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KAAV INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
& LINGUISTICS
POETRY IN BETWEEN TRANSLATIONS AND CULTURES: A
STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE OF PABLO NERUDA AND FAIZ
AHMED FAIZ’S POETRY
AUTHOR
GARIMA GUPTA
Poetry as a form of expression had engaged critics and philosophers alike since the
dawn of human civilization. According to most critics, poetry is superior and older than
other branches of knowledge. Even the Vedas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the
Bible and the Quran are in verse form. The first philosophers and historians were poets;
and such works as the Psalms of David and the Dialogues of Plato are in poetry. Sydney
says that, “Poetry is the first light giver to ignorance, it nourished before any other art or
science” (neoenglish system).
Among the Greeks and the Romans, the poet was regarded as a sage or prophet; and
no nation, however primitive or barbarous, has been without poets. With its myriad forms,
variegated expressions and multifarious voices, it has assumed different roles – that of
giving pleasure, affording entertainment, instructing, preaching, embodying transcendental
truths, mirroring mundane existence, voicing the concerns or aspirations of a common man,
acting as a vehicle of revolution and so on and so forth. It is in its last role that the present
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paper presents the study of the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Faiz Ahmed Faiz – both
revolutionary and Marxist poets.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), Nobel Laureate poet (1971) from Chile, did not begin
his literary career as a political writer. It was only after several years abroad and his
experience during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) that he fully embraced the Marxist
ideology. Manuel Duran and Margery in Earth Tones say, “The Spanish Civil War was so
critical in Neruda’s development as a man and as a poet, that poetry into two clear-cut
sections, parted by the great explosion of the war” (77). Neruda voiced the issues of the
common people and this poetry became the paean of the collective voice of the people.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) like Pablo Neruda was a committed Marxist. Like
Neruda Faiz, too, moved from the poetry of love to poety of revolution. His new themes
were freedom, dignity, and justice and not only the undivided pre-partition India, but the
entire world served as his canvas. As a testimony to his Marxist leanings for the oppressed
anywhere in the world, in the book Poetry East Carlo Cappola calls him:
A spokesperson for the world’s voiceless and suffering people whether Indians
oppressed by the British in the 40’s, freedom fighters in Africa, and Roseburg’s
during the Cold War in the 50’s, Vietnamese peasants fleeing America napalm in
the 60’s or Palestinian children living in refugee camps in the 1970’s (35-36).
Actively associated with the Progressive Writers Association, his revolutionary tenor has
been acknowledged by many subsequently poets. In his preface to The Rebel’s Silhouette,
Agha Shahid Ali Khan says, “Faiz not only tapped into those (archetypal) meanings but
extended them to include the revolution. Waiting for the revolution is as intoxicating as
waiting for one’s love (35-36).
There have been many critical writings on both the poets individually but there are
hardly any comparative studies of the two. This paper is an attempt to analyze the language
employed by the two poets who are thematically so similar. Further, the study undertaken
is that of their poems in translation and hence is circumscribed by the very nature of such
an analysis. The study takes into account their poetic oeuvre in entirely and not just the
revolutionary poems.
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Language and style refer to the conventions used by an author to construct his idea.
Translation plays a vital role to determine the structure of the poetry and the main purpose
of the translation is to convey the meaning of the text to the other language reader, without
contaminating the matter. The translator must accommodate to target linguistic conventions
so that the translated piece reads smoothly. Linguistic and cultural accommodation should
also be taken into consideration to become a qualified and competent translator or
interpreter.
Jack Schmit deals with the Spanish translation into English in case of Pablo Neruda,
where as Riz Rhim deals with the Urdu translation into English in case of Faiz Ahmed
Faiz. Jack and Rhim have given themselves over to the task with the devotion and the
passion that Neruda and Faiz demanded. Both have acquired clarity and accuracy while
translating the work. This study brings to light the various aspects of language and style
used by both poets in their poetry.
