Octavio Paz

In thisSpanish name,the first or paternalsurnameisPazand the second or maternal family name isLozano.

Octavio Paz
Paz in 1988
Born	Octavio Paz Lozano (1914-03-31)March 31, 1914 Mexico City,Mexico
Died	April 19, 1998(1998-04-19)(aged 84) Mexico City, Mexico
Occupation	Writer poet diplomat
Period	1931–1965
Literary movement	Surrealism existentialism
Notable awards	Miguel de Cervantes Prize(1981) Nobel Prize in Literature(1990)
Spouse	Elena Garro ​ ​ (m.1937;div.1959)​ Marie-José Tramini ​ ​ (m.1965⁠–⁠1998)​

Octavio Paz Lozano(March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977Jerusalem Prize,the 1981Miguel de Cervantes Prize,the 1982Neustadt International Prize for Literature,and the1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early life

Octavio Paz was born nearMexico City.His family was a prominentliberalpolitical family in Mexico, withSpanishandindigenous Mexicanroots.His grandfather,Ireneo Paz,the family's patriarch, fought in theWar of the Reformagainst conservatives, and then became a staunch supporter of liberal war heroPorfirio Díazup until just before the 1910 outbreak of theMexican Revolution.Ireneo Paz became an intellectual and journalist, starting several newspapers, where he was publisher and printer. Ireneo's son, Octavio Paz Solórzano, supportedEmiliano Zapataduring the Revolution, and published an early biography of him and the Zapatista movement. Octavio was named for him, but spent considerable time with his grandfather Ireneo, since his namesake father was active fighting in the Mexican Revolution; his father died in a violent fashion.The family experienced financial ruin after the Mexican Revolution; they briefly relocated to Los Angeles, before returning to Mexico.Paz had blue eyes and was often mistaken for a foreigner by other children—according to a biography written by his long-time associate, historianEnrique Krauze,when Zapatista revolutionaryAntonio Díaz Soto y Gamamet young Octavio, he said, "Caramba,you didn't tell me you had aVisigothfor a son! "Krauze quotes Paz as saying," I felt myself Mexican but they wouldn't let me be one. "

Paz was introduced to literature early in his life through the influence of his grandfather Ireneo's library, filled with classicMexicanandEuropean literature.During the 1920s, he discoveredGerardo Diego,Juan Ramón Jiménez,andAntonio Machado;these Spanish writers had a great influence on his early writings.

As a teenager in 1931, Paz published his first poems, including "Cabellera". Two years later, at the age of nineteen, he publishedLuna Silvestre(Wild Moon), a collection of poems. In 1932, with some friends, he funded his first literary review,Barandal.

For a few years, Paz studied law and literature atNational University of Mexico.During this time, he became familiar withleftistpoets, such as ChileanPablo Neruda.In 1936, Paz abandoned his law studies, and left Mexico City forYucatánto work at a school inMérida.The school was set up for the sons ofpeasantsand workers.There, he began working on the first of his long, ambitious poems, "Entre la piedra y la flor" ( "Between the Stone and the Flower," 1941, revised 1976); influenced by the work ofT. S. Eliot,it explores the situation of the Mexican peasant under the domineering landlords of the day.

In July 1937 he attended the Second International Writers' Congress—the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals tothe war in Spain—held inValencia,BarcelonaandMadridand attended by many writers, includingAndré Malraux,Ernest Hemingway,Stephen Spender,andPablo Neruda.Paz showed his solidarity with the Republican side, and against thefascistsled byFrancisco Francoand supported by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. While in Europe he also visited Paris, where he encountered thesurrealistmovement, which left a profound impact upon him.After his return to Mexico, in 1938 Paz co-funded a literary journal,Taller(Workshop) and wrote for that magazine until 1941. In 1937 he marriedElena Garro,considered to be one of Mexico's finest writers; they had met in 1935. They had one daughter, Helena, and were divorced in 1959.

