Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano (Spanish pronunciation: [oktajopas losano] audio ; March 31, 1914 April 19, 1998)was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer.For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguelde Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prizefor Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1 Early lifeOctavio Paz was introduced to literature early in his lifethrough the inuence of his grandfathers library, lledwith classic Mexican and European literature.[1] Duringthe 1920s, he discovered the European poets GerardoDiego, Juan Ramn Jimnez, and Antonio Machado,Spanish writers who had a great inuence on his earlywritings.[2] As a teenager in 1931, Paz published his rstpoems, including Cabellera. Two years later, at the ageof 19, he published Luna Silvestre (Wild Moon), a col-lection of poems. In 1932, with some friends, he foundedhis rst literary review, Barandal. In 1937 at the age of23, Paz abandoned his law studies and left Mexico Cityfor Yucatn to work at a school in Mrida, set up for thesons of peasants and workers.[3] There, he began workingon the rst of his long, ambitious poems, Entre la piedray la or (Between the Stone and the Flower) (1941,revised in 1976). Inuenced by the work of T. S. Eliot, itexplores the situation of the Mexican peasant under thedomineering landlords of the day.[4] In 1937, Paz was in-vited to the Second InternationalWriters Congress in De-fense of Culture in Spain during the countrys civil war; heshowed his solidarity with the Republican side and againstfascism. Upon his return to Mexico, Paz co-founded aliterary journal, Taller (Workshop) in 1938, and wrotefor the magazine until 1941. In 1937 he married ElenaGarro, who is considered one of Mexicos nest writ-ers. They had met in 1935. They had one daughter,Helena, and were divorced in 1959. In 1943, Paz re-ceived aGuggenheim fellowship and used it to study at theUniversity of California at Berkeley in the United States.Two years later he entered the Mexican diplomatic ser-vice, and was assigned for a time to New York City. In1945, he was sent to Paris, where hewroteEl Laberinto dela Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude). The New YorkTimes later described it as an analysis of modern Mex-ico and the Mexican personality in which he describedhis fellow countrymen as instinctive nihilists who hide be-hind masks of solitude and ceremoniousness.[5] In 1952,he travelled to India for the rst time. That same year,

he went to Tokyo, as charg d'aaires. He next was as-signed to Geneva, Switzerland. He returned to MexicoCity in 1954, where he wrote his great poem Piedra desol (Sunstone) in 1957, and published Libertad bajopalabra (Liberty under Oath), a compilation of his poetryup to that time. He was sent again to Paris in 1959. In1962 he was named Mexicos ambassador to India.

2 Later lifeIn India, Paz completed several works, including El monogramtico (The Monkey Grammarian) and Ladera este(Eastern Slope). While in India, he met numerous writersof a group known as the Hungry Generation and had aprofound inuence on them. He met his rst wife ElenaGarro a writer in Mexico City and was married to her in1937, they were together until 1959. They had a daugh-ter Helena Laura Paz Garro. In 1965, he married Marie-Jos Tramini, a French woman who would be his wifefor the rest of his life. In October 1968, he resigned fromthe diplomatic service in protest of the Mexican govern-ments massacre of student demonstrators in the Plaza delas Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco.[6]

After staying in Paris for refuge, he returned toMexico in1969. He founded his magazine Plural (19701976) witha group of liberal Mexican and Latin American writers.From 1969 to 1970 he was Simon Bolivar Chair Profes-sor at Cambridge University. From 1970 to 1974 he lec-tured at Harvard University, where he held the CharlesEliot Norton professorship. His book Los hijos del limo(Children of the Mire) was the result of those lectures.After theMexican government closed Plural in 1975, Pazfounded Vuelta, another cultural magazine. He was ed-itor of that until his death in 1998, when the magazineclosed.He won the 1977 Jerusalem Prize for literature on thetheme of individual freedom. In 1980, he was awardedan honorary doctorate from Harvard, and in 1982, hewon the Neustadt Prize. Once good friends with nov-elist Carlos Fuentes, Paz became estranged from himin the 1980s in a disagreement over the Sandinistas,whom Paz opposed and Fuentes supported.[7] In 1988,Pazs magazine Vuelta published criticism of Fuentes byEnrique Krauze, resulting in estrangement between Pazand Fuentes, who had long been friends.[8]

