Existentialist Echoes in Harold Pinter’s Early Poetry

This paper has attempted to investigate the absurdist voices in Harold Pinter’s selected poems written from 1951to1953. These poems belonging to his early phase of writing as the poet deals with the major obsessions of post-Modern man depicting his anxiety of identity aggravated by his existential condition. Pinter’s early poetry characterizes him as an absurdist poet and expresses his world view through distinctive images and tones. The selected poems appear to be a blending of his absurdist insights with his poetic art. His early poems predominantly portray existential anxiety, absurdity and pessimism. The study seeks to reflect on Pinter as a practitioner of the ‘Literature of the Absurd’ who tries to depict how different people act and react when they confront different aspects of absurdity and existential dilemma.