In 1943, Paz received aGuggenheim Fellowshipand used it to study at theUniversity of California at Berkeleyin the United States. Two years later, he entered the Mexican diplomatic service, and was assigned for a time to New York City. In 1945, he was sent to Paris, where he wroteEl Laberinto de la Soledad(The Labyrinth of Solitude,English translation 1963);The New York Timeslater described it as "an analysis of modern Mexico and the Mexican personality in which he described his fellow countrymen as instinctive nihilists who hide behind masks of solitude and ceremoniousness."In 1952, he travelled to India for the first time, and that same year went toTōkyōaschargé d'affaires.He next was assigned toGeneva,Switzerland. He returned to Mexico City in 1954, where he wrote his great poem "Piedra de sol" ( "Sunstone" ) in 1957, and publishedLibertad bajo palabra(Liberty under Oath), a compilation of his poetry up to that time. He was again sent to Paris in 1959, and in 1962, he was named Mexico's ambassador to India.

Later life

InNew Delhi,as Ambassador of Mexico toIndia,Paz completed several works, includingEl mono gramático(The Monkey Grammarian) andLadera este(Eastern Slope). While in India, he met numerous writers of a group known as theHungry Generationand had a profound influence on them.

In 1965, he married Marie-José Tramini, a French woman who would be his wife for the rest of his life. That fall, he went toCornell Universityand taught two courses, one in Spanish and the other in English—the magazineLIFE en Españolpublished a piece, illustrated with several pictures, about his tenure there in their July 4, 1966 issue. He subsequently returned to Mexico.

In 1968, Paz resigned from the diplomatic service in protest against the Mexican government'smassacre of student demonstrators in Tlatelolco;after seeking refuge in Paris, he again returned to Mexico in 1969, where he founded his magazinePlural(1970–1976) with a group of liberal Mexican and Latin American writers. From 1969 to 1970, Paz wasSimón Bolívar Professorat theUniversity of Cambridge.He was also a visiting lecturer during the late 1960s, and theA. D. WhiteProfessor-at-Large from 1972 to 1974 at Cornell. In 1974, he was theCharles Eliot Norton Professor of PoetryatHarvard University;his bookLos hijos del limo(Children of the Mire) was the result of his lectures. After the Mexican government closedPluralin 1975, Paz foundedVuelta,another cultural magazine. He was editor of that until his death in 1998, when the magazine closed.

Paz won the 1977Jerusalem Prizefor literature on the theme of individual freedom. In 1980, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard, and in 1982, he won theNeustadt Prize.Once good friends with novelistCarlos Fuentes,Paz became estranged from him in the 1980s in a disagreement over theSandinistas,whom Paz opposed and Fuentes supported.;in 1988, Paz's magazineVueltapublished criticism of Fuentes byEnrique Krauze,resulting in the estrangement.

A collection of Paz's poems (written between 1957 and 1987) was published in 1990, and in that year, he was awarded theNobel Prize for Literature.

Paz died of cancer on April 19, 1998, in Mexico City.Guillermo Sheridan,who in 1998 was named by Paz as director of the Octavio Paz Foundation, published a book,Poeta con paisaje(2004), with several biographical essays about the poet.

Aesthetics

"The poetry of Octavio Paz," wrote the criticRamón Xirau,"does not hesitate between language and silence; it leads into the realm of silence where true language lives."

Writings

A prolific author and poet, Paz published scores of works during his lifetime, many of which have been translated into other languages. His poetry has been translated into English bySamuel Beckett,Charles Tomlinson,Elizabeth Bishop,Muriel RukeyserandMark Strand.His early poetry was influenced byMarxism,surrealism,andexistentialism,as well as religions such asBuddhismandHinduism.His poem, "Piedra de sol" ( "Sunstone" ), written in 1957, was praised as a "magnificent" example of surrealist poetry in the presentation speech of his Nobel Prize.

His later poetry dealt with love and eroticism, the nature of time, and Buddhism. He also wrote poetry about his other passion, modern painting, dedicating poems to the work ofBalthus,Joan Miró,Marcel Duchamp,Antoni Tàpies,Robert Rauschenberg,andRoberto Matta.As an essayist, Paz wrote on topics such asMexican politicsandeconomics,Aztec art,anthropology,andsexuality.His book-length essay,The Labyrinth of Solitude,delves into the minds of his countrymen, describing them as hidden behind masks of solitude; due to theirhistory,their identity is lost between a pre-Columbian and a Spanish culture, negating either. A key work in understandingMexican culture,the essay greatly influenced other Mexican writers, such asCarlos Fuentes.Ilan Stavans wrote that Paz was "the quintessential surveyor, aDante's Virgil, a Renaissance man ".

