Imprisonment as the Gateway to Wonder in the Poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Abstract

The themes of imprisonment and exile figure prominently in the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984) who spent several years in jail and dedicated his life as a journalist, educator, and poet to preserving Pakistan’s artistic and spiritual heritage. Faiz reinvigorated a fossilized Urdu literature whose stale diction conferred predetermined meanings on traditional images such as the nightingale, the rose, the love-stricken gazelle, and the moon. Drawing upon a rich store of Urdu, Persian, and Arabic poetry, and working within the demanding confines of the love couplet known as the ghazal, Faiz imparts the experience of the image to the senses in ways that draw the reader or listener into the creative process. Imprisonment awakened Faiz to the sensations of the natural world and heightened his concern for others. After the carnage that accompanied independence in 1947, Pakistan grew militaristic and repressive. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and its first governor general, died in 1948, barely a year after the country’s independence. Another capable and unifying leader, Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister, was assassinated in 1951 shortly after requesting that the US vacate its air bases in Pakistan. In the years that followed, Pakistan devolved into a US client state under the military regimes of Ayub Khan (1958–1969) and Yahya Khan (1969–1971). The benighted policies of these military rulers were partly responsible for the breakup of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh in former East Pakistan. As the first chief editor of The Pakistan Times, Faiz defended democracy and civil liberties. In March 1951, Faiz was jailed due to the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, which was used to silence progressive voices in Pakistan. During four years in solitary confinement, he wrote two volumes of verse, Dast-e-Saba (The Writing of the Wind) and Zindan Nama (Prison Journal). Faiz resumed his journalism upon his release from prison, but in 1958 General Ayub Khan’s military regime seized control of Progressive Papers Ltd., which owned The Pakistan Times, and placed Faiz under arrest. After his release the following year, Faiz became the Secretary of the Pakistan Arts Council of Lahore. In 1962, the year he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, the military regime Socialism and Democracy, 2019 Vol. 33, No. 2, 142–150, https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2019.1647701