In an essay entitled “Speak through My Words: The Poetics and Politics of
Translating Neruda”, Janice Jaffe says, “Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, more than
any other Latin American poet, the history of Neruda in English translation has achieved
epic proportions” (1). Pablo Neruda shows a vastness in style that reveals many different
shades of content and language. From his first, surrealistic book Crepusculario (1923) to
his last La rosa separada (1972), and to the posthumously collected Oda a las flores de
Datitla (2002), Neruda’s work moves briskly from style to style, mood to mood. If there is
anything that unites his massive oeuvre it is his love for the world, his passion for small
things such as seashells and for significant historical developments such as the Spanish
Civil War. His career shows a controlled experiment in poetry; unambiguous statements
mix with copious imagery in his many verses.
Pablo’s first book i.e. Twenty Love Poems and Song of Despair was published in
1924 when he was just twenty years old. Some of Neruda's most famous poems were
published in this collection, and are still today some of the best known and well loved
poems in history. Neruda's love poetry is distinguishable from others due to his use of
startlingly direct language and his poignant, original and subtle imagery. In this collection
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he depicts the imagery of angst and passion of young love so brilliantly that it instantly
propelled him into fame. The best example of this imagery can be seen in the poem entitled
Every Day You Play, Neruda writes,
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed (25).
Nature has played a large role in literature, especially poetry, since the medieval
age. Poets employ the images of nature for several purposes: to express childlike delight in
the sense of freedom it affords, as a background to or reflection of human actions or
emotions, to express a sense of the infinite, to symbolize the human spirit, or to describe
nature for its own sake.
Manuel Duran and Margery Safir in their Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
note that in all the poetry in Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,
Nature does not enter for itself alone, but rather nature and woman are seen
as two aspects of the same reality. The beauty and strength and mystery, at
times terror of nature and the beauty, strength, and mystery of woman are but
mirrors of one another. In Twenty Poems nostalgia, love of nature, and love
of woman are united in a single strand and nowhere do we find the detached
contemplation of nature itself (poetrydrodriguez.weebly.com).
Pablo Neruda adopted a Romantic vision in the twentieth century in Tonight I Can
Write in his use of nature as reflection of the spiritual and emotional. Yet in this poem,
Neruda's use of nature becomes more complex. In the speaker's lyrical evocations of his
relationship with the woman he has loved and lost, he and the woman become almost
indistinguishable from nature. The lovers' passion and despair thus transcend the human
and achieve the cosmic. Marjorie Agosin, in her book on Neruda, comments,
The image of the woman takes on a transcendental importance in Twenty
Poems, for she is associated with the elements and the earth. She is the earth
mother, a notion established by the romantic poets of the last century, but
which Neruda makes more immediate and secular Woman, who plays with
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the world and resembles that world elevated to a cosmic level, is cast in
images
of
the
surrounding
natural
landscape
sky,
water,
earth
(poetrydrodriguez.weebly.com).
Neruda sought refuge in poetry, publishing his first book, Crepusculario, in 1923.
Because of its traditional Alexandrine meter, fellow Chilean poet Marjorie Agosin
observes that this book “follows the patterns set by Chilean romantic poetry of the last
century, mixed with traces of modernism that Spanish American literary current that swept
the continent from 1888 to 1916 and that was the first original literary movement
originating in Spanish America” (blackbirdlibrary.pbworks.com).
Neruda was elated when Crepusculario was first published. The joy of publication,
however, was soon undercut by Neruda's deep poetic anxiety about the direction of his
verse. He apparently felt constrained by traditional forms, yet was apprehensive about
breaking free of the kind of verse which was readily accepted. Neruda took short trips to
the southern part of Chile attempting to renew his creative powers. In his Memoirs he
describes a strange experience:
I had returned home to Temuco. It was past midnight. Before going to bed, I
opened the windows in my room. The sky dazzled me... I became star-drunk,
celestially, cosmically drunk. I rushed to my table and wrote, with heart
beating high, as if I were taking dictation it was smooth going, as if I were
swimming in my very own waters (blackbirdlibrary.pbworks.com).