A collection of Pazs poems (written between 1957 and1987) was published in 1990. In 1990, he was awarded

1

2 4 WRITINGS

the Nobel Prize for Literature.[9]

He died of cancer on April 19, 1998, in MexicoCity.[10][11][12]

Guillermo Sheridan, who was named by Paz as directorof the Octavio Paz Foundation in 1998, published a book,Poeta con paisaje (2004) with several biographical essaysabout the poets life up to 1968.

3 AestheticsThe poetry of Octavio Paz, wrote the critic RamnXirau, does not hesitate between language and silence;it leads into the realm of silence where true languagelives.[13]

4 WritingsA prolic author and poet, Paz published scores of worksduring his lifetime, many of which have been trans-lated into other languages. His poetry has been trans-lated into English by Samuel Beckett, Charles Tomlinson,Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser andMark Strand. Hisearly poetry was inuenced by Marxism, surrealism, andexistentialism, as well as religions such as Buddhism andHinduism. His poem, Piedra de sol (Sunstone), writ-ten in 1957, was praised as a magnicent example ofsurrealist poetry in the presentation speech of his NobelPrize.His later poetry dealt with love and eroticism, the natureof time, and Buddhism. He also wrote poetry about hisother passion, modern painting, dedicating poems to thework of Balthus, Joan Mir, Marcel Duchamp, AntoniTpies, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roberto Matta. As anessayist Paz wrote on topics such as Mexican politics andeconomics, Aztec art, anthropology, and sexuality. Hisbook-length essay, The Labyrinth of Solitude (Spanish:El laberinto de la soledad), delves into the minds of hiscountrymen, describing them as hidden behind masks ofsolitude. Due to their history, their identity is lost be-tween a pre-Columbian and a Spanish culture, negatingeither. A key work in understanding Mexican culture, itgreatly inuenced other Mexican writers, such as CarlosFuentes. Ilan Stavans wrote that he was the quintessen-tial surveyor, a Dante's Virgil, a Renaissance man.[14]

Paz wrote the play La hija de Rappaccini in 1956. Theplot centers around a young Italian student who wandersabout Professor Rappaccinis beautiful gardens where hespies the professors daughter Beatrice. He is horriedto discover the poisonous nature of the gardens beauty.Paz adapted the play from an 1844 short story by Amer-ican writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was also enti-tled "Rappaccinis Daughter". He combined Hawthornesstory with sources from the Indian poet Vishakadattaand inuences from Japanese Noh theatre, Spanish autos

Octavio Paz

sacramentales, and the poetry of William Butler Yeats.The plays opening performance was designed by theMexican painter Leonora Carrington. In 1972, Surrealistauthor Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues translated the playinto French as La lle de Rappaccini (Editions Mercurede France). First performed in English in 1996 at theGate Theatre in London, the play was translated and di-rected by Sebastian Doggart and starred Sarah Alexanderas Beatrice.The Mexican composer Daniel Catn adapted the play asan opera in 1992.Pazs other works translated into English include sev-eral volumes of essays, some of the more prominent ofwhich are Alternating Current (tr. 1973), Congurations(tr. 1971), in the UNESCO Collection of Representa-tive Works,[15] The Labyrinth of Solitude (tr. 1963), TheOther Mexico (tr. 1972); and El Arco y la Lira (1956; tr.The Bow and the Lyre, 1973). In the United States, HelenLane's translation of Alternating Current won a NationalBook Award.[16] Along with these are volumes of crit-ical studies and biographies, including of Claude Lvi-Strauss and Marcel Duchamp (both, tr. 1970), and TheTraps of Faith, an analytical biography of Sor Juana Insde la Cruz, the Mexican 17th-century nun, feminist poet,mathematician, and thinker.His works include the poetry collections guila o sol?(1951), La Estacin Violenta, (1956), Piedra de Sol(1957), and in English translation the most prominent in-

6.2 Book translations 3

clude two volumes that include most of Paz in English:Early Poems: 19351955 (tr. 1974), and Collected Po-ems, 19571987 (1987). Many of these volumes havebeen edited and translated by Eliot Weinberger, who isPazs principal translator into American English.

