Question

main idea of poem self portrait by ak ramanujan

Answer 1

Setting of Self Portrait:

Alongside being a great poet, Ramanujan carried on his scholarly work too. He wrote about identity and displacement, about the human heart and its framework, that is, the body. He also wrote about work and play. One soon begins to believe that the poems written yesterday by him were written in one’s own language and they were, in fact, written for the ones reading them. Self Portrait is a perfect example of his writing about ‘identity’. Self Portrait by A.K. Ramanujan is a much simpler poem, yet it has a deep meaning. It is more of an introspective poem where the poet compares himself with everyone else and feels a loss of identity. This loss of identity is well supported by expressions like ‘I resemble everyone’, ‘but myself, and sometimes see’, ‘the portrait of a stranger’. This shows that his personal identity is vague and is not properly formed.