Today, 99th birth anniversary of famous revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz is being celebrated today. On this occasion art exhibitions, poetry recitations and other events intended to honour him for his many contributions to national life.Pakistani poet and journalist, who combined in his poetry the themes of love, beauty, and political ideals into a vision of a better world and goodness. Faiz's first language was Punjabi but he gained fame with his poems written in Urdu, a language similar to Arabic. Due to his opposition to the government and military dictators, Faiz spent several years in prison and was forced to go into exile at different times in his career. Next to Muhammad Iqbal , Faiz is one of the best-known poets of Pakistan.Faiz's first collections of poetry, Naqsh-e faryadi (1943), Dast-e saba (1952), and Zindan Namah (1956), were politically motivated, and include some of his most famous poems based on his prison experiences. Faiz describes his life behind the walls, in confinement, finding consolation in the thought that though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed / in rooms where lovers are destined to meet / they cannot snuff out the moon (from 'A Prison Evening') His tone is introspective along the conventions of ghazal, the favorite form of traditional Urdu poetry. But Faiz also expresses feelings of other political prisoners when he writes: I make a toast to my friends everywhere, / here in my homeland and scross the world: 'Let us drink, my dear ones, to human beauty, / to the loveliness of earth.' (from 'Solitary Confinement'). In one of his prison poems Faiz paralles his own fate with the authoritarian system outside the prison: If you look at the city from here / there is no one fully in control of his senses. / Every young man bears the brand of a criminal, / every young woman the emblem of a slave.In spite of his Marxist beliefs, Faiz did not burden his poems with ideological rhetoric. He fused classic traditional forms of poetry with new symbols derived from Western political ideas. However, in an interview Faiz has criticized the view that a poet should always present some kind of philosophical, political or some other sort of thesis. Like Muhammad Iqbal, he reinterpreted the most important theme in the Urdu ghazal, the theme of love. The word ghazal comes from Arabic and has been translated as to talk with women or to talk of women. Faiz often addressed his poem to his beloved, who can be interpreted as his muse, his country, or his concept of beauty or social change.
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