Octavio Paz

Paz wrote the playLa hija de Rappacciniin 1956. The plot centers around a young Italian student who wanders about Professor Rappaccini's beautiful gardens, where he espies the professor's daughter, Beatrice. He is horrified to discover the poisonous nature of the garden's beauty. Paz adapted the play from an 1844 short story by American writerNathaniel Hawthorne,which was also entitled "Rappaccini's Daughter";he combined Hawthorne's story with sources from the Indian poetVishakadattaand influences from JapaneseNohtheatre, Spanishautos sacramentales,and the poetry ofWilliam Butler Yeats.The play's opening performance was designed by the Mexican painterLeonora Carrington.In 1972, Surrealist authorAndré Pieyre de Mandiarguestranslated the play into French asLa fille de Rappaccini(Editions Mercure de France). First performed in English in 1996 at theGate Theatrein London, the play was translated and directed bySebastian Doggartand starredSarah Alexanderas Beatrice. The Mexican composer Daniel Catán adapted the play as an opera in 1992.

Paz's other works translated into English include several volumes of essays, some of the more prominent of which areAlternating Current(tr. 1973),Configurations(tr. 1971), in theUNESCO Collection of Representative Works,The Other Mexico(tr. 1972); andEl Arco y la Lira(1956; tr.The Bow and the Lyre,1973). In the United States,Helen Lane's translation ofAlternating Currentwon aNational Book Award. Along with these are volumes of critical studies and biographies, including ofClaude Lévi-StraussandMarcel Duchamp(both, tr. 1970), andThe Traps of Faith,an analytical biography ofSor Juana Inés de la Cruz,the Mexican, seventeenth-century nun,feminist poet,mathematician, and thinker.

Paz's works include the poetry collections¿Águila o sol?(1951),La Estación Violenta,(1956),Piedra de Sol(1957). In English,Early Poems: 1935–1955(tr. 1974) andCollected Poems, 1957–1987(1987) have been edited and translated byEliot Weinberger,Paz's principal translator into American English.

Political thought

II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture.

Originally, Paz supported the Republicans during theSpanish Civil War,but after learning of the murder of one of his friends by the Stalinist secret police, he became gradually disillusioned. While in Paris in the early 1950s, influenced byDavid Rousset,André BretonandAlbert Camus,he started publishing his critical views on totalitarianism in general, and particularly againstJoseph Stalin,leader of the Soviet Union.

In his magazinesPluralandVuelta,Paz exposed theviolations of human rightsin Communist regimes, includingCastro'sCuba.This elicited much animosity from sectors of the Latin American Left: in the prologue to Volume IX of his complete works, Paz stated that from the time when he abandoned Communist dogma, the mistrust of many in the Mexicanintelligentsiastarted to transform into an intense and open enmity. Paz continued to consider himself a man of the left—the democratic, "liberal" left, not the dogmatic and illiberal one. He also criticized the Mexican government and leading party that dominated the nation for most of the twentieth century.

Politically, Paz was asocial democrat,who became increasingly supportive of liberal ideas without ever renouncing his initial leftist and romantic views. In fact, Paz was "very slippery for anyone thinking in rigid ideological categories," Yvon Grenier wrote in his book on Paz's political thought. "Paz was simultaneously a romantic who spurned materialism and reason, a liberal who championed freedom and democracy, a conservative who respected tradition, and a socialist who lamented the withering of fraternity and equality. An advocate of fundamental transformation in the way we see ourselves and modern society, Paz was also a promoter of incremental change, not revolution."

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

— Octavio Paz

In 1990, during the aftermath of thefall of the Berlin wall,Paz and hisVueltacolleagues invited several of the world's writers and intellectuals to Mexico City to discuss the collapse of Communism; writers includedCzesław Miłosz,Hugh Thomas,Daniel Bell,Ágnes Heller,Cornelius Castoriadis,Hugh Trevor-Roper,Jean-François Revel,Michael Ignatieff,Mario Vargas Llosa,Jorge EdwardsandCarlos Franqui.The encounter was calledThe Experience of Freedom(Spanish:La experiencia de la libertad), and broadcast on Mexican television from 27 August to 2 September.

