{"id":327,"date":"2008-02-21T17:07:02","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T17:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/21\/faiz-ahmed-faiz\/"},"modified":"2008-02-21T17:20:27","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T17:20:27","slug":"faiz-ahmed-faiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/21\/faiz-ahmed-faiz\/","title":{"rendered":"Faiz Ahmed Faiz"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine asked me about Pakistani poetry, or specifically whether I’d read anything by Faiz Ahmed Faiz<\/a>. Well I have, and to be honest I’d always struggled with some of his writings – which were often political and deliberately antagonistic towards the ruling elite – he did this by challenging colonial as well as feudal values and as a result he was sent to prison repeatedly by both colonial and post colonial authorities. As a marxist his works reflect a strong sense of both commitment to and empathy for the lower classes. But I don’t want to dwell on the political aspects of his works largely because I don’t actually agree with some of them – I’ll save that for another day :).<\/p>\n

What I do want to talk about are the various poems he wrote that dealt with love, loneliness and death. The more passionate followers of his work will often say that Faiz is considered primarily responsible for shaping poetic diction in contemporary Urdu poetry. I suspect they are probably right, whilst I can speak Urdu fluently, I can’t actually read it, so my exposure to Faiz’s works has always been through english translations. I do often wonder whether I do him a dis-service by judging, sometimes quite harshly, what I have read based on a translation, which may or may not genuinely convey what he intended.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he was a very talented poet, here’s a few of my favourites:<\/p>\n

\r\n              Some Lover To Some Beloved!\r\n  \t\r\nDown the memory lanes, on which\r\nyou've strolled since ages past\r\nThey will end if you walk farther a step or two\r\nWhere exits the turn towards the wilderness of forgetfulness\r\nbeyond which, there isn't any Me, nor any You\r\nMy eyes hold their breath, for any moment you\r\nmay turn back, move ahead, or at least turn to look back\r\n\r\nAlthough my sight knows that the wish is just a farce\r\nFor if ever it were to run across your eyes again\r\nright there will spring forth another pathway\r\nLike always, where ever we run into, there will begin\r\nanother journey of your lock's shadow, your embrace's tremor\r\n\r\nThe other wish is also in error, for my heart knows\r\nThere is no turn here, no wilderness, no mountain-range\r\nbeyond whose horizon, my perpetual sun-of-your-Love can set\r\nMay you continue walking these pathways, its better this way\r\nIf you don't even turn to look back, it is okay\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n
   <\/p>\n
 and … <\/p>\n
\r\n                   Do not ask, my love.....\r\n  \t\r\nDo not ask, my love, for the love we had before:\r\nYou existed, I told myself, so all existence shone,\r\nGrief for me was you; the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grief was far.\r\nSpring was ever renewed in your face:\r\nBeyond your eyes, what could the world hold?\r\nHad I won you, Fate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head would hang, defeated.\r\nYet all this was not so, I merely wished it so.\r\nThe world knows sorrows other than those of love,\r\nPleasures beyond those of romance:\r\nThe dread dark spell of countless centuries\r\nWoven with silk and satin and gold braocade,\r\nBodies sold everywhere, in streets and markets,\r\nBesmeared with dirt, bathed in blood,\r\nCrawling from infested ovens,\r\nMy gaze returns to these: what can I do?\r\nYour beauty still haunts me: what can I do?\r\nThe world is burdened by sorrows beyond love,\r\nBy pleasures beyond romance,\r\nDo not demand that love which can be no more.\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n
   <\/p>\n
 … and finally … <\/p>\n
\r\n                      Ghazal\r\n  \t\r\nI am being accused of loving you, that is all\r\nIt is not an insult, but a praise, that is all\r\n\r\nMy heart is pleased at the words of the accusers\r\nO my dearest dear, they say your name, that is all\r\n\r\nFor what I am ridiculed, it is not a crime\r\nMy heart's useless playtime, a failed love, that is all\r\n\r\nI haven't lost hope, but just a fight, that is all\r\nThe night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all\r\n\r\nIn the hand of time is not the rolling of my fate\r\nIn the hand of time roll just the days, that is all\r\n\r\nA day will come for sure when I will see the truth\r\nMy beautiful beloved is behind a veil, that is all\r\n\r\nThe night is young, Faiz start saying a Ghazal\r\nA storm of emotions is raging inside, that is all.\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n
   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend of mine asked me about Pakistani poetry, or specifically whether I’d read anything by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Well I have, and to be honest I’d always struggled with some of his writings – which were often political and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27],"tags":[382,407],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-poetry","tag-personal","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}