Love, Surrender, and Power in Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Pablo Neruda

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22693560

Abstract

This study revisits the representation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Pablo Neruda as revolutionary poets by examining their poetry as love poetry and by focusing on the reversal of power dynamics between the lover and the beloved. Faiz and Neruda have frequently been associated with political resistance, rebellion, socialism, and the suffering of their respective societies. Their political lives and historical circumstances have consequently influenced the manner in which their poetry has been received and studied. The present study argues, however, that their identities as revolutionary poets have overshadowed their identities as poets of love. Their poetry contains classical elements of love poetry, including desire, beauty, grief, heartbreak, intoxication, devotion, sensuality, longing, and the divine. The study examines selected poems by Faiz and Neruda alongside poems by conventional love poets including John Donne, John Keats, Lord Byron, William Butler Yeats, and Pablo Neruda, in order to identify recurring elements of conventional love poetry. It further examines the power dynamics between the lover and the beloved and demonstrates how poets who appear powerful and rebellious in the public sphere become vulnerable and powerless in the intimate sphere of love. The study also considers the manner in which Faiz’s love for his beloved and his love for his country coexist within his poetry. By applying the techniques of New Criticism, the study focuses on the poems as love poems and examines their language, imagery, metaphors, conceits, sensuality, religious imagery, and treatment of beauty and longing. The study therefore attempts to restore Faiz and Neruda to their position as love poets while recognizing the relationship between their personal and political poetic worlds.