Neruda tells of how he then locked the door on a rhetoric that he could never go on
with, and deliberately toned down his style and expression. The result was Veinte poemas
de amor y una cancion desperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), published
in 1924. This is one of his best-known and most translated works. In this collection,
Neruda begins to develop his own voice, leaving behind the regular rhyme and measured
verses. The result was astonishing. As Agosin notes, “Neruda's simplicity, sparse imagery,
and above all, unabashed expression of amorous statements were innovations that
immediately
commanded
the
attention
of
the
reading
public”
(blackbirdlibrary.pbworks.com).
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Neruda started to become politically aware at a fairly young age. After the
publication of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, he was appointed to the
honorary post of Chilean consul. He was just 20 years old and was travelling to places like
Rangoon, Sri Lanka, Batavia, and Indonesia. In the 1930's, he was appointed as consul in
Barcelona, Spain, where he met people who were involved in radical politics and the
Communist Party. It was during this time that a noted shift in the tone of his poetry could
be felt. He was moving away from his more personal writing and began communicating
instead his social and political idealism.
Neruda's Communist idealism is what coloured many of the poems that he wrote,
and he felt that it was his responsibility, or poet's obligation to give a voice to the silent and
the oppressed. An excellent example is the poem “The Pueblo,” where he champions the
proletariat and speaks in terms of a Communist society, saying, “And those who make
bread ought to eat! And those in the mine should have light!” (451).
Neruda felt a real connection with so many different things in his life. He wrote
odes about common and everyday objects such as chestnuts, clothes and tomatoes. It was
said that he began writing his odes, of which he published two volumes, Odas Elementales
(1954) and Nuevas Odas Elementales (1956), not only because he felt a real connection
with these objects, but also because he felt a great need to make his poetry more accessible
to the common man.
His collection i.e. Canto general is the historical epic and constitutes Five hundred
pages, twenty thousand verses, three hundred and twenty poems, all organized into fifteen
major divisions or cantos. Each canto has been organized in a chronological order and
cover the events from pre-historic time to the tweinth century. The theme of Canto general
is man’s struggle for justice in the new world. The heroes of this epic adventure are
generally men, collectively the people.
Martin Espada, whom the Mexican-American novelist Sandra Cisneros calls the
“Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” points out that there “is a Neruda for
everyone. There's Neruda the love poet, Neruda the surrealist poet, the poet of historical
epic, Neruda the political poet, Neruda the poet of common things, with the odes, the poet
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of sea and so on” (www.cpim.org/marxist). Indeed, within one of his epic poems, one finds
many of these forms. The critic Roberto González Echevarría points out in Canto General
(1950),
The poem is topological cornucopia. Everything is in a state of flux,
everything is in the process of becoming something else or looking likes
something else. The analog here is America's proliferating nature (In fertility
time grew). There is no conventional rhyme, or strophic arrangement, and
although the history recounted begins before the beginning of history, it does
not flow chronologically from there until the end. The Canto establishes its
own inner rhythms. There is something sacramental in Neruda's poetic
language, like the words of a religion in the process of being founded, of a
liturgy establishing its rituals and choosing its words. The grandiose tropes of
his verse emerge as if not only to give names to things but to anoint them. (3)
The study of patterns of imagery shows the peace of Spain’s past, which he
compares to Spain’s violent present. Out of this juxtaposition of peace and war he shows
the people they need, as well as the possibility and changes for betterment. While it is
difficult to trace an organic structure in Neruda’s poetry, there is an organization in the
changes in the Neruda’s imagery. These changes relate to the specific themes of Peace,
Hope, Destruction and Reaction. The theme and imagery of peace and hope is clear from
the lines of the poem “The letter”
Above this clarity, farms, cities,
Mines will bring forth,
And above this unity like firm
Germinant earth, creative permanence
Has been disposed, the seed
Of the new city for lives. (301)
Here in the above lines poet is creating the imagery of paradise, which is a hope for
the people of Chile that they will live happy and prosperous life without any tussle. Here
“the new city” for lives is a reference to paradise or perfect or classless society. C. D Lewis
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in his book The poetic Image (1969) said, “the subject of a poem is, as it were, the support
group up which its theme climbs, throwing out its imagery as it grows…” (108).
