked in his writings. But as a poet he is an alien insider because the India of traditions and thoughts he knows it not, nor has he come to feel it in his poetry and this is because he suffers from identity crisis and is often questioned, how far Indian is his poetry? The quest for identity is that of an Indian Jew writing in English with Marathi as his lost tongue found again and the second one that relating to writing from India and that too in English. Whether you accept it or not, he is a foreign returnee. Sometimes we feel it if he is a minor poet. Whatever our suspense and doubt in this regard, Nissim Ezekiel is important from different perspectives. Something he draws from metaphysical poets. Though we know he has nothing to do with the lore of India; the myth and mysticism of it, but instead it is uniquely Indian as for sarcasm, irony and comment.  Indian backwardness, illiteracy, superstition and underdevelopment repel him, caste, class and community divides. 

The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the Gita are not the properties of the poet. He is a Jew, an Indian Jew drawn to another lore and his lore is not the mythic lore of India, the legends and folktales he is not at all drawn to and on seeing it, we too feel it, how can it be? Is he the same minority fellow? How can it be that he will say that he knows it not Rama and Krishna?

He is a modern poet of the modern age, an urban writer, city-bred and city-centric. Bombay is the center of his writings but is conservative too as and when the community-based things arrive. 

Had Nissim Ezekiel been not an editor, could he have scaled heights in poetry? This is also a matter of reckoning. Jayanta Mahapatra edited Chandrabhaga. Kamala Das too was media savvy and did politics for coming into power or keeping with her.

Nissim Ezekiel in his article How a Poem is Written tells about the process of writing poetry, the germination of ideas, waiting for words and so on, but is not supportive of classroom teaching of poetry. He adds that the teaching is fruitful with regard to the technique, but the idea and the concept are particularly of the inventive mind delving deep in to create out of. The best thing is to hear the voice which drowns it all to be resonant. Let us see how he describes the process of creative poetry-writing:

“I have chosen from the discipline and art of poetry a familiar but not common theme: ‘How A Poem is Written’. Not, please note, ‘How to Write a Poem’, which is somewhat related but assumes that when no one knows how to, one may do it. This is the assumption of some creative writing classes in America and elsewhere. Though they have vastly improved the technical standard of poetry, they have not necessarily improved poetry. I admit that in many cases to improve the technique is to improve the poem. I should add that it is so only to that extent that the poem can be improved.” - (Nissim Ezekiel, Selected Prose, Oxford Univ. Press, Delhi, 1992, p.11)    

The poet speaks about inspired poems, uninspired poems, good poems and bad poems. How is the process of poetry? How is experience taken the help of? How is observation utilized? It is better to hear from the relatives and better-haves of the poets, and they may enlighten upon the topic in hand. 

The names which Nissim Ezekiel has selected for his collections of poems are really modern and self-explanatory. What has come to his mind he has given that. A Time to Change indicates that some change is going to take place, Sixty Poems just tells of it being sixty in number, The Third just about making a way after both of them, and after that he talks of The Unfinished Man, perhaps something has remained it unfinished, The Exact Name takes to just exactly. Let him finish. Plain statements contain so much of meaning, thought and idea. It is wonderful, really very wonderful. But the two collections, Hymns in Darkness and Latter-day Psalms tell of a change and the transformation he undergoes. The poet turns to prayers and psalms.

A Time to Change, published in 1952, contains some of the best poems ever written, such as History, Poetry, An Affair, Advice, Occupation, Commitment, but it shows the promise to be carried on. History is remarkable as for taking of history, what is history, how is it written?  How have the people interpreted it the ways they have seen? Poetry is representative of Nissim’s art of writing, what he takes poetry to be for. It is here where he differentiates between a poem and poetry. An Affair is about the visiting of the cinema hall and the sharing of the scenes casting an illusory impact of their own. How do lovers behave? How the villain as a side hero keep enthralling, plotting and planning? 

Sixty Poems, brought out in 1956, with poems such as New Poems, A Poem of Dedication, The Stone, The Crows, Song, Situation, The Lines, A Visitor, Portrait, For William Carlos Williams, Marriage Poem, etc. weave a cobweb of own.

The Third appearing after them makes an entry with the publication in 1958 to mark the day for the growth of poesy. Portrait, Division, For Her, Waking, Advice, aside, Declaration, etc. can be cited. 

The Unfinished Man, published in 1960, includes in Poems, Urban, Enterprise, A Morning Walk, Love Sonnet, Commitment, Marriage, A Morning Prayer and others. How does the joint venture as a collaborative enterprise fail midway? A noble thing disrupts it and the companions disintegrate. Expectations, hopes and optimism all come to a halt when friction and fissures start to mar it. The holy mission gets it disrupted in the end.

The Exact Name published in 1965 after The Unfinished Man tells of the turn, the growing of wisdom and intelligence. Now the unfinished fellow has tried to perfect it.  Philosophy, Night of the Scorpion and Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher are the famous  collection of  poems of The Exact Name. Philosophy has always enticed us with its reckoning, dwelling and brooding. He too feels drawn to as finds solace with. The poet beautifully says it in Philosophy, do not explain, what cannot be explained. He does want to go, but something draws it. The myths of light and darkness, cannot be explained. In Night of the Scorpion, Nissim Ezekiel presents an Indian rural scene with his mother at the center after being stung by a scorpion. The rainy night, people coming with lanterns and oil lamps wishing speedy recovery, talking of sin and expiation, dharma and karma, mitigation of previous pain and so on form the crux of the poem. The poem is interesting no doubt when we see the rationalist father going on his own to put on a bit of paraffin oil to light upon, the herbalist making a paste to put on, the exorcist trying to tame poison through mantric effect. His mother lying unconscious, writhing in pain finally comes to senses when gets relieved, thanks God as for picking her, sparing her son. The lanterns and the shadows cast by the people coming add to the poem. The scorpion with the diabolic tail after the bite goes missing, while the people search in vain.

