NISSIM EZEKIEL life and works

INTRDOCUTION
The Indo - Anglian poetry is said to be essen-tially Indian and everything
else afterwards. It expre-sses the essence of Indian personality and is also very
sensitive to the changes of its national climate and it voices the aspirations and
the joys and sorrows of Indians.
It has been opined, that the Indo - Anglian poets are of two factions. The
neo-modernists and the neo-symbolists. The outlook of the former is coloured
by humanism and irony and that of the latter is imbued with mysticism and
sublimity, but a perfect blend is achieved by the two groups in the realms of
beauty. A perfect example, of anlndo - Anglian poet, who was able to arrive at
a synthesis between the two factions of poetry, is none other than Sarojini
Naidu, for she took her stance in the neutral, middle ground, between the
sacred and profane sphere of poetry4 she was at home in both the worlds and
found them united in the realms of poetry.
Its possible to gain a proper perspective of the development of Indian
feminine poetic tradition, only if it is considered with reference to the
chang-ing position of women in India. The very term Women poets implies an
attempt to isolate women poets from men poets, and consider them in a group
only on the basis of sex, some critics have wondered as to whether there is anything like feminine sensibility, feminine experiences and feminine ways of
expression. The feminine character is made up of certain psychological traits
as well as certain socially conditioned ones.
All these features set them apart as a group. They moreover do not
accept the duties which are tradi-tionally allotted to women, in the male
dominated society, and assert their new identity as independent, individualistic
and conscious participants in experience. Thus these women poets do mark'
the evolution of the Indian feminine Psyche from the tradition to modernity.
Nissim Ezekiel occupies an important place in post-Independence Indian
English literature. He has wielded a great influence as a leading poet, editor
and an occasional playwright. Besides, he is a well-known critic. Sometimes he
also emerges as a politician in the guise of a fighter for cultural freedom in
India. Ezekiel held many important positions. He was for many years a
Professor of English in Bombay University. He is a noted name in the field of
journalism. In this capacity he was editor of many journals including Poetry
India (1966-67), Quest (1955-57) and Imprint (1961-70), He was an Associate
Editor to the Indian P.E.N., Bombay.
1.2 LIFE AND WORKS OF NISSIM EZEKIEL
As a man of letters Nissim Ezekiel is a 'Protean' figure. His
achievements as a poet and playwright are considerable. K. Balachandran
writes, "The post-Independence Indian poetry saw its new poetry in the fifties.
Among the new poets A.K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Shiv K. Kumar,
Kamala Das, Monica Verma, O.P. Bhatnagar, Gauri Deshpande, Adil
Jussawalla, Ezekiel occupies a prominent place. His versatile genius can be
found in his poetry, plays, criticism, journalism and translation."
Nissim Ezekiel has done a good work in Indian writing in English. He
has written many volumes of poems—A Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems
(1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965)
and others. His plays Nalini, Marriage Poem, The Sleep-Walkers, Songs of
Deprivation and Who Needs No Introduction are already staged and published.
He has also edited books Indian Writers in Conference (1964), Writing in India
(1965), An Emerson Reader (1965), A Martin Luther King Reader (1965) and
Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1972). His literary essays published in magazines
and papers are innumerable. The notable among them are 'Ideas and Modern
Poetry' (1964), 'The Knowledge of Dead Secrets' (1965), 'Poetry as Knowledge'
(1972), 'Sri Aurobindo on Poetry' (1972), 'Should Poetry be Read to Audience?'
(1972), 'K.N. Daruwalla' (1972), 'Poetry and Philosophy,' 'Hindu Society'
(1966). He has written essays on art criticism 'Modern Art in India' (1970),
'How Good is Sabavala?' (1973), and 'Paintings of the Year 1973' (1973). His
essays on social criticism Thoreau and Gandhi' (1971), 'Censorship and the
Writer' (1963), 'How Normal is Normality' (1972), 'Tradition and All That a
Case Against the Hippies' (1973), 'A Question of Sanity' (1972) and 'Our
Academic Community' (1968) are varied and auto telic of his wide interest. Ezekiel is an editor of several journals encouraging writing poetry,
plays and criticisrm He also asked many writers for translation, affecting the
theory and practice of the young poets. The writers like Rilke and W.B. Yeats
influenced Ezekiel. Like Yeats, he treated poetry as the 'record of the mind's
growth.' His poetic bulk indicates his growth as a poet-critic and shows his
personal importance.
Chetan Karnani states, "At the centre was that sincere devoted mind that
wanted to discover itself. In the process, he managed to forge a unique
achievement of his own."
The poet Ezekiel has already published several volumes of poems. A
Time to Change (1952) was his first book of poems. For him poetry-writing
was a lofty vocation, a way of life. He treated life as a journey where poesy
would be the main source of discovering and organising one's own self. In a
sense, poetry to Ezekiel became a way for self-realisation. He calls life a
texture of poetry. He identifies himself with poetry. So all of his volumes of
verse are well-knit and they are in the poet's view, a continuation of each other.
Ezekiel's experiments in prose rhythms and his fine sense of structure and
metrical ability. The verse rhythms of T.S. Eliot seem to haunt his mind.
Ezekiel's Sixty Poems (1953), his second volume of poems was published in
1953. But these poems are loose in structure and they are less appealing.