FAIZ
AHMED FAIZ AND STEPHEN GILL: A Comparative Study
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The purpose of this comparative
study is not to lower or excel one
poet over the other because every flower has its
own uniqueness. Considering this fact and also that comparisons may
not be easy and tasteful for everyone this evaluation is directed
to dissect similarities and dissimilarities for a
better understanding and enjoyment of Faiz
Ahmed Faiz and Stephen Gill.
Faiz is a
poet of beauty and love. These elements are evident not only in his diction but also in the
subject matter of his poetry. He is also remembered as a poet of
revolution. Dictionaries explain that a
revolution refers to change in the political
system through force. That is the
credo of the Marxists and Faiz Ahmed Faiz was a Marxist. He was
imprisoned because of his involvement in a
plot to overthrow the government of Zia-ul-Haq through a military coupe. Faiz is also referred to
as a poet of the masses, although the fact is that
only a handful of his poems
about love and beauty are understandable by
the masses. These handful of poems have
been sung by famous singers who can be credited for
bringing him popularity among the common people.
On the other hand, Stephen Gill writes to bring peace through peaceful means. He is a poet of
universal peace, love and human rights. He “urges abolition of racial,
religious, political and economic prejudices and seeks equal opportunities and
privileges for men and women, adoption of a world code of human rights and
responsibilities, and creation of a world federal government to heal the
dissensions that divide people. He knows religious fanaticism and hatred are a
world-devouring fire.”1 He does all
this in a poetry that is graceful and easy to understand.
Stephen Gill and Faiz Ahmed Faiz are two poetic sons of Sialkot that was a region of the Panjab of India before the partition in 1947 and
became a region of the Panjab
of Pakistan after the partition. The
fertile land of Sialkot, known
for the production of the supporting goods, is
also known for producing personalities that
became prominent nationally and internationally. The
area has a shrine of Guru
Nanak, the first guru of the Sikhs. In
film industry, Sialkot has
produced director Kidar Sharma, a
good poet who wrote dialogue for films, and
songs for the immortal singer Saigal.
Among actresses, there is Nimmi
and among actors, there is Rajinder Kumar who acted in
the famous film Jogan. In the field
of poetry there is Allama Muhamed Iqbal, who
is the national poet of
Among the most recent
contemporary poets, Stephen Gill and Faiz
Ahmed Faiz are worth
comparing. Both are known
and respected internationally and both have produced
the bulk of their works outside of
The father of Faiz, a
feudal lord and lawyer in
Faiz Ahmed Faiz held a
master’s degree in English Literature from
Stephen Gill has a
master’s degree in English Literature from
Life in new pastures
did not heal his wounds completely. “Fear as a wolf
of painful emotions kept emerging again and again from the bushes of helplessness in the wasteland of time. It kept
disturbing the peace of my nights,” he says,
“particularly whenever I heard about the riots
from my compatriots in Canada. Even when the wolf was
asleep, the thorn of the scars bothered me.3
Both Faiz and Gill accepted
their self-exiles because of the life-threatening situations, although
for Faiz those situations
were avoidable. Faiz was not in a life-threatening
situation because he was from a Muslim background
and his name was Muslim. Moreover, he
lived in a country that is predominantly Muslim. If
there were problems for him, they were
self-created. There was no danger for him if he had refrained from
criticizing his government.
On the other hand, life-threatening
situation for Stephen Gill was real. It
was the result of the religious bigotry that was out
of his control. In those days “persons were being killed mercilessly on
the streets, in the houses, trains and other places. People were changing their
religions under force, and forced marriages to men of other faith were common.
Young girls were kidnapped and were passed on from one man to another for pleasure .”4
To criticize a non-Christian in those days
was not going to land Stephen Gill in a jail. It
was going to land him in a
graveyard. That could have been his fate
even if he had done nothing. He was interrogated a couple of times for
his writings by fundamentalists. The
question of criticising the government as Faiz did,
was not imaginable for Stephen Gill. Life was miserable even without any fault of his own. Religious bigots
were making the lives of minorities more and more suffocating. To be secure, free and be able to write about those bigots
needed a life-giving environment that he received in
Faiz started his
poetry with the traditional themes and
treatment of love and beauty in Urdu literature. Soon he began to write also about social
and political issues of his day. He has suggested this change in
his famous lyric mujhse pehli si muhabbat
mere mehboob na mang that could be translated as
Do not Ask Me Now My Beloved to Love You as
I Did.
