Deciphering Faiz: ‘Don’t get lost in translation’

Scholar believes ‘Hum Dekhein Ge’ is too harsh to be written by Faiz.

KARACHI: Poetry must be appreciated for its magic. And Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry truly has ‘duende’ — what Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca described as the shiver down your spine when you hear a good poem. No point in getting lost in translation.

These views were expressed by scholar Dr Nomanul Haq at a lecture on Faiz at the Aga Khan University Hospital on Thursday.

According to Dr Haq, poetry needs to be rehabilitated into poetics -— we should focus on the theory and the abstract of poetry. “It is best if we appreciate a work of art for what it is — abstract and magical — rather than looking for something concrete and getting lost in translations.”

Currently a senior faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Dr Haq is noted especially for his work on history and literature. He criticised the current discourse on Faiz’s poetry that focuses almost exclusively on his socio-political role. Rich use of metaphor, imagery, motif and rhythm are a tradition of Urdu poetry in which Faiz excelled beyond limit, he said. “He plays with metaphors and extracts them from reality. No world poetry has this reconstruction of metaphor at all.”

Dr Haq, who is currently working on Faiz’s work, used to accompany the poet everywhere when he was alive. Faiz is the only poet who brought him face to face with contemporary poetry, he said.

The scholar admitted that he could not relate to Faiz’s revolutionary ghazal ‘Hum Dekhein Ge’ because “it was just not him”. “The words were way too harsh for a softspoken man like Faiz. There is no one as gentle as he is in the annals of Urdu history.”

Referring to the aura and magnetic pull of Faiz’s poetry, Dr Haq said that its beauty was that a layman could relate to it. “There was ubiquitous Allama Iqbal too. Schools, colleges and airports have been named after him but an average school-going student does not understand or relate to him at the same level as they do with Faiz’s poetry.” Faiz was undefeated by everyday reality and history.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th, 2011.