Literature and heritage
By Naguib Mahfouz
I read a lot of poetry and prose, the Holy Qu'ran being among the first books I read. Afterwards I read Al- Asfahani's Al-Aghani, and Mubrad's Al-Kamel, followed by the popular epics like Antara and Hamza Al- Bahlawan -- I used to enjoy these epics so much I could not be parted from one of them until I finished it, even though Antara, for example, runs to 6,000 pages. So much for direct reading of heritage. I also acquired knowledge of heritage through the work of my teachers and mentors, or in conversations with them: Taha Hussein, El-Aqqad and Tawfik El-Hakim. They all dealt with heritage ...
As for poetry, I kept a large notebook of handwritten Arabic poetry that I copied out myself. There you find lines by Al- Mutanabbi, Al-Buhturi, Abu Nawwas, to which I've regularly returned. Every year I read the whole notebook at least once, and they were among my most enjoyable reading material. I also studied ancient Egypt -- its history, legends and literature -- another, perhaps far-fetched aspect of heritage that I nonetheless employed in four of my novels. I should mention that I also read the modern heritage, poets like Shawqi, Hafez Ibrahim and Mutran, as well as English, French, German and Russian literature -- all of which had a part to play in my development as a writer. So you see that, even if they are apparently unrelated, my books have been inspired by much knowledge of heritage.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
