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Of Light, Loss, and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Reimagining of Paradise Lost
His poem “Mujh Se Pehli Si Mohabbat” (Not That Old Love) is a direct renunciation of romantic, escapist longing (the desire to return to a pre-lapsarian state of love). He commands himself to focus on the concrete miseries of the world: Do not ask for the old love from me, I am weary of the world’s sorrows. This is the final break with Milton. For Milton, the memory of Eden informs the future. For Faiz, the memory of Eden is a bourgeois distraction. The only valid future is one forged in the crucible of the fallen present. Faiz Ahmed Faiz does not simply echo Paradise Lost ; he dialectically negates it. He takes Milton’s grand architecture—the cosmic war, the prison of the fallen world, the defiant rebel—and inverts its moral poles. Good becomes evil (the celestial tyrant becomes the colonial state). Evil becomes good (Satan becomes the revolutionary comrade). Tragedy becomes opportunity (the Fall becomes the revolution).
In his seminal poem “Bol” (Speak), Faiz writes: Speak, for your lips are still sealed. Speak, for this is the light of truth, the dark of falsehood. This is a post-lapsarian command. Unlike Milton’s God who condemns Adam to labor, Faiz’s implicit call is for humanity to create meaning through speech and action. The prison becomes the central metaphor. In “Zindan ki Ek Sham” (An Evening in Prison), Faiz transforms the cell into a microcosm of the fallen world: The night has grown weary of the stars, The walls are wet with the breath of sighs. Here, the prison is not merely a physical space but an existential condition—a “Paradise Lost” where innocence is impossible. However, crucially, Faiz does not ask for a return to a pre-lapsarian state. For the revolutionary, the garden is a myth. Authentic existence begins after the fall, inside the cell, in the awareness of chains. This is the inverse of Milton: For Milton, the loss of Eden is a catastrophe that necessitates divine grace; for Faiz, the loss of the false Eden (colonial peace, feudal stasis) is a liberation into historical reality. The most striking parallel between Faiz and Milton is the figure of the heroic rebel. William Blake famously noted that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Faiz is of the Devil’s party knowingly .
Milton’s Satan declares in Paradise Lost (Book I): “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Faiz recasts this sentiment in “Nisar Main Teri Galiyon Ke” (Sacrificed to Your Streets): Do not ask for that love which brings peace to the heart, Give me the love that is a tempest in the blood. The “tempest” is the Satanic principle: rebellion against the celestial tyrant (be it God, the colonial state, or the military junta). In Faiz’s famous “Hum Dekhenge” (We Shall See), the apocalyptic imagery is distinctly Miltonic: When the ark of the oppressor is wrecked in the storm of blood, We shall see. This is the language of a fallen angel promising a second fall—not of humanity into sin, but of tyrants into oblivion. Faiz’s Satan is not a tempter of Eve but a union organizer. The apple of knowledge is not original sin but class consciousness. Where Milton’s Satan is ultimately self-defeating (turning into a serpent), Faiz’s revolutionary Satan is a Promethean figure: he steals the fire of justice from an indifferent heaven and gives it to the earth. Perhaps the most profound divergence from Milton is theological. Milton’s epic is suffused with divine presence. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are active characters. In Faiz’s universe, God is conspicuously, painfully absent. This absence is not atheistic nihilism but a structured silence that forces humanity to take responsibility.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984), one of the most influential poets of the Urdu literary tradition, is often celebrated as a “poet of protest” and a revolutionary Marxist. While his work is frequently analyzed through the lens of post-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and socialist realism, a deeper theological and literary tension permeates his oeuvre: a persistent, albeit fractured, engagement with the Judeo-Christian concept of the Fall. This paper argues that Faiz’s poetry serves as a deliberate, secular re-inscription of John Milton’s Paradise Lost . Unlike Milton, who sought to “justify the ways of God to men,” Faiz seeks to justify the ways of men to a silent or absent God. By examining Faiz’s use of prison imagery (as a new Eden), his inversion of the Satanic archetype (the revolutionary as a fallen angel), and his ultimate rejection of celestial paradise for earthly justice, this paper demonstrates how Faiz inverts Milton’s epic to create a modern, post-lapsarian poetics of resistance. 1. Introduction: The Unlikely Epicenter At first glance, linking Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a Marxist Muslim from Punjab, with John Milton, a 17th-century Puritan Englishman, seems anachronistic. Yet, the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost on the intellectual currents of the Indian subcontinent is undeniable. For poets and revolutionaries emerging from the shadow of British colonialism, Milton’s Satan—the defiant rebel against an omnipotent tyrant—became an archetypal figure. Faiz, who spent years in Pakistani military prisons under the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, internalized this dialectic. His poetry is not a direct translation of Milton but a response to him. Where Milton mourns the loss of Eden, Faiz argues that Eden was always a prison. Where Milton sees the Fall as humanity’s greatest tragedy, Faiz sees it as the necessary precondition for consciousness, struggle, and revolutionary love.