Throughout the book Neruda borrows his images from the world of nature, from
man’s occupations or trades, and from the world of minerals and stones, written in free
verse and conversational style, with the narrator frequently present in the text, the poems
follows the chronology that leads from the present to the past, back to the present, and then
on the immediate as well as distant future. One striking feature of Neruda’s poetic language
is the abundance of images containing elements of organic substances (living substance
pertaining to the plant world, such as flowers, vegetables, fruit, trees, grains, gardens and
orchards) as well as images of mineral matter (objects of still nature, lifeless elements
pertaining to the geological world of matter, such as rocks, stones, metals and minerals).
The difference in Neruda's language can be seen in several of the poems in Spain in
Our Hearts. The third poem in the collection, I Will Explain a Few Things, is a poem that
almost reads as prose. I Will Explain A Few Things end with the following lines:
You will ask: Why his poetry
Has nothing of the earth, of the leaves,
of the great volcanoes of your native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood in the streets (261)
Neruda asks the rhetorical question why he can no longer write poetry emblematic
of his past work, but the last three lines are the most startling. The language is so simple
that he appears to draw it out. The lines form run-on sentences that provoke the reader to
pronounce every word. This is an unusual usage of enjambment in these last lines.
Enjambment of lines normally causes the reader to speed up, and while the reader speeds
up, they are confronted with the same eight words: “Come and see the blood in the streets.”
Duran and Safir say that these last lines use “An obsessive leitmotiv three times repeated,
the last lines are absolutely chilling in their simplicity and in the revulsion they
communicate and provoke” (79).
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The manipulation of the line length also provides a musical element to the words.
“Come and see” appears to hit high notes and echo in the mind. It is by using this
simplicity of language that Neruda attempts to bridge the gap between his poetry and the
people of Spain.
Alonso Amado records Neruda saying the following at a press conference: “the
people love the simple word; they seek it as they would a flag preparing for the fight, in
order to comfort their wretchedness, and the simple word can also come from us to seek the
people” (8).
Neruda uses several different structural forms through this collection, which
possibly reflects the times in which the poems were written. Most likely, he was structuring
the poem according to what was best for the individual piece. For example, in his earlier
pieces, he often used stanzas of four lines each, or four lines, eight lines and back to four.
In The Heights of Macchu Picchu, a twelve part poem, he wrote his stanzas
eclectically in every shape and size imaginable. When he wrote Entrance of the Rivers, The
Magellan Heart (1519), Autumn Testament and Furious Struggle Between Seamen and an
Octopus of Colossal Size, he used subtitles in the margins to tell the reader that the poem's
chapter was changing.
The language Neruda used is poetically descriptive and packed full of imagery. He
was a master of literary vehicles such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, allusion, and
personification. All of the poems written by Neruda are in Spanish, his native language,
and translated to English in this collection. English is not the only language that his poems
were translated into. Many other cultures, including Russian and Chinese, were eager to
access his poetry and thus his work has been translated into those languages as well.
Much can be lost in translation and in some cases the translation of his poetry has
been open to interpretation. There are often more than one translated version of each poem.
For the most part, the meaning of his poems seems to come through however, no matter
which translation is read.
