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PRESENTATION AS A TEACHER
BIOGRAPHY • Date of Birth: February 13th, 1911Place: Sialkot (Punjab), Pakistan Faiz's mother was Sultan Fatima. Faiz's father died in Sialkot in 1913. Faiz's father was a learned man and enjoyed the company of well-known literary persons. Wrote the biography of Amir Abdur Rehman. Faiz was therefore, born in a respectable and literary environment and was a very promising student with a religious background.
EMPLOYMENT • Returning from London in 1964 he settled down in Karachi and was appointed as Principal, Abdullah Haroon College , Karachi. Editorship of the monthly magazine Adabe-Latif from 1947 to 1958. Worked as Editor under the Progressive Papers Ltd, of the Pakistan Times, the Urdu newspaper Imroze and the weekly Lailo-Nihar. In the 1965 war between India & Pakistan he worked in an honorary capacity in the Department of Information. Acted as Editor of the magazine Lotus in Moscow, London and Beirut.
PUBLICATIONS • Naqshe Faryadi, 1941 • Daste Saba, 1953 • Zindan Nama, 1956 • Mizan, a collection of literary articles, 1956 • Daste-Tahe-Sang, 1965 • Sare-Wadiye Seena, 1971 • Shame-Shehr Yaran, 1979 • Merey Dil Merey Musafar, 1981 • Nuskha-Hai-Wafa, 1984 • Pakistani Culture, Urdu & English
YADOON KAY SAYE By Alys Faiz
AWARDS • The real award for a poet is the love and appreciation of his fans. Faiz stands among those who enjoy both at one and the same time. Besides he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963, as the first Asian poet. Before his death in 1984 he was also a nominee for the award of Nobel Prize, but his association in later life, with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Movement, and the Editorship of Lotus, deprived him of the award because the Zionist element in the controlling body of the Nobel Prize is strong.
THE MESSAGE • Faiz is a poet of beauty and love. His message is the reign of beauty and love in the country. The passion for enjoying the beauty of life, his deep attachment to love of self and the agony of the world, his love of humanity, his patriotism, his passion for revolution, his sense of justice, are all metaphors of the agony of love. That agony of love which is the soul of his imagination and feeling, on account of which he illuminates the beauty of both worlds with the desolation of his heart.
CONCLUSION Faiz was acknowledged long ago as the greatest Urdu poet after Iqbal. Even those who were critical of his progressive social and political beliefs could not deny him that position, although they always qualified their praise of him by regretting that such a good man should have fallen among the Communists.
YOUR TASK AS A STUDENT (ASSIGNMENT) • Q-1. Elaborate Faiz life and Ghazal? • Early life, Education. • Q-2. Described Faiz as a poet? • Q-3. How is he called the inheritor of the tradition of Ghalib. • Q-4. Find a portrait of Faiz. • Q-5. Which poem do you like? • Q-6. Give the background of Urdu Ghazal. • a. Influence of Iranian, poetry and literature • b. Background of Urdu Poetry. • Political, Criticism, Revolution
PRESENTATION AS A STUDENT
FAIZ AHMED FAIZ: LIFE AND GHAZALS Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born in 1911 at Sialkot and was educated at Lahore, where he studied English literature and philosophy. He began his career as a lecturer in English at Amritsar. After the second World War, he turned to journalism and distinguished himself as the editor of The Pakistan Times. He was charged with complicity in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case and was condemned to four years' imprisonment in 1951. The jail term gave him a first-hand experience of the harsh realities of life, and provided him with the much-needed leisure and solitude to think out his thoughts and transmute them into poetry. Two of his books, Dast-e-Saba and Zindan-Nama are the products of this period of imprisonment.