Though the poet draws a line of demarcation here
between his former and forthcoming poetry, he could not
stick to this demarcation. There has always
been a combination of both features in his
poetry. Even those poems which are
presented as the models of his political poems do not appear
to be political. It is “often,
a mingling of the political and the romantic pervades his poetry.
Sometimes the two, especially in the ghazals,
are entangled in such a way that there is no point in trying to separate
them : the political meaning informs the romantic and the romantic, the
political”5 This feature in the poetry
of Faiz is noticeably
different from the poetry of Stephen Gill
that is obviously about peace and social concerns even to a casual
reader.
One of the meeting points of both poets is
the language of Urdu. Both started writing poetry early in life during their schools days and both stopped
writing poetry till they finished their
schools. Both have written
occasionally in Panjabi language.
Stephen Gill switched to English from Urdu. He
writes now occasionally in Urdu and Panjabi. The main reason for
his switch is his message that he wants to share
with a wider audience for which English is more
suitable. Most of the work of Stephen Gill is in English though once in a
while he writes in Urdu and Panjabi,
depending on his mood and need. He changes
the version from one language to another himself as Robindranath Tagore
did. There is a
bulk of English poems that Stephen Gill has not
put in Urdu and Panjabi versions. In the same way there are several Urdu poems that
Stephen Gill has not put into English version. He does not
call this practice as translation.
For him it is like writing originally in that
language. He has not done some of
his Urdu poems in English. Those poems were written
primarily for Urdu-knowing audiences, because of the
references and their need for that readership. He
still thinks that one day he may do
them in English with footnotes and
vice versa if he would find time.
Faiz like Robinderanath Tagore and
Stephen Gill could produce the English version of his poems himself. He had a
master’s degree in English as Stephen Gill
has, and taught English as Stephen Gill
did. Unlike Stephen Gill, Faiz studied English at his early age when he was a
student at
Stephen Gill, has the same features
in his English poetry that he has in his Urdu and Panjabi poetry. He writes and talks about life
around. He is convinced that without
peace there cannot be progress. Instead of wasting money and intelligence to manufacture the
engines of destruction, governments must discover ways to cure the incurable diseases.
He wants everybody to
enjoy equal legal and social status in the global
village. He also believes that the purpose of religion is to bring unity, not to divide
humanity.
Faiz talks about
peace, not so strongly and diligently as Stephen Gill does in his poem after
poem. The fountain of inspiration for Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a leftist, is
Marxist ideology that holds capitalism responsible for
several ills in society. This system
reduces workers to the status of
poverty and undernourishment. Faiz
was one of the founders of the Progressive
Writers Movement that has a leaning toward socialist philosophy.
On the other hand, the fountain of inspiration
for Stephen Gill is world federalism. He
believes in forming a democratic one-world
government to eliminate wars and
waste. World Federalism
has fertilized the thinking of Stephen Gill strongly:
In addition to a number of articles, he has
incorporated it in his other works also. His book Discovery of
Gill's poetry obviously shows the influence of World Federalism. His
collections revolve around world unity and survival. "The United
Nations" expresses his respect for the founding principles of the United
Nations and his admiration for its efforts to foster peace and harmony in the
world. Poems like "To War Mongers" and
"War is Fraud" condemn war openly. There are
references to war and to the unity of mankind in other poems. In Life's
Vagaries, a collection of short stories, there is a tale called "A
Contemporary Poet,” which is based on the subject of world
government. These stories were written to convey Gill's conviction that people
all over the world are basically the same, and that
therefore there is no need for discrimination. Gill's interest in H.G. Wells is
also directly linked to his commitment to world federalism. He explores the
same themes, including justice, toleration, brotherhood and compassion in Why and Immigrant. Gill therefore is a world
federalist in his writing as well as in his practical life, and he considers
himself a world citizen. 6
Another fountain of inspiration for Stephen Gill is democracy. He believes in democratic set ups to give equality to
everyone before the law. He says:
The seed of democracy sprouts in the open
air
of that soil which is freely watered by the
freedom of expression
and where the tongue of the serpent does
not throw the poison of fear
to fertilize the land for the thorns of
repression to grow.
The plant of democracy blossoms into the
fruits of abundance
and its branches dance to the tune of a song
that brews a wine for peace.
The shade of the tree provides joys of
social equality
through self-governing winds.7
Stephen Gill is against
fundamentalist because they destroy peace, beauty, and
kill innocent persons, including women and children. He has
written in all three languages to
denounce these merchants of death. In his interview for Poetry
in the Arts, he points out to Peggy Lynch that
“violence is a disgusting aberration of beauty, and beauty
is the music of creation. The systematic violations of the rights which
were universally declared and adopted by the General Assembly of the United
Nations are the worst aberrations.”8
The insane assaults in
Why
terrorists profess their targets are not innocent
yet they engineer sneaky devices to awaken
the dogs of gloom.