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Language and style of Faiz’s poetry
Faiz's first language was Punjabi but he gained fame with his poems written in
Urdu, a language similar to Arabic. Sohail Hashmi in his article “Faiz- The Poet of
Romance and Revolution” says,
over the last three centuries Urdu has produced one great poet every 100
years or so, as the eighteenth century was the century of Meer, 19 th century
was the century of Ghalib and the 20 th century is century of Faiz Ahmed Faiz,
who is the most imminent poet not only in Urdu and in the subcontinent, but
also in the entire world. (177)
Meer was to use the metaphor of broken shattered, distraught heart to describe his
own personal loss as also the pillage and destruction of Delhi, an adopted city that he came
to love and hold not only physically but also metaphorically. The deserted streets and
empty houses became symbols of the passing away of a life style and an aesthetic urbane
milieu. Ghalib had infused the Ghazals with a depth and a multilayeritrity that the form had
not hitherto seen. But what is unique in the writing of Faiz is his grasp of both the Ghazal
and the Nazm. Faiz was equally dexterous in both forms. Some poets were known as poets
of the Ghazal and others were poets of Nazam, but Faiz is equally at ease in both forms.
The difference between ghazals and nazams is that ghazal is free from following any
single theme, but nazam is always made on single theme. Ghazal contains Radeef, Kafiya,
Matla, Maqta and Behar. Radeef is the last word in a line which is a repetition, Kafia is the
pattern of words before radeef in every line, Behar is actually the meter of the ghazal and
Maqta is the last line in which poet writes his own name or pen name. This structure of
ghazal has been followed by Faiz Ahmed Faiz in his poems.
From the time that Urdu language began to flower, its poetry has had the intrinsic
trait of reinventing itself. Urdu poetry can be compared to a flowing river that does not stop
at any destination but continues to move from one bank to another. Such qualities can be
traced from the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
An example of Nazam is clear from the following poem where the poet follow no
particular rhyming, Kafia, Radief and Maqta.
hum dekhenge
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We will see
laazim hai ke hum bhii dekhenge
It is inevitable that we too will see
hum dekhenge
We will see ...
His style of writing, coming after Iqbal, was a new trend. It took Urdu poetry into an
altogether new phase. Earlier Urdu poetry was recited in a very affected style. It was full of
romanticism. It talked of love, gardens, and flowers. It is not that Faiz did not use these
phrases or interpretations of life; it was just that his poetry had a revolutionary style.
As a poet, Faiz began writing on the conventional themes of love and beauty, but
soon these conventional themes got submerged in the larger social and political issues of
the day. The traditional grief of love got fused with the travails of the afflicted humanity,
and Faiz uses his poetry to champion the cause of socialistic humanism. Consequently, the
familiar imagery of a love-poet acquires new meanings in the hands of Faiz. This turning
away from romance to realism, from Eros to Agape, is beautifully suggested in his poem
(nazam), “Don’t Ask me Sweetheart, for the Love We’ve Had Before” (Mujh Se Pehli Si
Mohabbat Meri Mahboob Na Maang.)
In the matter of diction and style, Faiz may be called the inheritor of the tradition of
Ghalib. His admiration for Ghalib is also reflected in the title of his first published work,
Naqsh-e-Faryadi, which comes straight from the opening line of the first
Ghazal of Diwan-e-Ghalib. Although he has written poems in a simple,
conversational style, he has a marked preference for polished, Persianised diction, the
diction of the elite rather than of the commoners. But because of the universality of his
thought and sympathetic vision, and because of his perfect handling of the ghazal, his
poetry is read and admired in both parts of the Indian sub-continent.
Furthermore, by publishing the poems in Dast-e-Saba in the rough order of their
composition, Faiz invites us to read the psychological evolution of his productions as they
relate and respond to the shifting conditions of the nation state system they oppose. His
earliest poems in Dast-e-saba may be categorized loosely as poems of defiance, followed
by a middle period of remembrance, and finally a time of loneliness and despair.