5 Political thoughtOriginally Paz supported the Republicans during theSpanish Civil War, but after learning of the murder ofone of his friends by the Republicans, he became gradu-ally disillusioned. While in Paris in the early 1950s, in-uenced by David Rousset, Andr Breton and Albert Ca-mus, he started publishing his critical views on totalitar-ianism in general, and particularly against Joseph Stalin,leader of the Soviet Union.In his magazines Plural and Vuelta, Paz exposed theviolations of human rights in communist regimes, includ-ing Castros Cuba. This brought him much animosityfrom sectors of the Latin American left. In the pro-logue to Volume IX of his complete works, Paz stated thatfrom the time when he abandoned communist dogma, themistrust of many in the Mexican intelligentsia started totransform into an intense and open enmity. Paz contin-ued to consider himself a man of the left, the democratic,liberal left, not the dogmatic and illiberal one. He alsocriticized the Mexican government and leading party thatdominated the nation for most of the 20th century.In 1990, during the aftermath of the fall of the Berlinwall, Paz and his Vuelta colleagues invited several ofthe worlds writers and intellectuals to Mexico City todiscuss the collapse of communism. Writers includedCzesaw Miosz, Hugh Thomas, Daniel Bell, gnesHeller, Cornelius Castoriadis, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Jean-Franois Revel, Michael Ignatie, Mario Vargas Llosa,Jorge Edwards and Carlos Franqui. The encounter wascalled The experience of freedom (Spanish: La experien-cia de la libertad) and broadcast on Mexican televisionfrom 27 August to 2 September.[18]

Paz criticized the Zapatista uprising in 1994.[19] He spokebroadly in favor of a military solution to the upris-ing of January 1994, and hoped that the army wouldsoon restore order in the region. With respect to Pres-ident Zedillos oensive in February 1995, he signedan open letter that described the oensive as a legiti-mate government action to reestablish the sovereigntyof the nation and to bring "Chiapas peace and Mexicanstranquility.[20]

6 List of works

6.1 Poetry collections 1933: Luna silvestre

1936: No pasarn! 1937: Raz del hombre 1937: Bajo tu clara sombra y otros poemas sobre Es-

paa 1941: Entre la piedra y la or 1942: A la orilla del mundo, compilation 1949: Libertad bajo palabra 1954: Semillas para un himno 1957: Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) 1958: La estacin violenta 1962: Salamandra (19581961) 1965: Viento entero 1967: Blanco 1968: Discos visuales 1969: Ladera Este (19621968) 1969: La centena (19351968) 1971: Topoemas 1972: Renga: A Chain of Poems with JacquesRoubaud, Edoardo Sanguineti and Charles Tomlin-son

1975: Pasado en claro 1976: Vuelta 1979: Hijos del aire/Airborn with Charles Tomlin-son

1979: Poemas (19351975) 1985: Prueba del nueve 1987: rbol adentro (19761987) 1989: El fuego de cada da, selection, preface andnotes by Paz

Madrugada

6.2 Book translations 1952: Anthologie de la posie mexicaine, edition andintroduction by Octavio Paz

1958: Anthology of Mexican Poetry, edition andintroduction by Octavio Paz; translated by SamuelBeckett

1957: Sendas de Oku, by Matsuo Basho, translatedin collaboration with Eikichi Hayashiya

4 8 REFERENCES

1962: Antologa, by Fernando Pessoa 1966: Poesa en movimiento (Mxico: 19151966),edition by Octavio Paz, Al Chumacero, HomeroAridjis and Jose Emilio Pacheco

1971: Congurations, translated by G. Aroul (andothers)