Hymns In Darkness which appeared in 1976 contains Subject of Change, Background, Casually, Island, The Couple, The Railway Clerk, Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S., Guru, Distance, London, Ganga, Tribute to the Upanishads, Mind, Poster Poems, The Egoist’s Prayers, Hymns in Darkness and so on. Though style remains the same, instead of it, the latter-day works show a change. Ganga as a poem is a pathetic poem and it talks about our mentality and inhuman treatment. How have we gone on treating our housekeepers, domestic help? What does she get for her work? A cup of tea kept from the nighttime, a stale loaf of home-made bread and scolds, this is but her due! We love and like her work, not her. Still now the Gangas keep on working as helps, doing household work, unable to get bread and butter for two times. Such a thing is not in Brahminical thinking of the Brahmin caste people, in our Indian mentality that she too is a human being, she too has basic needs to fulfill. A maid servant, how long will she keep washing utensils, washing clothes and living on stale food? Such a thing is in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, but the character of the priest he paints or sketches he exaggerates it to slander him. The Egoist’s Prayers smack of ego and hypocrisy. A modern man he cannot pray submissively as because he is busy and engaged with and has no time to give to reflection.  

Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S. by Nissim Ezekiel is about a tryst between a foreign returnee and a foreign goer. A Bombayan convent school product is holding parleys with a stranger girl of distant acquaintance who is from Gujarat and is going to foreign, but what is more interesting is the lessons in English he is imparting and the conversations continuing. At that time, he seems to be a professor of linguistics and phonetics, but is not, one of Indian English. What is more interesting is that he abuses himself by calling poet rascal and herein lies it the interest of the story. What has he done taking to poetry? Are the poets the stupid fellows? Sometimes a poet comes to feel his stupidity. A craze after poetry is also not good as it spoils careers too. It is really difficult to be engaged with words as these eat into life. 

Background, casually is the poem which is an overt introduction of Nissim Ezekiel, how he feels it in India, how the people surrounding him, how his ethos and lineage and the poet as a boy in friendship and camaraderie, that entire he says it in this poem. His range of seeing things is Western and through this vision he discerns and distils. Apart from all this, the identity crisis he faces for being a Jew and an Indian writing in English, he is uniquely Indian as and when he takes to describe poverty, Indian poverty and underdevelopment, backwardness and human misery. 

Latter-day Poems which saw the light of the day in 1982 is inclusive of the poems, as such, Counsel, Poverty Poem, Healers, Hangover,  Jewish Wedding in Bombay, Minority Poem, Latter-Day Psalms, Torso of a Woman, Woman and Child and so on.  

Nissim Eziekiel is but a poet of birthday party, tea party, marriage anniversary, picnic party, ta-ta, bye-bye, goodbye, see you again, please and thank you just like a country cowboy wanting to be modern after coming to the town or the city.  A.G. Gardiner’s On Saying Please can help a lot in understanding Nissim Ezekiel. There is something of the elation of a convent schoolboy in him too and so in a sense his English is different from the Indian school products. There is hilarity, joy-finding, glee, a courtesy of greeting in his poetry which we find in a plenty in the convent school products. There is also something about Bertrand Russell’s Knowledge and Wisdom in him as he uses poetry for this sake of learning from various sources. But his Jewish mind he cannot discern it in adjusting with the locals and natives.

He could never understand the heart of Portia, Indian Portia. He just kept on seeing Juliette, dreaming of, romancing with sarcastically. Just like an Indian oldie he dreamt of passing  his time in seeing the cinema together with the better half. An art critic, a writer he could not support the freedom of the press. A poet of Bombay he was a Bombay man of the sprawling island, land-filled and encroached upon, not so sure of its ancient history, chronicles and annals. Gandhi and Gandhism was not his matter though he saw from far, never could reminisce him. But his patriot he saw it ludicrously, a mass following bluntly, a mass so ignorant, illiterate, foolish, backward, uneducated, living below the poverty line and superstitious, uncultured, unreasonable and so much illogical. 

An emulator of English studies, Nissim remained an earlier phase Gandhi wanting to be British, emulating them ditto, but Sarojini changed her stance. How do the people speak English? This has interested him too much. How do the Indians speak English? Even the professors of English falter and fumble poorly. Conversational English, how to be conversant with, how to be an eloquent speaker? He says all about that and caricatures in. Written English not, spoken English, how to learn it? Nissim’s patriot too knows it not. Even the Guajarati girl going to London too stammers and thinks to speak. Acquiring a second language is no mean task. How many languages can one own? Communication too is a problem as it needs a language to hold talks with, otherwise conversations are not possible.

A Poem of Dedication is about the basement life of Nissim Ezekiel which he came to experience in London, how did he pass his time with great difficulty and where and how much difficult it was really to connect with the outside world as it was somewhat underground?