This paper will explore three core thematic transformations: (1) The prison cell as the site of a new, terrestrial paradise; (2) The rehabilitation of Satan as the proletarian revolutionary; and (3) The rejection of divine justice in favor of historical materialism. Milton’s Paradise Lost opens with a catastrophic expulsion. Adam and Eve lose a garden of unearned bliss, a place without toil, sorrow, or death. Faiz’s poetry, conversely, opens with an already-lost world. The Eden of colonialism and pre-capitalist feudalism is not a paradise to be mourned but a structure of oppression to be dismantled.
In “Subh-e-Azadi” (Dawn of Freedom—written after the Partition of India in 1947), Faiz famously writes: This stained light, this night-bitten dawn, This is not that dawn for which we yearned. The poet refuses to thank Providence for a flawed independence. Milton’s Adam leaves Paradise with divine promise; Faiz’s post-colonial subject leaves the colonial prison only to find a new, corrupt prison. Consequently, Faiz rejects Milton’s theodicy (the justification of God). Instead, he proposes an anthropodicy: the justification of humanity. The only “paradise” Faiz can imagine is a terrestrial one built by collective labor—a communist utopia that is explicitly this-worldly .
Of Light, Loss, and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Reimagining of Paradise Lost
His poem “Mujh Se Pehli Si Mohabbat” (Not That Old Love) is a direct renunciation of romantic, escapist longing (the desire to return to a pre-lapsarian state of love). He commands himself to focus on the concrete miseries of the world: Do not ask for the old love from me, I am weary of the world’s sorrows. This is the final break with Milton. For Milton, the memory of Eden informs the future. For Faiz, the memory of Eden is a bourgeois distraction. The only valid future is one forged in the crucible of the fallen present. Faiz Ahmed Faiz does not simply echo Paradise Lost ; he dialectically negates it. He takes Milton’s grand architecture—the cosmic war, the prison of the fallen world, the defiant rebel—and inverts its moral poles. Good becomes evil (the celestial tyrant becomes the colonial state). Evil becomes good (Satan becomes the revolutionary comrade). Tragedy becomes opportunity (the Fall becomes the revolution). faiz paradise lost
In his seminal poem “Bol” (Speak), Faiz writes: Speak, for your lips are still sealed. Speak, for this is the light of truth, the dark of falsehood. This is a post-lapsarian command. Unlike Milton’s God who condemns Adam to labor, Faiz’s implicit call is for humanity to create meaning through speech and action. The prison becomes the central metaphor. In “Zindan ki Ek Sham” (An Evening in Prison), Faiz transforms the cell into a microcosm of the fallen world: The night has grown weary of the stars, The walls are wet with the breath of sighs. Here, the prison is not merely a physical space but an existential condition—a “Paradise Lost” where innocence is impossible. However, crucially, Faiz does not ask for a return to a pre-lapsarian state. For the revolutionary, the garden is a myth. Authentic existence begins after the fall, inside the cell, in the awareness of chains. This is the inverse of Milton: For Milton, the loss of Eden is a catastrophe that necessitates divine grace; for Faiz, the loss of the false Eden (colonial peace, feudal stasis) is a liberation into historical reality. The most striking parallel between Faiz and Milton is the figure of the heroic rebel. William Blake famously noted that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Faiz is of the Devil’s party knowingly . Of Light, Loss, and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s
