Remebering Faiz - The Voice of the Weak

 

Faiz's lovers are celebrating his birth centenary on 13/ Feb/11. Below is some  information about this great poet and some of his master pieces.      1911-2011    Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911 - 1984)  Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born on February 13, 1911, in Sialkot In 1916, Faiz entered Moulvi Ibrahim Sialkoti, a famous regional school, and was later admitted to the Scotch Mission High School where he studied Urdu, Persian, and Arabic. He received a Bachelor's degree in Arabic, followed by a Master's degree in English, from the Government College in Lahore in 1932, and later received a second Master's degree in Arabic from the Oriental College in Lahore.After graduating in 1935, Faiz began a teaching career at M.A.O. College in Amritsar and then at Hailey College of Commerce in Lahore. Faiz's early poems had been conventional, light-hearted treatises on love and beauty, but while in Lahore he began to expand into politics, community, and the thematic interconnectedness he felt was fundamental in both life and poetry. It was also during this period that he married Alys George, a British expatriate, with whom he had two daughters. In 1942, he left teaching to join the British Indian Army, for which he received a British Empire Medal for his service during World War II. After the partition of India in 1947, Faiz resigned from the army and became the editor of The Pakistan Times, a socialist English-language newspaper. On March 9, 1951, Faiz was arrested with a group of army officers under the Safety Act, and charged with the failed coup attempt that became known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. He was sentenced to death and spent four years in prison before being released. Two of his poetry collections, Dast-e Saba and Zindan Namah, focus on life in prison, which he considered an opportunity to see the world in a new way. While living in Pakistan after his release, Faiz was appointed to the National Council of the Arts by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government, and his poems, which had previously been translated into Russian, earned him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963. In 1964, Faiz settled in Karachi and was appointed principal of Abdullah Haroon College, while also working as an editor and writer for several distinguished magazines and newspapers. He worked in an honorary capacity for the Department of Information during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, and wrote stark poems of outrage over the bloodshed between Pakistan, India, and what later became Bangladesh. However, when Bhutto was overthrown by Zia Ul-Haq, Faiz was forced into exile in Beirut, Lebanon. There he edited the magazine Lotus, and continued to write poems in Urdu. He remained in exile until 1982. He died in Lahore in 1984, shortly after receiving a nomination for the Nobel Prize. Throughout his tumultuous life, Faiz continually wrote and published, becoming the best-selling modern Urdu poet in both India and Pakistan. While his work is written in fairly strict diction, his poems maintain a casual, conversational tone, creating tension between the elite and the common, somewhat in the tradition of Ghalib. Faiz Ahmed Faiz has brought revolutionary changes to the way poetry was written, combining socio-political messages and revolutionary ideas with the sweetness of Urdu language. His poetry was like a beacon of light for the oppressed segments of the society and the voice of the poor people's conscience. Apart from being a great revolutionary poet, he was a great romantic poet and his love for humanity is free from the prejudices of race, color and nationality   .                                                                                                          On Speaking   Speak, your lips are free. Speak, it is your own tongue. Speak, it is your own body. Speak, your life is still yours. See how in the blacksmith's shop The flame burns wild, the iron glows red; The locks open their jaws, And every chain begins to break. Speak, this brief hour is long enough Before the death of body and tongue: Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet, Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.  On Freedom If they snatch my ink and pen I should not complain, For I have dipped my fingers In the blood of my heart I should not complain Even if they seal my tongue, For every ring of my chain Is a tongue ready to speak    On Blackout India-Pakistan War: 1965 Since our lights were extinguished I have been searching for a way to see; my eyes are lost, God knows where. You who know me, tell me who I am, who is a friend, and who an enemy. A murderous river has been unleashed into my veins; hatred beats in it. Be patient; a flash of lightning will come from another horizon like the white hand of Moses with my eyes, my lost diamonds. . . .

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