Faiz ahmad faiz biography and his poetry

Submitted To:

Ma’am Sumera naaz

Submitted By:

Tania Arshad

6th Semester

6923

Department of English

Government Postgraduate College for women,

Haripur 2020
 Department of English

Faiz Ahmad Faiz Biography:

Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born in 1911 at Sialkot and was educated at Lahore, where
he studied English literature and philosophy. He began his career as a lecturer in
English at Amritsar. After the second World War, he turned to journalism and
distinguished himself as the editor of The Pakistan Times. He was charged with
complicity in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case and was condemned to four years'
imprisonment in 1951. The jail term gave him a first-hand experience of the harsh
realities of life, and provided him with the much-needed leisure and solitude to
think out his thoughts and transmute them into poetry. Two of his books, Dast-e-
Saba and Zindan-Nama are the products of this period of imprisonment.

Faiz was to become a symbol of revolt and dissidence. His poetry as much as his
life came to represent the longings of the people which had come their way so
briefly and then cynically been taken away. Faiz became a source of great
ideological power. His voice always rang high and clear and during the grave-like
silence of martial law rule, his words remained a beacon of light that could not be
extinguished. With him has gone the luminosity of hope. Faiz was a Marxist but
what differentiated him from this often joyless and doctrinate crowd was his
profound humanism steeped as it was in the rich tradition of subcontinent’s culture,
literature and spiritual continuum. His poetry is a celebration of life and an
affirmation of the law of change. He was a man singularly devoid of prejudice. He
fought bigotry, not with bigotry, but with tolerance.

In literary terms Faiz was in the direct classical tradition of Ghalib and Iqbal and
took his place in that distinguished pantheon an equal among equals with a style
and presence distinctly his own. His greatness lay in his ability to have written of
contemporary issues and human predicament in an idiom which always retained

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

the high sobriety of classicism. He wrote within the great traditions of Urdu poetry.
His diction, his imagery and his symbols remained unmistakably traditional, but
unlike others who managed to produce the same formula, Faiz managed to produce
poetry which could be directly and immediately related to the concerns of today.
With Faiz the sleeping gods once again came to life. The word regained its vitality
and its power. This will remain the greatest testimony to his genius.

Rejecting the art-for-art’s sake approach in his life, he identified himself with the
aspirations of the common life. The miracle of his genius lay in his ability to
communicate not only with them, but with the so-called “more sophisticated”
sections of society as well. His verse retained its purity and lyricism and failed to
move. He is among that handful of whom it can be said: they never wrote bad or
indifferent poetry. His seven volumes of verse stand in witness to that.

As a committed poet:

Faiz is a "committed" poet who regards poetry as a vehicle of serious thought, and
not a mere pleasurable pastime. Faiz was honored by Soviet Russia with the
prestigious Lenin Award for Peace and his poems have been translated into the
Russian language. His poetical collections include Naqsh-e-Faryadi (1943), Dast-
e-Saba (1952), Zindan-Nama (1956) and Dast-e-Tah-e-Sang (1965).

As a poet, Faiz began writing on the conventional themes of love and beauty, but
soon these conventional themes get submerged in the larger social and political
issues of the day. The traditional grieves of love get fused with the travails of the
afflicted humanity, and Faiz uses his poetry to champion the cause of socialistic
humanism. Consequently, the familiar imagery of a love-poet acquires new
meanings in the hands of Faiz. This turning away from romance to realism, from

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

Eros to Agape, is beautifully suggested in his poem (a nazm), "mujh se pehli si

mohabbat meri mahboob na maang”,”Do Not Ask”.

Faiz is a poet of humanity so there is not a single theme in his poetry but his poetry
encompasses all the human emotions, he shares it with all classes of readers. There
we find love with all its ecstasies, the elations of blood besides this he doesn’t miss
the suffering, disintegration, pain, injustice , cruelties that he witnessed in his life.
There is also the major theme of Revolution abundantly found in Faiz Ahmad
Faiz’s poetry.

Themes:

Love theme:

Faiz’s poetry is profusely rich with love. In other words, we can say that love is the
hallmark of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poetry but it is important to mention here that love
depicted in Faiz’s poetry is of two sorts: his love for his beloved and his love for
his country. Before having the yawning glance of it, we need to have a look on his
statement:

“The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.”