Milton’s Satan declares in Paradise Lost (Book I): “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Faiz recasts this sentiment in “Nisar Main Teri Galiyon Ke” (Sacrificed to Your Streets): Do not ask for that love which brings peace to the heart, Give me the love that is a tempest in the blood. The “tempest” is the Satanic principle: rebellion against the celestial tyrant (be it God, the colonial state, or the military junta). In Faiz’s famous “Hum Dekhenge” (We Shall See), the apocalyptic imagery is distinctly Miltonic: When the ark of the oppressor is wrecked in the storm of blood, We shall see. This is the language of a fallen angel promising a second fall—not of humanity into sin, but of tyrants into oblivion. Faiz’s Satan is not a tempter of Eve but a union organizer. The apple of knowledge is not original sin but class consciousness. Where Milton’s Satan is ultimately self-defeating (turning into a serpent), Faiz’s revolutionary Satan is a Promethean figure: he steals the fire of justice from an indifferent heaven and gives it to the earth. Perhaps the most profound divergence from Milton is theological. Milton’s epic is suffused with divine presence. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are active characters. In Faiz’s universe, God is conspicuously, painfully absent. This absence is not atheistic nihilism but a structured silence that forces humanity to take responsibility. For Milton, the memory of Eden informs the future
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984), one of the most influential poets of the Urdu literary tradition, is often celebrated as a “poet of protest” and a revolutionary Marxist. While his work is frequently analyzed through the lens of post-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and socialist realism, a deeper theological and literary tension permeates his oeuvre: a persistent, albeit fractured, engagement with the Judeo-Christian concept of the Fall. This paper argues that Faiz’s poetry serves as a deliberate, secular re-inscription of John Milton’s Paradise Lost . Unlike Milton, who sought to “justify the ways of God to men,” Faiz seeks to justify the ways of men to a silent or absent God. By examining Faiz’s use of prison imagery (as a new Eden), his inversion of the Satanic archetype (the revolutionary as a fallen angel), and his ultimate rejection of celestial paradise for earthly justice, this paper demonstrates how Faiz inverts Milton’s epic to create a modern, post-lapsarian poetics of resistance. 1. Introduction: The Unlikely Epicenter At first glance, linking Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a Marxist Muslim from Punjab, with John Milton, a 17th-century Puritan Englishman, seems anachronistic. Yet, the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost on the intellectual currents of the Indian subcontinent is undeniable. For poets and revolutionaries emerging from the shadow of British colonialism, Milton’s Satan—the defiant rebel against an omnipotent tyrant—became an archetypal figure. Faiz, who spent years in Pakistani military prisons under the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, internalized this dialectic. His poetry is not a direct translation of Milton but a response to him. Where Milton mourns the loss of Eden, Faiz argues that Eden was always a prison. Where Milton sees the Fall as humanity’s greatest tragedy, Faiz sees it as the necessary precondition for consciousness, struggle, and revolutionary love.
This paper will explore three core thematic transformations: (1) The prison cell as the site of a new, terrestrial paradise; (2) The rehabilitation of Satan as the proletarian revolutionary; and (3) The rejection of divine justice in favor of historical materialism. Milton’s Paradise Lost opens with a catastrophic expulsion. Adam and Eve lose a garden of unearned bliss, a place without toil, sorrow, or death. Faiz’s poetry, conversely, opens with an already-lost world. The Eden of colonialism and pre-capitalist feudalism is not a paradise to be mourned but a structure of oppression to be dismantled.
In “Subh-e-Azadi” (Dawn of Freedom—written after the Partition of India in 1947), Faiz famously writes: This stained light, this night-bitten dawn, This is not that dawn for which we yearned. The poet refuses to thank Providence for a flawed independence. Milton’s Adam leaves Paradise with divine promise; Faiz’s post-colonial subject leaves the colonial prison only to find a new, corrupt prison. Consequently, Faiz rejects Milton’s theodicy (the justification of God). Instead, he proposes an anthropodicy: the justification of humanity. The only “paradise” Faiz can imagine is a terrestrial one built by collective labor—a communist utopia that is explicitly this-worldly .