Why
all that runs opposite to their fabric is
unholy for their mind.
Why do they hold a Rosary in one hand and
violence in the other.
Why
hiding behind the fungus of hate they rape the
sanctity of life. Why their road to
bliss
litters with lingering bitterness. Why they
are merchants uncivilized.
Why
they are trained in the school of anarchy
which blooms as deadly nightshade on the fringes of
fallacies. Why they talk of harmony but plan
genocide.
Why
they cannot see the ecstatic dance of peacocks
and across a borderless horizon the
dove flying. Why do they promote the twisted
agenda of insanity. Why do they love the
catechism of ruin. Why do they commit outrages which are futile.9
In “Religious Fanaticism,” he condemns them in
the strongest possible language when he says that a
fanatic is :
A mental labyrinth;
bearer of deformed urchins in the ruins of assumptions. A leper caressing
humanity under false pretences; volcano when it
blusters.
It grows on the babel
of confusion in the lap of the blinding dust of vanity by
the arrogant prince of ignorance. It breeds the daughters of fire storm and wound.
It leads the adders of dread, destruction,
disdain and distaste.10
Stephen Gill believes that peace and progress go hand in hand, and to call the
humans of today civilised is wrong because they have invented
weapons of mass destruction. They can
reach the moon but cannot reach the moon of the human
heart. Considering the sufferings that this so-called progress has
brought, it would be called retrogression. Stephen
Gill has summed up these ideas in several
poems. In “We Are Proud,” he wonders:
We are proud to view
the moon's cold breast and to collect
shallow knowledge
of
distant planets in our laps.
We are proud of
fiddling with noxious gases and of raining virus and fire
to deface our mother
earth.
We are proud of our
bloodthirsty robots, our youth in uniforms, gigantic factories,
Sky-hitting
buildings and restless machines which crush our peace.
Yet we are not proud
of a single aircraft accident-free to ensure our travels carefree.
Diseases still
scurry. From their sinister effects medicines still not free.
Families falling
apart, no love, no respect for life.
Yet we are proud. I
wonder why?11
Stephen Gill has a cloudless vision of the future he wants to build and the
paths that he wants the world to follow to
achieve that vision. He is against wars. He wants democracy, respect for
the rights of minorities and
ultimately formation of a world government through
educational means. These solutions and goals are clear in his writings. He has
written a number of poems to condemn wars
and bloodshed. To make his readers aware of the futility of wars, he has edited two anti war anthologies.
In the first anthology that was published in 1984
he points out the perils of nuclear warfare when he says in the
introduction that “one single factor that is
responsible for this impending peril is the nuclear warfare, hanging over
our heads like the sword of Damocles. The
sword may fall any time or moment to destroy all of us.”12
In the introduction of the second anthology that
was published in 1986 he says, “History has proved
over and over again that violence leads to further violence and hatred to
further hatred. Fear and violence may silence a few
persons and nations for a while– not forever– and the problems,
which are the real enemies, remain unsolved.”13 Faiz on the other
hand, is critical of capitalism. Even
this criticism is not clear and strong in his
poetry. He has no definite goal to achieve to bring peace in the world,
except that of overthrowing the capitalism to end the sufferings of the workers.
Stephen Gill and Faiz Ahmed
Faiz believe in using their
pens to get across their messages. For both, writing is not a pleasurable
pastime. Faiz believed,
as the other members of the Progressive Writers Movement do,
in using the arts to spread ideology.
Stephen Gill believes the same though he
believes also in maintaining a balance between the form and
subject. A message is important to Stephen Gill,
but he does not want to carry that message in a vehicle that is not
equally beautiful. He wants a perfect marriage between both.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz follows Mirza
Ghalib as far as the
diction of his poetry is concerned. His admiration for Ghalib
is obvious when he titled his first collection of poems Naqshe-e-Faryadi that is
the first line of the first ghazal of the collection
of Ghalib. Faiz shows his strong commitment to lower class of people in his
poetry that is loaded with classical tradition of Urdu literature. His poetry is shaped by the traditional romantic
imagery of Urdu poetry though here and there he mingles it with
symbols from the West. “Faiz’s language, true
to its Urdu and Persian ancestry, can be filled with ambiguity, and this allows
the poet to combine the passion of love with the passion of political
commitment.”14 The message of Faiz Ahmed Faiz gets lost in the
wilderness of his diction. Faiz was aware of it:
Since the day Faiz appeared on
India's literary scene, some people had been complaining that though Faiz wrote for the common man his diction was beyond
the comprehension of the people he wrote for,
barring of course poems like Bol
keh lub azaad hain tairay
or soach. Whenever Faiz was
encountered with this question, he would concede
that this had been a weakness in his Urdu poetry.
