Novelista o poeta

"Me impresiona cada vez más lo diferentes que son el novelista y el poeta", dice [Martin Amis en esta entrevista publicada en el Guardian]. "Fíjese en el soneto de Auden titulado El Novelista. Los poetas pueden 'cargar de frente, como húsares', pero la labor del novelista consiste en estar con los aburridos, los feos, los sucios. En tu persona tienes que reunir, lo mejor que puedas, todas las faltas del hombre. Para ser novelista tienes que ser una especie de persona corriente, y los poetas jamás son personas corrientes". ¿Ha escrito Amis poesía alguna vez, como hizo su padre [el escritor Kingsley Amis]? "Escribí y publiqué un par de poemas. Cada vez que Kingsley consideraba que me estaba envaneciendo, me decía: 'no me parece haber visto tu primer libro de poesía. Lo busco, pero no lo encuentro; me resulta muy confuso'."

[Para quien no quiera leer la entrevista entera, el original es éste:] "I'm more and more struck by how different the novelist and the poet are," he says. "Look at Auden's sonnet, The Novelist. Poets can 'dash forward like hussars', but the work of the novelist is to be with the boring, the ugly, the filthy. In your person, as best you can, you comprehend all the wrongs of man. You have to be a sort of everyman to be a novelist, and poets are never everymen." Did Amis, like his father, ever write poetry? "I wrote and published a couple of poems. Whenever he considered I was too big for my boots, Kingsley would say, 'I don't seem to see your first book of poems. I look but it isn't there; it's very puzzling.' "

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The Novelist
W. H. Auden

Encased in talent like a uniform,
The rank of every poet is well known;
They can amaze us like a thunderstorm,
Or die so young, or live for years alone.
They can dash forward like hussars: but he
Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn
How to be plain and awkward, how to be
One after whom none think it worth to turn.

For, to achieve his lightest wish, he must
Become the whole of boredom, subject to
Vulgar complaints like love, among the Just

Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,
And in his own weak person, if he can,
Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.