1974: Versiones y diversiones

7 Awards Inducted Member of Colegio Nacional, Mexi-can highly selective academy of arts and sciences1967[21]

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade National Prize for Arts and Sciences (Mexico) inLiterature 1977

Honorary Doctorate National Autonomous Univer-sity of Mexico 1978[22]

Honorary Doctorate (Harvard University) 1980[23]

Ollin Yoliztli Prize 1980 Miguel de Cervantes Prize 1981 Nobel Literature Prize in 1990[9]

Grand Ocer of the Order of Merit of the ItalianRepublic 1991[24]

Premio Mondello (Palermo, Italy) Alfonso Reyes International Prize Neustadt International Prize for Literature 1982 Jerusalem Prize Menndez Pelayo International Prize Alexis de Tocqueville Prize Xavier Villaurrutia Award

8 References[1] Guillermo Sheridan: Poeta con paisaje: ensayos sobre la

vida de Octavio Paz. Mxico: ERA, 2004. p. 27. ISBN968411575X

[2] Jaime Perales Contreras: Octavio Paz y el circulo de larevista Vuelta. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Proquest, 2007.pp.4647. UMI Number 3256542

[3] Sheridan: Poeta con paisaje, p. 163

[4] Wilson, Jason (1986). Octavio Paz. Boston: G. K. Hall.

[5] Rule, Sheila (October 12, 1990). Octavio Paz, MexicanPoet, Wins Nobel Prize. New York Times (New York).

[6] Preface to The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 19571987 by Eliot Weignberger

[7] Anthony DePalma (May 15, 2012). Carlos Fuentes,Mexican Man of Letters, Dies at 83. The New YorkTimes. Retrieved May 16, 2012.

[8] Marcela Valdes (May 16, 2012). Carlos Fuentes, Mexi-can novelist, dies at 83. The Washington Post. RetrievedMay 16, 2012.

[9] The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990.

[10] Mxico, Distrito Federal, Registro Civil (20 Apr 1998).Civil Death Registration. FamilySearch.org. Genealog-ical Society of Utah. 2002. Retrieved 22 December 2013.

[11] Arana-Ward, Marie (1998). Octavio Paz, MexicosGreat Idea Man. Washington Post. Retrieved October3, 2013.

[12] Kandell, Jonathan (1998). Octavio Paz, MexicosMan ofLetters, Dies at 84. New York Times. Retrieved October3, 2013.

[13] Xirau, Ramn (2004) Entre La Poesia y El Conocimiento:Antologia de Ensayos Criticos Sobre Poetas y PoesiaIberoamericanos. Mexico City: Fondo de CulturaEconmica p. 219.

[14] Stavans (2003). Octavio Paz: A Meditation. University ofArizona Press. p. 3.

[15] Congurations, Historical Collection: UNESCO CultureSector, UNESCO ocial website

[16] National Book Awards 1974. National Book Founda-tion. Retrieved 2012-03-11.There was a National Book Award category Translationfrom 1967 to 1983.

[17] Paz, Octavio. Signs in Rotation (1967), The Bow andthe Lyre, trans. Ruth L.C. Simms (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1973), p. 249.

[18] Christopher Domnguez Michael (November 2009).Memorias del encuentro: La experiencia de la liber-tad"". Letras Libres (in Spanish). Retrieved July 10, 2013.

[19] Huschmid (2004) pp127-151

[20] Huschmid (2004) p145

[21] Member of Colegio Nacional (in spanish)

[22] Honorary Degree National Autonomous University ofMexico.

[23] Honorary Degree Harvard University.

[24] Presidency of the Italian Republic. Awards granted toOctavio Paz by the Italian Republic (in Italian). Re-trieved August 13, 2013.

59 External links Nobel museum biography and list of works Boletin Octavio Paz Octavio Paz The Art of Poetry No. 42 Summer1991 The Paris Review

Nobel lecture Recorded inWashington D.C. on October 18, 1988.Video (1 Hr)

Petri Liukkonen. Octavio Paz. Books and Writers(kirjasto.sci.). Archived from the original on 4 July2013.

6 10 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

10 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses10.1 Text

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