This statement can be taken as a Sufi tenet, a teaching of Sufism. ‘The beloved’ in
the phrase may “refer to a person, a home, a country — anything that is beloved,
whose meaning is love”. To Faiz the Sufi teachings came to have many meanings
and “loss encompasses many losses — loss of home, family, livelihood, country”,
because for Faiz, his country and his people were, of course, among the beloved
ones and he suffered a lot while in exile.

There we find unique expression of feelings, sentiments and sensations in Faiz’s

poetry.

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

Of the long days when I knew you could not come,

Don’t ask if I thought of you or missed you very much.

Your memory alone fills the wellspring of my mind

But it is not the same as your lips, your arms, and your touch.

Even here, the imprisoned lover instructs his beloved not to ask of his longing,
because—he implies—he refuses to long for her on the days when he knows that
she is impossibly separated from him, and thinking of her only reminds him of his
forced isolation. Thus, even in the love poems of this period, Faiz’s righteous
defiance pervades.

Patriotism:

This conflation of the belovèd with the belovèd country—through the conventional
theme of hijr—allowed Faiz to take his familiar imagery to new heights. If the true
country of Pakistan, “the dawn we awaited with longing sighs,” has not yet arrived,
then he may address his nation with the same sense of longing he feels for his
absent wife. This union of the personal and political is most manifest in the poem
“Two Loves,” which begins with the extremely conventional gesture of addressing
Saqi, the wine-bearing muse of Persian poetry, in exclamatory declarations of love,
before revealing midway the poem’s central conceit:

Oh rose-like Saqi, fresh yet in my memory

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

are those days whose bright mirror still vibrates with her;

those moments we met, like an opening flower,

the moments, like fluttering heartbeats, I waited for her—

In this same way I have loved my darling country;

In this same way my heart has pounded with devotion to her;

In this same way my passion has sought the respite of a resting-place,

In the curve of her cheek, in the curls of her hair.

In this same way, to that sweetheart world, my heart and eyes.

The promise of these stylistic advances in the last poems of Dast-e-saba is fulfilled
in the poem, “Bury Me Under Your Streets.” Shuttling brilliantly from rhetoric to
image, from argumentation to emotional evocation, it moves, as Bly says the best
difficult poems do, “from the anguished emotions to the intellect and back”:

Bury me under your streets, O my beloved country,

Where today men dare not pass with heads held high,

Or where lovers of you who wish to pay tribute,

Must fear for their lives and come around on the sly.

Faiz was a great nationalistic poet, sometimes also called chauvinistic. He

witnessed the partition circumstances of Pakistan, the sacrifices of the people to

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

gain a separate homeland, scuffles of Quaid, Hindu-Muslim tussles, thrashes of all

the Pakistanis to establish it, so there we find unfathomable comprehension of all
these things in his poetry. All these things come together in writing his poetry.

He writes that silent love and tears do not suffice one’s duty to the country. Strife
and struggle are necessary in the face of tyranny and exploitation. In his poem “Aaj
Bazaar Mein”, which he wrote during his captivity in Lahore Jail, he calls out for
those with “exposed palms”, “muddy hair” and “blood on the chest” to move
forward. The closing verses may be rendered in English thus:

Come, gather your possessions,

O people with injured hearts.

Come, O Friends,

Let us go and get killed.

Faiz’s love for his country, his people is beautifully expressed in his poem Do Not
Ask where he ranks second to his beloved in face of the miseries and infirmities of
life.

Your beauty is still a river of gems but now I know

There are afflictions which have nothing to do with desire,

Raptures which have nothing to do with love.

My love, do not ask me………….

Solitude:

There is the lamentation, mourning, suffering in Faiz’s poetry over the issues of
seclusion from his beloved. There he describes the afflictions of solitude that he

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

suffers, he no longer finds the moments of coming across with his beloved so he is
grieved. This theme is evident in his poem “Tanhai” translated as “Solitude”.

Someone is coming at last, sad heart! No. I am wrong.

It is a stranger passing on the way to another place.

Night falters; stars are scattered like clouds.

The lamps in the hallway droop; they want to go out

……… ………. …………..

Lock up your sleepless doors, my heart.

No one, no one will ever come here now.

This poem depicts an unfortunate lover who can’t get the sight of his beloved and
consoling his heart, also advising it not to wait for any beloved.

