Youthful flair
By
Naguib Mahfouz
I tried my young hand at verse as a teenager, perhaps in my secondary school.
Most of what I wrote did not abide by conventions of metre, which I was in no position to master. I thus hailed myself as an innovative poet. The lines were inadequately composed; even though, very occasionally, I would subsequently realise, they followed recognised metres and some lines were indeed beautiful. The vast majority of those attempts, however, I rejected. I'm a poetry lover, and I'm particularly interested in old Arabic poetry, such lines fell far short of my standards.
One of my memories of that period is a book that was part of our curriculum; Al-Mokhtar (The Selected). It contained selections from major Arabic poets, from pre-Islamic times to the modern era. It still constitutes the basis of my poetic ear -- if there is such a thing. Poetry has, thus remained a passion of mine.
But literature requires specialisation; and the more focussed you are on your genre of choice the less distracted you become. One becomes either a writer of prose or a poet. And of all the prose genres at which I've tried my hand, there is no doubt that the novel remains my principal medium -- the genre I have mastered and the one in which I feel I can best express my vision. I still feel that poetry is a remarkably noble art. It is simply that the novel is far better suited to my own purposes.