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Careful historical examination of the events shaping the composition of these
poems provides much insight into this progression as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy trial
dragged on for nearly two years and the likelihood of Faiz’s conviction became
increasingly certain. These events, however, do not fully define the poems, and it is equally
fascinating to read the unfolding argument of Faiz’s work as he develops a system of
setting the true country of Pakistan the nation promised by Jinnah before Partition in
opposition to the realized totalitarian nation-state.
Thus, his poems occupy the singular space of a lyric that does not speak for the
subjugated one against the oppressive many, but rather for the many ruled against the
ruling few. The poetry of Faiz was completely in tone with Persio-Arabic tradition of Urdu
poetry and the most unique aspect of his poetry is the fact that his sensibilities were very
modern and western in nature and his diction was purely traditional.
Sohail Hashmi in his article “Faiz-The Poet of Romance and Revolution” published
in Faiz Centenary Special 2011 quoted Noon Meem Rashid, a contemporary poet who
said, “Faiz is alone among contemporary poets who with his imagination, wishes to create
an alluring heaven of pure beauty, but has also glimpsed the reality that lurks behind the
golden drapes of beauty and romance” (189).
His vocabulary, his symbols and his similes were deep rooted in traditional diction
of Urdu. In his poems he talks of the language which is plainly symbolic to illustrate, he
used some symbols in the poem “The speak up” which is clear from the following lines,
Look in the blacksmith’s
Flames are raging iron is red –hot.
Locks melting,
Links of the chain now wide open. (92)
In the above lines he uses the symbols of flames, ragging, chain and red-hot. The
flames are the voices of the protest that have begun to rise everywhere. The chains are the
symbols of slavery, ragging is the symbol of struggle going on for India’s freedom and the
red-hot is the heat generated by the death of the various martyrs. His poems are also full of
imagery As V. G. Kiernan writes in Poems by Faiz. (1971)
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So much of the spirit and tone of Urdu poetry derives from Persian tradition
that this ancestry must often be kept in mind, even when a poet like Faiz is
alluding to quite contemporary matters. Verse forms and meters, besides
diction, have helped to preserve continuity; and, still more strikingly, a
common stock of imagery, which can be varied and recomposed
inexhaustibly. (32)
Faiz’s poetry was written in the form of free verse and the meter of his poetry is not
fixed, but when Faiz was confined to solitary, his pen and paper confiscated, he composed
a four-line rhymed form that he could memorize and recite. Later when he could commit
his poems to paper, Faiz’s writings that were sent outside the confines of the prison walls
were subject to rigorous censorship. Some examples of the quatrains are,
Prisons echo with martyrs, slogans, wine flows
In the parties;
Desire, rivers of blood,
Decadence, flowing free. (395)
This quatrain and the poem Trace of the Blood were written after the police firing
on Karachi protesters against the rigged election of Ayuab Khan (winner) against Miss
Fatima Jinnah, sister of Pakistan founder M.A. Jinnah. He developed a covert system of
images and metaphors, often drawn from the traditional forms of Persian and Urdu poetry
that would seem harmless to the unthinking eyes of the censors. In the lecture, Faiz
contended that
an entire range of symbols evoked in the Urdu ghazal have transcended
successive historical periods, each time acquiring new meanings to reflect
changing political, economic and social realities. Faiz then demonstrated why
traditional symbols like chaman (garden), sanam (idol), sayyaad (captor) and
qafas (prison) are valid today and how they can be used as a means of
escaping censorship. (www.urdustudies.com)
He used various literary devices, such as Run on line, Simile, Metaphore, Repitition,
Anaphora, Dicaope, Caesura, Epistrophe, and Anadiplosis in his poems.
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Another figurative device which Faiz uses in his poetry is Simile, which means to
make a comparison in order to show similarities between two different things. Simile
draws resemblance with the help of the words “like” or “as”. An example of the simile is
clear from the lines of the poem “The Night Without You,”
In my imagination your beauty
Was lit like a candle
The painful moon gone
The night of separation, over (160)
A figurative device which Faiz used frequently in his poetry is Metaphor.