In an introduction to Faiz's collection of poetry, Zindaan Naama, Major Ishaq
wrote: ‘Faiz's poetry has the spirit and emotions of
a man of heart. Within it beats the heart of the nation but I don't know why
the warmth of the sweat and the blood of a worker is
not present in it in the required proportion. He remembers the roses and the
jasmines with great affection but he does not describe the plight of the one
who produces them with great toil and has full right to benefit from their
beauty, fragrance and colours. His poetry has yet to
come out of drawing rooms, schools and colleges and to spread to the streets,
roads, fields and factories.15
Although Faiz did not believe in arts for arts sake, in practice he
does. He follows the tradition of Ghalib. If there is any serious message in his poetry that is not clear.
“Although politics colors
much of Faiz's poetry, much of it is also romantic,
and some is a combination of the two, a juxtaposition not always familiar to
Western readers.”16 Faiz Ahmed Faiz
is seldom fully immersed in the sea of peace as Stephen
Gill does in the bulk of his poetry. Stephen Gill
uses the dove repeatedly as a symbol of peace. He has
addressed several poems only to the dove, such
as “To A Dove,” “My Dove,” and “The Dove of Peace.”
Moreover, Stephen Gill does
not follow any master or tradition. His
diction is unique, and clear. “Gill’s gift of language, the immediacy of his wit and
word-play combined with a command of imagery which not
only captures his readers in a freeze-frame, but hustles them
through time and space to another dimension, places him in the forefront of
contemporary Indian poets writing in English.”17 Gill’s individuality that is clear in
his English poetry is also clear in his Urdu and Panjabi poetry. “What is apparent in all of Stephen Gill’s
work is his generous use of imagery, the substance of all poetry to allow to comprehend
the shadow, form and content inseparable as always but
in a contemporary, un abstruse and most relevant fashion that remain
timeless and universal”18 Tracing the reasons for this
individuality in Stephen Gill’s works, Dr. R.K. Singh, head of the
English department of a university, a reputed poet and critic of India,
says “His social norms, standards and values are neither fully Indian nor
fully Western, but rather international. His
concerns are human and his contexts increasingly become global.”19“
Dr. Gill’s poems in general are simple and at times plain; images and
metaphors that he employs are communicative and not
decorative. In them lyric is
subservient to the greater thematic concern and the emphasis is on the forceful
communication of his social concern to achieve a wider goal, the realization of
his dream of a world free from fear, hunger, discrimination, hatred and
violence.”20
For Stephen Gill, message is equally
important as is the vehicle that carries the message of peace. His Urdu
and Panjabi
poetry is also in the same vein and with the same purpose. Nearly they all are about
peace and social concerns. Some Urdu poems of Stephen Gill
have been sung by a prominent musician and singer of
Faiz was honoured
by organizations for his efforts to promote peace through
poetry. His main honour,
Lenin Peace Prize, was from
Stephen Gill has not been honored by
Russia, because he does not use his pen to promote Marxism,
though he has been also called a
progressive writer. He does not write to
please any regime or institution. He is
concerned about human rights and equality before law
for every individual. He shows ways to
abolish future wars and bloodshed. He dreams that minorities should also enjoy the
freedoms that are enshrined in the declarations of the United Nations Human
Rights and that are enjoyed by majority. He is a
devotee of democracy and believes in the
formation of a democrat world government. He uses his prose also to
spread his message. Stephen Gill is also a progressive writer
from every angle because of his subject matter
and diction.
Using Lotus, an
international leftist publication that he edited from
Stephen Gill is primarily a poet, though he is known also for
writing his powerful prose. Whether it
is his poetry or prose or his talk, he emerges as an embassador
of harmony. Stephen Gill has
workable solutions to make the world
a better place to live. He is fully
aware how to create peace in the war-weary world. He does not seek
escapism in the lap of a beloved as Faiz does. For him
peace is beauty and beauty is peace. Stephen Gill
is not a poet of love and beauty in the
sense Faiz is. Stephen Gill has
tried the themes of love and beauty rarely
because the snakes of religious bigotry and
his struggle for his vision did not let him roam
leisurely in the vale of romance. For Stephen Gill, love is the peace
that is inherent in the beauty of the human rights.
