Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Born in Sialkot in 1911, Faiz Ahmed Faiz is a renowned Pakistani poet who wrote primarily in Urdu. His poetry has been acknowledged by critics and readers as embracing a spectrum of emotions – from patriotic fervour to social injustice to intense romantic love to gut-wrenching loneliness. He was unapologetically Marxist and therefore labelled as a revolutionary and a rebel in his country and accused for fanning a ‘Culture of Resistance’. The luminous arc of his writings is a reflection of his own restless life. Faiz was sent to jail twice because of his political leanings and was subjected to third degree methods of interrogation. Later, Faiz thought it proper to leave the country and he remained in exile till late 1983.
Faiz’s political leanings were no secret, yet, he was no revolutionary. If anything, his politics were fiercely unpredictable—seemingly guided only by his personal convictions. He had tested his poetry readers in undivided India by openly criticizing Gandhi in the poem “To a Political Leader,” but when Gandhi was assassinated in 1947, Faiz risked the scrutiny of the Pakistani government by traveling to India to attend the funeral. He consistently supported leftist causes, but refused to join the Communist Party. He took high-profile positions as the vice president of the Trade Union Federation of Pakistan and as secretary of the Pakistan Peace Committee, but remained close with many of the country’s top military leaders, with whom he had become friends when he served in the Moral Welfare Directorate of the Indian army during World War II.
For me, working on Faiz’s poetry was a labor of love. The fifty odd translations of his works in English, happened because I enjoyed reading them in their original language and wanted to bring them alive for the contemporary global reader as well. Concessions had to be made for collateral damage – the inevitable loss in meanings when translating from Urdu to English, especially in a language as richly nuanced as Urdu. There’s nothing like reading Faiz in the original. Period. However for the reader searching for a similar experience, then these translations are my humble but sincere offerings.
← Vinita Agrawal
Bol ke lab azad hain tere / Proclaim
Aaiye haath uthaein ham bhi / Prayer
Yeh daag daag ujala / Duplicity
Translated from original Urdu by Vinita Agrawal
← October 2019 Issue
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