Nissim Ezekiel: Modernity
The austerity of Ezekiel's poetic art, the condensation of his style, the economical precision of his language, the impressiveness of imagery, the sharpness of his wit and irony, the contemporarity of his subject matter - all these things immediately render him a modern poet. Modernism as a literary movement which reached its height in Europe between 1900 and 1920s, with the writings of Nissim Ezekiel, it began spreading in India. Two of the Nissim Ezekiel's poems: "Night of the Scorpion" and "The Patriot" bears the evidence of Ezekiel's modernity. Both thematically and structurally, these poems are modern poems. Before bringing out the elements of modernity, we need to know what we mean by modernity and what the characteristics of modernity are. Literay Scholar Peter Childs sums up: "There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old, nihilism, an...