Paz said that the literature on Spanish and Portuguese colonialism is biased and "is full of somber details and harsh judgments". He said that there were also immense gains:

"Not all was horror: over the ruins of the pre-Columbian world the Spanish and Portuguese raised a grandiose historical construction, much of which is still in place. They united many peoples who spoke different languages, worshiped different gods, fought among themselves, or were ignorant of one another. These peoples became united by laws and judicial institutions, but, above all, by language, culture, and religion. Although the losses were enormous, the gains were immense. To measure fairly the effect of the Spanish in Mexico, one must emphasize that without them—that is, without the Catholic religion and the culture the Spanish implanted in our country—we would not be what we are. We would probably be a collection of peoples divided by different beliefs, languages, and cultures."

Paz criticized theZapatista uprisingin 1994.He spoke broadly in favor of a "military solution" to the uprising of January 1994, and hoped that the "army would soon restore order in the region". With respect to President Zedillo's offensive in February 1995, he signed an open letter that described the offensive as a "legitimate government action" to re-establish the "sovereignty of the nation" and to bring "Chiapaspeace and Mexicans tranquility ".

First literary experiences

Paz was dazzled byThe Waste LandbyT. S. Eliot,in Enrique Munguia's translation asEl Páramowhich was published in the magazineContemporariesin 1930. As a result of this, although he maintained his primary interest in poetry, Paz also had an unavoidable outlook on prose: "Literally, this dual practice was for me a game of reflections between poetry and prose".

Worried about confirming the existence of a link betweenmoralsandpoetry,in 1931, at the age of sixteen, he wrote what would be his first published article, "Ethics of the Artist", in which he posed the question of the duty of an artist among what would be deemed "art of thesis," or pure art, which disqualifies the second as a result of the teaching of tradition. Employing language that resembles a religious style and, paradoxically, aMarxistone, Paz finds the true value of art in its purpose and meaning, for which the followers of pure art—of whom he isnotone—are found in an isolated position and favor theKantianidea of the "man that loses all relation with the world".

The magazineBarandalappeared in August 1931, put together byRafael López Malo,Salvador Toscano,Arnulfo Martínez Lavalleand Paz; all of them were not yet in their youth, except for Salvador Toscano, who was a renowned writer thanks to his parents. Rafael López participated in the magazine "Modern" and, along withMiguel D. Martínez Rendón,in themovimiento de los agoristas,although it was more commented on and known by high-school students, over all for his poem, "The Golden Beast". Octavio Paz Solórzano became known in his circle as the occasional author of literary narratives that appeared in the Sunday newspaper add-inEl Universal,as well asIreneo Pazwhich was the name that gave a street inMixcoacidentity.

Awards

• Inducted Member ofColegio Nacional,Mexican highly selective academy of arts and sciences 1967
• Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
• National Prize for Arts and Sciences (Mexico)in Literature 1977
• Honorary DoctorateNational Autonomous University of Mexico1978
• Honorary Doctorate (Harvard University) 1980
• Ollin Yoliztli Prize1980
• Miguel de Cervantes Prize1981
• Nobel Literature Prizein 1990
• Grand Officer of theOrder of Merit of the Italian Republic1991
• Premio Mondello (Palermo, Italy)
• Alfonso Reyes International Prize
• Neustadt International Prize for Literature1982
• Jerusalem Prize
• Menéndez Pelayo International Prize
• Prix Alexis de Tocqueville,1989,
• Xavier Villaurrutia Award

Works

Poetry collections

• 1933:Luna silvestre
• 1936:No pasarán!
• 1937:Raíz del hombre
• 1937:Bajo tu clara sombra y otros poemas sobre España
• 1941:Entre la piedra y la flor
• 1942:A la orilla del mundo,compilation
• 1949:Libertad bajo palabra
• 1954:Semillas para un himno
• 1957:Piedra de Sol(Sunstone)
• 1958:La estación violenta
• 1962:Salamandra (1958–1961)
• 1965:Viento entero
• 1967:Blanco
• 1968:Discos visuales
• 1969:Ladera Este (1962–1968)
• 1969:La centena (1935–1968)
• 1971:Topoemas
• 1972:Renga: A Chain of PoemswithJacques Roubaud,Edoardo SanguinetiandCharles Tomlinson
• 1974:El mono gramático
• 1975:Pasado en claro
• 1976:Vuelta
• 1979:Hijos del aire/AirbornwithCharles Tomlinson
• 1979:Poemas (1935–1975)
• 1985:Prueba del nueve
• 1987:Árbol adentro (1976–1987)
• 1989:El fuego de cada día,selection, preface and notes by Paz

