MARXIST UTOPIA AND POLITICAL IDEALISM IN THE POETRY OF PABLO NERUDA AND FAIZ AHMAD FAIZ: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

Comparative literature in its pure, classical form has been on a steady decline since the rise of postcolonial studies that challenged its Eurocentricity and universalist claims. Contrary to the formalistic approach of the European comparatists, postcolonial comparative literary studies focus upon the nexus between aesthetics and politics contributing to the growing multiple perspective approach in the comparative studies field. Pablo Neruda and Faiz Ahmad Faiz are the two eminent, socially-committed, poets of the post-imperial age who have committed their art to lend intellectual authority to the political struggle of the forces of resistance against hegemonic orders to effect socio- political change and to create an exploitation-free world order. The two poets have projected their Marxist futuristic vision and political ideals in the wake of bourgeois hegemony in their respective postcolonial societies. These responses are deeply embedded in the specific philosophical, cultural, religious and literary traditions of their societies. The comparative study of Marxist utopia and political idealism in the poetry of Neruda and Faiz examines similarities of counter-hegemonic content and form – a logical outcome of shared political and historical conditions of their societies and specificities arising out of the influence of particular frames of reference in which the works of the two poets are produced. The theoretical framework of the study is Marxist literary theory which affirms political and neo-historicist readings of literature. I have also benefitted from certain aspects of postcolonial theory since it complements Marxist perspective on imperialism, nationalism, history and culture and ascribes to the politics of resistance. Research questions are based upon the basic tenets of literary Marxism which also evaluate the significance of Neruda and Faiz’s poetry in this age of corporate globalisation. Keeping in view the vast oeuvre of the two poets and the limitations of research in terms of time and space, I have delimited my study to the textual analysis of Neruda’s celebrated political work Canto General (General Song) translated into English by Jack Schmitt and the thematically and formally significant poems of Faiz translated into English by Victor Kiernan in Poems by Faiz and Daud Kamal and Khalid Hasan’s O City of Lights. The comparative study endorses the thesis statement highlighting ideological and formal similarities and specificities as the ideological commitments of the two poets are contextualised in their cultural backgrounds.