That is what Mr. Pritam
Singh, a retired IAS officer, records in Advance:
Art is beauty and I see real beauty in peace and l strive
to bring it out in my writing, whether it is poetry or prose. No sensible
person will deny that we are living on the mouth of a volcano. It took millions
of years to build human civilisation, which nuclear warfare can destroy in
minutes. No sane reader will endorse barbarity, and condemn peace and world
unity, which are basic to all the religious and human survival. Peace allures
me as does any beauty. To go one step further, peace and
beauty are identical terms for me. A poet
expresses what produces a powerful impact on him. One of my obsessions is the
danger imposed by the sophisticated engines of destruction, which have the
capability to destroy the world many times over. Man
seems to exist only on this earth throughout the whole
universe. It will be the catastrophe-- an
irreversible step-- if man annihilated himself.21
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
acknowledges in a conversation with Muzaffar
Iqbal that is included in Pakistan
Literature that “one should not lose one’s faith
and hope for without faith and hope, one cannot survive and
life cannot continue”. Faiz
quotes a ghazal that has
a glimpse of this hope.22
However, this hope is not expressed vividly in
the poetry of Faiz as it is
expressed in the poetry of Stephen Gill. “Stephen Gill is a Radical
Optimist always seeing the best side of every situation, always expecting the
future to be better than the past but eager and willing to do all in his power
to help bring this about”23 Talking
of hope in Gill’s poetry, Dr. Frank Tierney, former head of
the department of English Literature of the University of Ottawa, points
out:
There is, in Mr. Gill's mature work, public despair but
private hope. Survival and growth of the person and the nation begin with inner
enlightenment, inner awareness of
the principle of survival-- love.
But there is in Tennyson's poem and Mr. Gill's
volume a hierarchy of values. The first and most important is, as John
Henry Newman insisted, "growth within" This
growth requires spiritual priority. This principle leads man to
personal, national and international harmony through an understanding that
comes from love.24
Stephen Gill is a poet
of hope as several critics maintain. Professor Dr. Frank Tierney is one of them.
Expression of hope is clearer in the
following widely read and appreciated poem of Stephen Gill:
Through the cracks in the crumbling walls
of now
I grab particles of the dust from the
diamonds of your
shoreless abode of the fathomless bliss.
More than the sweet sobbing melodies
the amaze of the amazing abode of your calm
grace
is to me. Your recollection tiptoes in the
caves of my words
and your sobering silence plays with the lips
of my thinking
For his efforts in poetry, Dr. Stephen
Gill has been honored by several national and international
organizations, including
The Pakistan Association of Ottawa, Canada, has honored
Stephen Gill with Poet of Peace Award in
1995. Other recognitions include Pegasus International Poetry
for Peace Award, (Poetry in the Arts, Inc., Austin, Texas, USA);
Certificate and a Laurel Leaf, inscribed Laureate Man of
Letters at the 13th world conference of United Poets Laureate
International, held at The Pointe in Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Best
Poet of Peace in the World for the year 1993
from Roger Cable 11, Canada; and The Queen’s Golden Jubilee
Medal in 2002. He has received the honor
of doctorates.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz is essentially a poet of
love and beauty. “Although he is
sometimes described as a Marxist thinker, he was at heart a romanticist who
wrote some of the best love poems of his time.”25 On the other hand, Stephen Gill is
essentially a poet of peace and human rights.
Both poets excel for their global mindedness and
service to humanity through poetry, rising above the growth
of religious pollutants that have been sickening the
subcontinent of
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1"A Search For Elysium” by Dr. Prof. R.K. Singh
and Mitali De Sarkar. The Mawaheb
International, June 1998
2Shrine ( poems of social concerns) by Stephen Gill,
Introduction. The
3----------------- The
4----------------- The
5The True Subject by Agha Shahid
Ali. Winter90, vol.9,
issue 2
6Stephen Gill & His Works by Dr. George Hines, pp16-17, Vesta
Publications Ltd., 2003
7Shrine, “Seeds of Democracy”,
The
8 Poetry in the Arts, USA.,
No 23, January 2001
9Shrine, “Terrorists”, The
10Shrine, “Religious
Fanaticism,” The
11The Dove of Peace, MAF Press, New York, 1989, p.15
12Anti-War Poems ((vol.1), Vesta Publications
Ltd., 1984, Introduction
13Anti-War Poems ((vol.11, Vesta Publications
Ltd., 1986, Introduction
14World Literature in Review: Iran, By Hanaway
Jr., William L., “World Literature Today,” winter 93, vol. 67, issue1