Faiz Ahmad Faiz

About Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Faiz Ahmad Faiz was an influential left-wing intellectual, revolutionary poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language from State of Pakistan. A rising figure and notable member of the Progressive Writers' Movement (PWM), Faiz was an avowed Marxist-communist, long associated member of Russian-backed Communist Party and was a recipient of Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union in 1962. Despite being repeatedly accused of atheism by the political and military establishment, Faiz's poetry suggested his complicated relationship with religion in general and Islam in particular. He was, nevertheless, inspired by South Asia's Sufi traditions.

Faiz did his inter-mediate from Murray College, Sialkot, and B.A, in 1931, from Government College, Lahore. Two years later he did his Masters in English and followed it with an M.A. in Arabic as well. While at Murray College he started writing poetry once more. His poetry of this period though was conformist poetry and about the more common subjects like love.



In Faiz's own words "the period between 1920 and 1930 constituted a state of carelessness, prosperity and exuberance, in which along with important national and political movements, in prose and poetry, there was an element of light heartedness, along with serious thinking and observation……………. In this atmosphere there was also the wonder of the beginning of love but we had just a glimpse of this period, when we reached the end of love's companionship."



After he graduated he took up a job as a lecturer in English at the M. A. O. College in Amritsar in 1935 and five years later he joined Hailey College of Commerce, Lahore.



Faiz had tremendous sympathy for the suffering of the people. While he was teaching at the M. A. O. College he became friendly with the Vice Principal Sahabzada Mehmood-uz-Zafar and his wife, Dr. Rasheeda Jahan. Both were committed socialists and lovers of literature as well. Under their influence Faiz's poetry underwent a tremendous change. The other influence on him was The Progressive Writers' Movement.



In 1935 in London, some writers with socialist ideologies, set up The Progressive Writers' Movement. The Movement emphasized the writer's responsibilties towards spreading and promoting positive, healthy and just values through his writings. Faiz found himself in total agreement with the movement's views and goals and this started a new phase in his writing career. Faiz did not agree with the doctrine of art for art's sake, or that artistic and social values are things apart. Beauty did not have mere artistic value, but it also had a social and moral value. According to Faiz poetry was a struggle in which, art and life demanded participation according to one's abilities.



Once again his own words explain his feelings well " In this school the first lesson we learnt was that to think of separating oneself from the world is, in the first place, useless. This is so because the experiences around us necessarily affected us. The self of a human being, despite all its loves, troubles, joys and pains, is a tiny, limited and humble thing. The measure of the vastness of life is the whole universe. Thus the agony of love and the agony of time are two aspects of one experience.



In his poetry, Faiz incorporated both the values of beauty and social responsibilities. His message was couched in beautiful words with an almost wistful quality. That is why Faiz's poetry was unlike the writings of his contemporaries, with a style more mellifluous, his tone soft, his poems smooth and flowing, unlike the works of other poets which had a more stronger tone.