Anthology

• 1966:Poesía en movimiento (México: 1915–1966),edition by Octavio Paz,Alí Chumacero,Homero AridjisandJose Emilio Pacheco

Essays and analysis

• 1950:El laberinto de la soledad: Vida y pensamiento de México(Published in English in 1961 asThe Labyrinth of Solitude:Life and Thought in Mexico)
• 1956 -El arco y la lira(edición revisada y aumentada: 1967)
• 1957 -Las peras del olmo
• 1965 -Cuadrivio
• 1965 -Los signos en rotación
• 1966 -Puertas al campo
• 1967 -Corriente alterna
• 1967 -Claude Levi-Strauss o El nuevo festín de Esopo
• 1968 -Marcel Duchamp o El castillo de la pureza(edición aumentada:Apariencia desnuda,1973)
• 1969 -Conjunciones y disyunciones
• 1970 -Posdata,continuación deEl laberinto de la soledad.
• 1973 -El signo y el garabato
• 1974 -Los hijos del limo. Del romanticismo a la vanguardia
• 1974 -La búsqueda del comienzo. Escritos sobre el surrealismo
• 1978 -Xavier Villaurrutia en persona y obra
• 1979 -El ogro filantrópico
• 1979 -In/Mediaciones
• 1982 -Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe
• 1983 -Tiempo nublado
• 1983 -Sombras de obras
• 1984 -Hombres en su siglo y otros ensayos
• 1988 -Primeras letras (1931-1943)(antología de sus prosas de juventud)
• 1990 -Pequeña crónica de grandes días
• 1990 -La otra voz. Poesía y fin de siglo
• 1991 -Convergencias
• 1992 -Al paso
• 1993 -La llama doble
• 1993 -Itinerario
• 1994 -Un más allá erótico: Sade
• 1995 -Vislumbres de la India
• 1996 -Estrella de tres puntas. André Bretón y el surrealismo
• 2000 -Luis Buñuel. El doble arco de la belleza y de la rebeldía

Translations by Octavio Paz

• 1957:Sendas de Oku,byMatsuo Bashō,translated in collaboration with Eikichi Hayashiya
• 1962:Antología,byFernando Pessoa
• 1974:Versiones y diversiones(Collection of his translations of a number of authors into Spanish)

Translations of his works

• 1952:Anthologie de la poésie mexicaine,edition and introduction by Octavio Paz; translated into French by Guy Lévis-Mano
• 1958:Anthology of Mexican Poetry,edition and introduction by Octavio Paz; translated into English bySamuel Beckett
• 1971:Configurations,translated by G. Aroul (and others)
• 1973:Early Poems 1935-1955;with English translations byMuriel Rukeyser
• 1974:The Monkey Grammarian(El mono gramático); translated into English byHelen Lane
• 1987:Collected Poems 1957-1987;with English translations byEliot Weinberger
• 1995:The Double Flame(La Llama Double, Amor y Erotismo); translated by Helen Lane

External links

• Zona Octavio Paz
• Nobel museum biography and list of works
• Boletin Octavio Paz
• "Octavio Paz" The Art of Poetry No. 42 Summer 1991The Paris Review
• Octavio Pazon Nobelprize.orgincluding the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1990In Search of the Present
• Recorded in Washington D.C. on October 18, 1988. Video (1 Hr)
• Petri Liukkonen."Octavio Paz".Books and Writers.
• Consuelo Hernández, Enrico Santí on Octavio Paz. Recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s video literary archive. 2005
• Review of Octavio Paz:El poeta y la revolución,Enrique Krauze,Mexican Studies/Estudios mexicanos(2015), 31 (1): 196–200.
• Octavio Paz Corral recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s audio literary archive on March 23–24, 1961
• Hernández, Consuelo."The Poetry of Octavio Paz".Library of Congress,2008.https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-4329/