Page 189 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

Unit 12: Poetry : Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion

The Company I Keep Notes
Nissim Ezekial speaks about his contemporaries and the types of poetry appeared during that age.
He expects that a poet must keep up the moral, ethics of the age and people. If a poet cannot keeps up
that moral, then it shows that the poet has a minor talent in writing poetry. This cannot be called a
greater curse but having no talent. Just like - ring refers to the groups of poets who write poems.
Millions of people fine happiness in writing poetry. He is also one among the poets, who enjoys
writing poetry. Ezekiel feels that poets are mixing up metaphors and common thoughts. But poetry
is not simply miring up put an expression of deeper thoughts.
Ezekiel, here, tries to condemn out rightly those who just min metaphors and statements and produce
bogus poetry. These unfortunate beings exploit others skill and parade themselves as poets. He curses
all those who use other’s talents for their own selfish purpose. He also includes the publishers of
small magazines and broadcasters of small weather woes. The poet in his indignant mood calls them
as seducers of experience. By doing so these men show their letter lack of imaginative power. He also
condemns such practice as saying that they are the victims of their own spontaneous fraud. Ezekiel
asks them their last composition of a real poem. He himself answers that they are in hell and they do
not know it. But instead they will answer that they have been reviewing as compensation. He asserts
that he himself belonged once to as advertising offence. Ezekiel finds faults of not knowing the secret
of writing and becoming thoughts which cause a variety of disasters to the mind of people through
their poems.This practice is nothing but making the most out of borrowed intelligence, imagination
and skill. They really contribute nothing to the world of literature. The occasional rhyme or two
coming from such people cannot be a thing of justification at all. This activity is described by the poet
as a trail of smoke, that just irritates the people by its small and continuous suffocation.
Thus, the poet gives a warning here of such people. In a relentless vein of critical self-awareness and
with downright candour Ezekiel denounces all such poetasters:
No greater curse
than a minor talent
in the verse ring bull ring, yet
millions revel in it,
and I am counted
one among them, mixing
metaphors and platitudes...
Damn all you sensitive poets,
seducers of experience,
self-worshippers and publishers,
broadcasters of small weather woes.
Victims of your own spontaneous fraud
Your only achievement is monumentality of vanity
Very Poem in Indian
Nissim Ezekiel is one of those Indian poets writing in English who create an authentic flavor of India,
by their use of Indian English. Pidgin English on Bazar English, as it is often called. In this poem, the
Indian flavor has been created by stressing the various mistakes which Indians commit in their use of
English, by bringing in the hopes and aspirations of free India, and also the attitudes of her two
hostile neighbors, China and Pakistan. It is a common India mistake to use the present continuous
tense in the place of the simple present.
Ezekiel presents that the new generation is going after ‘fashion and foreign things.’ He presents the
typical Indian make - up. The Indian living conditions are sought to be portrayed. This is a lane of
Gandhi and other who have given their best for the sake of the country. Such principles as the truth,
Non - Violence and Non - Operation are the real virtues one will have to learn from these leaders. The
India of yester years is no longer to be seen here, as modernization and industrialization have speeded
up the process of change. The regrettable thing in the modern world is the act of violence and anti –
social tendencies proving to be a menace. Still the positive aspects like regeneration, remuneration

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