“The Dawn of Freedom” relies on a number of stock metaphors, most significantly
‘hijr’ translated here as “the anguish of separation.” As Aamir Mufti eloquently argues in
Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and Dilemmas in Post-Colonial
Modernity (1997)
The desire for justice, the steadfastness in face of suffering and oppression,
and the belief in a new dawn, are complicated by the “partitioned” nature of
the collective subject. In other words, the significance for me of Faiz’s
repeated use of hijr and of its derivatives is that it imbues the lyric experience
of separation from the beloved with a concrete historical meaning the parting
of ways or leave-taking that is Partition. (202)
The next literary device i.e. Anaphora, which means the repetition of the word or
phrases at the beginning of the every clause is clear from the poem “You Tell Me It is
Hopeless,” where poet says,
Body and soul damaged and wasted, so be it;
More destruction before anything good,
More grief to come on the body and soul, my friends,
More bitter tests and experiences, ahead. (204)
The next literary device used by the poet is the Epistrophe, which means the
repetition of word or words at the end of successive Phrases, clauses and sentences, as clear
from the poem “There Must be Some Foundation,” where poet says,
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Complaint to the Tyrant,
At least about the tyranny
Speak up, try to at least invent
The roar of the Doomsday (185)
Another literary device used by the poet in his poetry is Diacope, which means the
repetition of the word or phrases with one or two intervening words as evident from the
poem “A Song for Palestinian Freedom-Fighters,” where poet says,
We shall overcome,
By God, we shall overcome someday,
We shall overcome finally
One day. (360)
The next literary device used by the poet in his poetry is Anadiplosis, which means
the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause or in simple words it means the word is
used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence. An
example of Anadiplosis is evident from the poem “Hoping to See You, Waiting for You,”
Hoping to see you, waiting for so long that
The day doesn’t begrudge the night,
The night doesn’t berudge the day
Any one grief we attribute to you (191)
His approach was rumani, it was earthy. It was a reflection of the times he lived in.
His writing had a certain pace, rhythm, and thus his technique was unique. Sohail Hashmi
in his article Faiz-The Poet of Romance and Revolution published in Faiz Centenary
Special 2011 quoted Firaq Gorakhpuri who appreciate Faiz’s skill in the lines, “Faiz
established a new school of poetry, creative skill, affection, creative dexterity, and breadth
of vision with which Faiz relates the event of love with other significant social concerns
was something entirely new and worthwhile in the love poetry of Urdu” (189).
The voice of these poets is heard even today as their poetry is an embodiment of the
particular within the framework of the universal. Coming from two different corners of the
world, they reveal a striking thematic similarity even though the language they speak is
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different. The analysis above was aimed at studying the aspects of their language in their
translations and one can see that the stylistic richness has been preserved in the translations
as well though the sonority of the original languages – Spanish and Urdu – could not be
captured by English. However, the translation provides an opportunity to study them on the
same platform and discern the Universality of poetry amidst all the social, regional,
religious, geographical differences.
Works Cited
C.D Lewis.The Poetic Image.London. Hesprides Press, 2008. Print.
Coppola, Carlo. “Faiz Ahmed Faiz”. Poetry East. (Spring 1989). Print
Duran, Manuel, and Margery Safir. Ed. Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Indian
University Press, 1981. Print.
Faiz, Ahmed Faiz. The Role of the Artist. India: Oxford University Press, 1982. Print.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The Rebel’s Silhoute. Trans. by Agha Shahid Ali. Delhi:Oxford
University Press,1991.Print
“Final Thought on Poetry Friday.” Charlotteobserver.com. Charlotte Observer, 01 Aug.
2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.
Kiernan, V.G. Ed. Poems by Faiz. London: London Times Press, 1951. Print.
Rahim, Riz. In English Faiz Ahmed Faiz A Renowned Poet. U.S.A. Xlibris. 2011. Print.
Schmitt, Jack. Trans. Canto General. London: University of California Press, 2004. Print.
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