Marriage
by
Nissim Ezekiel
(Summary & Analysis)
Nissim Ezekiel is the poet of ‘Modern Age’ or
‘the Age of Interrogation and Anxiety’. The general characteristics of this age
are:
· Anxiety
and interrogation,
· Art
for life’s sake,
· Growing
interest in the poor and the working classes,
· Impact
of socio-economic conditions on literature,
· Stream
of consciousness,
· Impact
of the two world wars &
· The
two world wars.
The
general characteristics of poetry of this age are:
· Tradition
and experiment,
· Imagism,
· Symbolism
&
· Pound
and Eliot tradition.
The
modern poet includes: transitional poets, war poets, Georgian poets, poets of
imagism, poet of symbolism, oxford poets and the poets of Neo-Romanticism.
Nissim Ezekiel was born in Bombay in 1924. He is a major poet of Indo–Anglican poetry. He had his education in Bombay and worked as a reader in American literature at the University of Bombay. He is a widely travelled professor. He edited many journals. His poems were published in many journals of England.
In
the present poem ‘Marriage’ the poet expresses his views on marriage and love.
According to the poet love is an essential emotion of the highest joy of life.
In
the poem the poet says that lovers marry each other because they are charmed by
one another’s face and their marriage is favored and blessed by God. They hope
to lead their life together and they think,
“Never to be separated”
According
to the poet the bride seems to be the prettiest woman in the world, to the
groom and the groom is the luckiest man for the bride. The poet describes the
physical pleasures, enjoyed by both the bride and the groom, in only two lines,
“Roars
out of the joy of flesh and blood,
The use of nakedness is good”
In
the third stanza the poet confesses, that he had gone through all these
experiences of marriage and of the dark room. He says that their marriage is an
everlasting marriage and they hope never to experience ‘the Primal fall’. He
cites a biblical example of Adam and of Eve, when they used to wander among the
trees. He says that both Adam and Eve used to feel themselves immortal as the
breeze. Here the biblical reference can be the experience of the poet himself.
In other words, the experience of Adam and Eve can be the experience of any
newly wedded couple on the earth.
The
poet says, that both husband and wife, after enjoying a few brief moments of
pleasure, began to face the harsh realities of married life. They separate for
some time and they come together again. This love making or the game of sex
goes on over & over again till they both reach to a state of satisfaction.
The poet says that these pleasures are followed by the harsh realities of life
and they are disillusioned;
“Then
suddenly the mark of Cain
Began to show on her and me”
In these lines the poet wants to say that after sometime of their marriage they become aware of their own self and both become selfish and jealous. He says that the jealousy between the husband and the wife is the curse of Cain who murdered his own brother Abel because he was jealous of him. The poet, who is a regular visitor to the marriage parties, does not want to open this secret of marriage life to the bride and the groom.
The poem is written in a rhyming couplet and is divided into five stanzas, each of four lines. The lines are of 7 syllables each and each line of two metrical feet. The poet has described the physical joys in a very suggestive and appropriate manner:
“The
darkened room
Roars
of joy of flesh and blood
And
the use of nakedness is good”
The
biblical reference of Cain is also an appropriate attempt of the poet to give
antiquity to his poem.
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