As a poet, Faiz began writing on the conventional themes of love and beauty, but soon these conventional themes get submerged in the larger social and political issues of the day. The traditional griefs of love get 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 (a nazm), "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. Faiz is a "committed" poet who regards poetry as a vehicle of serious thought, and not a mere pleasurable pastime. He does not accept the maxim of "art for art's sake". An admirer of Karl Marx and a poet of the people, Faiz was honoured by Soviet Russia with the prestigious Lenin Award for Peace and his poems have been translated into the Russian language. His poetical collections include Naqsh-e-Faryadi (1943), Dast-e-Saba (1952), Zindan-Nama (1956) and Dast-e-Tah-e-Sang (1965).
(EXCERPTS FROM MASTERPIECES OF URDU GHAZAL - FROM 17TH TO 20TH CENTURY, BY K.C. KANDA) Ghazal originated in Iran in the 10th century A.D. It grew from the Persian qasida, which verse form had come to Iran from Arabia. The qasida was a panegyric written in praise of the emperor or his noblemen. The part of the qasida called tashbib got detached and developed in due course of time into the ghazal. Whereas the qasida sometimes ran into as many as 100 couplets or more in monorhyme, the ghazal seldom exceeded twelve, and settled down to an average of seven. Because of its comparative brevity and concentration, its thematic variety and rich suggestiveness, the ghazal soon eclipsed the qasida and became the most popular form of poetry in Iran.
The ghazal came to India with the advent and extension of the Muslim influence from the 12th century onwards. The Moghuls brought along with them Iranian culture and civilization, including Iranian poetry and literature. When Persian gave way to Urdu as the language of poetry and culture in India, the ghazal, the fruit of Indo-Iranian culture, found its opportunity to grow and develop. Although the ghazal is said to have begun with Amir Khusro (1253-1325) in Northern India, Deccan in the South was its real home in the early stages. It was nursed and trained in the courts of Golconda and Bijapur under the patronage of Muslim rulers. Mohd. Quli Qutab Shah, Wajhi, Hashmi, Nusrati and Wali may be counted among its pioneers. Of these, Wali Deccany (1667-1707) may be called the Chaucer of Urdu poetry.
Wali's visit to Delhi made in 1700 acquires a historic significance. This visit was instrumental in synthesizing the poetic streams of the South and the North. Wali's poetry awakened the minds of the Persian-loving North to the beauty and richness of Urdu language, and introduced them to the true flavor of ghazal, thus encouraging its rapid growth and popularity. In its form, the ghazal is a short poem rarely of more than a dozen couplets in the same metre. It always opens with a rhyming couplet called matla. The rhyme of the opening couplet is repeated at the end of second line in each succeeding verse, so that the rhyming pattern may be represented as AA, BA, CA, DA, and so on.
In addition to the restriction of rhyme, the ghazal also observes the convention of radif. Radif demands that a portion of the first line -- comprising not more than two or three words -- immediately preceding the rhyme-word at the end, should rhyme with its counterpart in the second line of the opening couplet, and afterwards alternately throughout the poem. The opening couplet of the ghazal is always a representative couplet: it sets the mood and tone of the poem and prepares us for its proper appreciation. The last couplet of the ghazal called makta often includes the pen-name of the poet, and is more personal than general in its tone and intent. Here the poet may express his own state of mind, or describe his religious faith, or pray for his beloved, or indulge in poetic self-praise.
The different couplets of the ghazal are not bound by the unity and consistency of thought. Each couplet is a self-sufficient unit, detachable and quotable, generally containing the complete expression of an idea. Some poets including Hasrat, Iqbal and Josh have written ghazals in the style of a nazm, based on a single theme, properly developed and concluded. But such ghazals are an exception rather than a rule, and the traditional ghazal still holds sway. However, we do come across, off and on, even in the works of classical poets, ghazals exhibiting continuity of theme or, more often, a set of verses connected in theme and thought. Such a thematic group is called a qita, and is presumably resorted to when a poet is confronted with an elaborate thought difficult to be condensed in a single verse. Although the ghazal deals with the whole spectrum of human experience, its central concern is love. Ghazal is an Arabic word which literally means talking to women.
