Suffering in the Love Poetry of Faiz and Neruda

Abstract

The political aspects of the work by Pablo Neruda and Faiz Ahmed Faiz have long dominated the love poetry of the two writers. The paper has tried to shift the critical focus back to the issue of suffering as it is evidenced in their chosen love poems. By means of close reading and comparative analysis, the paper analyzes the way in which both poets express personal anguish, loss, and longing as the general poetic issues as opposed to being the byproducts of their revolutionary identities. In this respect the following poems by Neruda are considered: Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines, A Song of Despair, and Don't Go Far Off, and poems by Faiz, in this case: If My Suffering Found a Voice, The Death of the Fires of Love, and Don't Ask Me Now, Beloved. The results indicate that the two poets are connected with one another through the common subject of suffering, but they are radically different in their reaction to suffering - Neruda becomes desperate and existential and Faiz uses suffering as an identity source and survival. The paper concludes that the love poetry of both Neruda and Faiz should be read in its own right without concern to the political paradigms in which they have been traditionally read.