Revolution :

Faiz said to be a revolutionary poet. His poems are best known for their
revolutionary cry. He shook the foundations of the oppression through using his
words sensibly by realizing his duty. Unsympathetic authoritarianism was shown
the naked dagger through the spine-chilling imagery of a poem titled “Hum
dekhain ge” or “We shall overcome” , in which the tyrants were conveyed the
horrible tidings of the “rattling ground”, “fearsome lightening in the skies”, the
“tossing of their crowns” and the “seizing of their thrones”, all of which were to
lead to their doom and the salvation of the oppressed.

The message of gearing into action for the country’s sake is a recurring theme in
Faiz’s work. He writes:

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

The day when the mountains of oppressions of oppression,

Will blow away like whips of cotton

When the earth will dance beneath the feet of once enslaved:

And heavens will shake with thunder

Over the heads of tyrants

……. …………….

We, the rejects of the earth,,

Will be raised to a place of honor.

All crowns’ll be tossed in air,

All thrones’ll be smashed.

Personal grieves:

Faiz’s poetry aromas with the the most personal feelings as well. Though there we
find the most personal grieves of to be in love with some, but there is a poem by
Faiz Ahmad Faiz which is the most personal/subjective in fashion .He wrote this
poem in the memory of his dead brother, and there is the beautiful expression of
the filial affection among siblings.

I have the accusation my brother ,you carried away

My book of past life with you

Containing my precious memories

Having my childhood and also comprising my youth

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

Revolt:

Faiz was also imprisoned for some time of his life. He was accused of conspiracy
against Liaqat Ali Khan. For the first three months of his imprisonment, while he
awaited trial; Faiz was held in solitary confinement at Sargodha then later at
Lyallpur. No visitors were allowed, and he was denied all reading and writing
materials. The only poems he composed during this period were qit‘tas a form he
could memorize or (according to his fellow inmates) scrawl with chunks of coal on
the walls of his cell. Not surprisingly, these brief poems fluctuate between pure
defiance and extreme loneliness. The best known of these is also the poem that
Faiz claimed as his first prison composition:

Why should I mourn if my tablet and pen are forbidden?

When I have dipped my fingers in my own blood until they stain?

My lips have been silenced, but what of it?

For I have hidden

A tongue in every round-mouthed link of my chain.

It whiffs distinctly in his poem “Supplication” or “Rabba Sachiya”.it sniffs and

presents the rebellious attitude of Faiz againast All Almighty,he adopts this attitude
in face of the difficulties of life.

If you accept our plea

We’ll do

Whatever you say.

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

If not

We’ll look for another God.

Optimism:

There we also find the aroma of optimism in Faiz’s poetry. As in his following
poem it smells:

These days of spring can’t be made prisoner by a snare.

No matter that I can’t see it myself. Others will see

these days of the brilliant garden and the singing nightingale.

As well as there is a famous line by Faiz comprising all the tenets of optimism:

Dawn is breaking—tell your heart not to doubt.

the unexpected effect of focusing and concentrating his talents—an experience he

later likened to being in love: The first thing is that, like the dawn of love, all the
sensations are again aroused and the mistiness of the early morning and evening,
the blue of the sky, the gentleness of the breeze return with the same sense of
wonder. And the second thing that happens is that the time and distances of the
outside world are negated; the sense of distance and nearness is obliterated in such
a way that a single moment weighs on the mind like the Day of Judgment and
sometime [sic] the occurrences of a century seem to be like the happenings of
yesterday. The third thing is that in the vastness of separation, one gets more time
for reading and thinking and for decorating the bride of creativity.

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

These sessions may have begun with great humor, but the seriousness of Faiz’s
verses soon shifted the tone. Poem’s like “The Execution Yard (A Song)” were
clearly intended to stoke the political fires of his fellow inmates:

There is exquisite manifestation of buoyancy and hopefulness in his following

poem:

Where the road of longing leads us, we will see tomorrow.

This night will pass, and this too we will see tomorrow.

Don’t fear my heart; we will see day’s shining face tomorrow.

Let the drinker’s thirst for wine slowly sharpen:

We will see how long they deny the fierce grapevine tomorrow;

We will see how long they refuse the cup and flask tomorrow

Let the summons come to the assembly from the Street of Scorn:

After unfolding these themes and probing through all the aspects of Faiz’s poetry,
we deduce that it is wrong to label Faiz with any tags of prejudice or any particular
kind of poetry as he is a universal poet, much loved by all the classes of readers
and even read years after his death.

Reference:

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur

 Department of English

www.omniglot.com

www.scribd.com

Government postgraduate college for women Haripur