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Translation from one language into another is rather a tricky and complicated venture, especially when it comes to translation of Urdu into English, as both the languages have little cultural and linguistic affinity with each other. Translations are never a substitute for the original, though they are indispensable for those who do not know the original. Some noted writers have rendered Faiz’s poetry into English, and their performance is admirable. In this volume, Daud Kamal and editor Khalid Hasan have translated Faiz’s poetry into English, and some of his poems have been translated into English for the first time. The book is divided into three parts. While the first part evaluates Faiz’s poetry, and includes his reflections on his life, the second and third parts contain the Urdu text of his poems and their translations. Faiz’s poetry has been reviewed, evaluated and admired by literary critics. After Ghalib and Iqbal, Faiz is easily acknowledged as one of the leading and distinguished Urdu poets. He brought out seven volumes of verses. The first part of the book has a special interest for the reader because it throws light on his life and his poetry, particularly from his own angle. I think that we hear for the first time in this work Faiz’s own voice on his life and what he made of it. Faiz was a private person, shy and taciturn, and seldom talked about himself. A dreamer, he loved mystery and solitude. His thoughts were discreetly coloured by visions of beauty, despair, and rays of hope in the vicissitudes of human affairs. A sturdy individualist, he lived in the age that imposed authority. But this titan of a man with a tearing spirit, yielded to none. He stood on his own. He had the worst of times in the regimes of Field Marshal Ayub Khan and General Zia-ul-Haq, but he never compressed. Despite his sufferings, he bore no ill will towards anyone. He was indeed a solitary reaper, a pathfinder, and a path-maker with malice to none. Reviewing his past and reflecting on his literary and intellectual development, Faiz acknowledges that it was during his stay at Amritsar from 1934 to1939 as an English lecturer in M.A.O. College that "there began a new change in my intellectual and emotional life, and in the life of my colleagues". According to him, he gained a new perspective of seeing the world and humankind at Amritsar. He read the Communist Manifesto, and a revolutionary change came in his outlook. He started writing poetry in a new vein. He formed lasting friendships with Sahibazada Mohmood-uz-Zafar, the Marxist ideologue, and his wife, Rashid Jahan, Dr M. D. Taseer, the principal of his college, and the poet Ghulam Mustaffa Tabassam. He married George Alys, Taseer’s sister-in-law. He was also the founder of the Progressive Writers’ Movement. He became an active member of the ‘Friends of the Soviet Union Society’, which was attended by some of the local academics such as Professor Waryan Singh and Gurbachan Singh Talib of Khalsa College, and R. K. Kapur and Arjan Nath Matoo of Hindu College. It is not often realised that before the Partition, Amritsar was a vibrant literary and cultural centre in North Inqia. Faiz also mentions his close association with A. S. Bokhari and Harish Chander Kathpalia of Government College, Lahore, close contacts with whom had acted as a unique literary tonic on his intellectual outlook. After leaving Amritsar in 1939, Faiz joined Hailey College of Commerce, Lahore. Thereafter, he served the Publicity Department of the Government of India during the Second World War. He was given the status of a Lieutenant Colonel. After the Partition, he went to Pakistan and spent four years in jail. He did not find the climate congenial for leading a free creative life in Pakistan. He went abroad and traveled widely seeing new men and new places. Men of Faiz’s mettle do not belong to a particular community, nationality or country. They are universal like Erasmus, Tolstoy and Tagore. Faiz gave to Khalid Hasan his own views on the function and practice of writing poetry. He could no longer subscribe to the theory of ‘Art of Arts’ sake in composing his poetry, though some of his poems reflect his exquisite artistry of the sensuous. He did not like the poet to sit in his ivory tower, float his imagination and weave his verses, completely cut off from the social and economic changes taking place in the topsy-turvy world. A man of disturbing intellect and sensibility, Faiz was a poet of the people, a poet of the poor and disadvantaged and oppressed, of the peasant and the worker, of the children crying the whole night for bread, and of the lonely postman walking miles, duty-bound, in sultry heal. He creates the image of the exploited helpless woman on sale with tinkles of her glass bangles, and cascading fragrance from her body. Khalid Hasan has done a
wonderful work. This book helps us in understanding the working of Faiz’s
mind and his poetry.
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