How not to Read Faiz Ahmad Faiz?

Source: Indian Literature (Sahitya Academy)
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Author: Gopi Chanel Narang
Translated from Udu by Baidar Bakht
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How not to read Faiz (Faiz Ahmad Faiz; 1911-1984) does imply how Faiz must not be read, or how he must be read. But this is not what is intended here. To say how Faiz be read or how he should not be read sounds prescriptive, and it is not the role of criticism to be prescriptive. There are readings and readings. Faiz is a popular poet and who can tell his admirers how to read and how not to read Faiz! It is besides the point that there is no dearth of critics who take such stance without realizing that their writing is neither of any use for literature nor for literary criticism. Notwithstanding, the poetry of Faiz is read by all sorts of readers, and the graph of his popularity stays pretty stable. It is also understandable that the camp-followers of a particular breed use the poetry of Faiz to shield their own shortcomings. Popularity has its own downside, because the crowd of admirers comprises a majority of those who do not know why they like their hero. Do they admire him because of their genuine appreciation of his text or simply because others admire him? The popularity of Faiz, intact even today, was established in the second half of the twentieth century, and this is not a short period for the firming of a poet's significance. During this period, much has been written about Faiz, but it is a sad fact that many of his admirers admire him for wrong reasons; they have written little about his poetic worth. In this regard, Faiz deserves our sympathy.

he poetry of Faiz deserves appreciation from those as well who understand the dynamics of reading and how poetry functions. Reading is an open-ended project and the problem arises only when a lobby insists on a particular reading so much so that that reading restricts the semantic play of the text. To say the least, it is a disservice to the poet. Faiz, no doubt is a committed poet and nobody can deny his ideological leanings. But mere ideological readings do not fit his aesthetic structure and the main question is that how this structure signifies within the framework of his ideological project. As reading implies freedom, by employing a negative 'how not' we are not impeding the free flow of interpretation, rather stressing that conflict within the ideological project needs to be attended to, and any reading that avoids conflict in the ideological project is restrictive and does not do justice to the appreciation of Faiz.

Popularity is usually the result of several factors, such as personal charisma, romantic image, biographical data (especially if it involves political confinement or exile or any such restriction). However, when the cruel hand of time creates a gap, all such subjective signages are washed away, and what remains is the spotless spring of the text; and it is this which is not fully considered by admirers of Faiz. If they do consider, they do so in a cursory manner. True poetry is a world in itself, but if literary criticism is not open to dissent and difference in interpretation, then the door of the magic of the poetry cannot open. In my earlier writings, I have alluded to the sensuous nature of the aesthetic effect in Faiz's poetry along with its peculiar semantic range. There is no need to repeat all that now. In this piece, I would like to point out briefly that in reading a text, one must not only pay attention to the presence (of words) but also heed to the silences and absences in the text, as Pierre Macherey or Roland Barthes usually suggest. This, in my opinion is a necessary prerequisite to appreciate the aesthetic dynamics of Faiz's poetry.

It should be noted that ideology as discussed by Althusser is not an abstraction which people carry around in their minds or a treatise of abstract ideas. Instead, it refers to human beings' necessary condition of action in a social formation. He had argued that ideology is represented by discourses governing the practices how we live our lives, i.e., it is in the condition of human existence. It is characteristic of the ideology that in a social formation at one end of the scale lies the ideology, on the other is science & technology, and somewhere in between is the world of art and literature marked by the aesthetic effect. All the three domains are inter-dependent yet relatively autonomous. Science leads to the 'knowl¬edge effect', ideology to the 'ideological effect', and art and literature to the 'aesthetic effect', and this last effect holds the key to the appreciation of Faiz. All the three effects, while each playing an autonomous role in its domain in the superstructure, do overlap and play a determinant role; and despite the inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in them, they do tend to resolve the inherent conflict. Having said this, now let's turn to the text of Faiz. Let's see how it is usually read and whether or not such reading is incomplete or misleading.

Merleau-Ponty, an important interpreter of phenomenology who has been almost forgotten by the moderns, had noted:

[italic]But what if language speaks as much by what is between words as by the words themselves? As much by what it 'does not say' as by what it 'says'![/italic]

In other words, it is beyond doubt that it is the characteristic of language that what it says through words, it also says through gaps and silences. Probably, from the point of view of meaning, this is a clear parallel to the oriental concept of ibain-ussutoof (lit. between lines), but perhaps no one in the oriental rhetoric ever tried to theorise this. Mark it that we are not talking of mere silence between lines or words, rather what is intended is the silence between the absent and present meaning. If we read once again what Merleau-Ponty said, we will appreciate the inference that words speak through what they reveal, as well as through what they hide or do not reveal. As if the dark areas of language are as instrumental in evoking meaning and aesthetic effect as the bright areas.

Let's take a look at Faiz's poem "Dast-e Teh-e Sang Amada" (A Hand Trapped Under a Rock) from his collection with the same title. (The translation is deliberately literal so that it stays as close to the original as possible):

Bezaar faza
darpa-e- aazaar saba hai
Yun hai ke har ik
hamdam-e-dairina khafa hai

(The morning breeze hurts,
and the atmosphere is displeased;
It seems as if every old friend
is angry [with me].)

Haan baada kasho
aaya hai ab rang pe mausam
Ab sair ke qaabil
ravish-e-aab-o-hawa hai

(Yes, fellow drinkers,
the time is just right for drinking;
The weather appears just right
for a stroll through the garden)