Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano (Spanish pronunciation: [oktajo he went to Tokyo, as charg d'aaires. He next was aspas losano] audio ; March 31, 1914 April 19, 1998) signed to Geneva, Switzerland. He returned to Mexico
was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer.
City in 1954, where he wrote his great poem Piedra de
For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel sol (Sunstone) in 1957, and published Libertad bajo
palabra (Liberty under Oath), a compilation of his poetry
de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize
up to that time. He was sent again to Paris in 1959. In
for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
1962 he was named Mexicos ambassador to India.

Early life

2 Later life

Octavio Paz was introduced to literature early in his life

through the inuence of his grandfathers library, lled
with classic Mexican and European literature.[1] During
the 1920s, he discovered the European poets Gerardo
Diego, Juan Ramn Jimnez, and Antonio Machado,
Spanish writers who had a great inuence on his early
writings.[2] As a teenager in 1931, Paz published his rst
poems, including Cabellera. Two years later, at the age
of 19, he published Luna Silvestre (Wild Moon), a collection of poems. In 1932, with some friends, he founded
his rst literary review, Barandal. In 1937 at the age of
23, Paz abandoned his law studies and left Mexico City
for Yucatn to work at a school in Mrida, set up for the
sons of peasants and workers.[3] There, he began working
on the rst of his long, ambitious poems, Entre la piedra
y la or (Between the Stone and the Flower) (1941,
revised in 1976). Inuenced by the work of T. S. Eliot, it
explores the situation of the Mexican peasant under the
domineering landlords of the day.[4] In 1937, Paz was invited to the Second International Writers Congress in Defense of Culture in Spain during the countrys civil war; he
showed his solidarity with the Republican side and against
fascism. Upon his return to Mexico, Paz co-founded a
literary journal, Taller (Workshop) in 1938, and wrote
for the magazine until 1941. In 1937 he married Elena
Garro, who is considered one of Mexicos nest writers. They had met in 1935. They had one daughter,
Helena, and were divorced in 1959. In 1943, Paz received a Guggenheim fellowship and used it to study at the
University of California at Berkeley in 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 wrote El Laberinto de
la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude). The New York
Times later 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.[5] In 1952,
he travelled to India for the rst time. That same year,

In India, Paz completed several works, including El mono

gramtico (The Monkey Grammarian) and Ladera este
(Eastern Slope). While in India, he met numerous writers
of a group known as the Hungry Generation and had a
profound inuence on them. He met his rst wife Elena
Garro a writer in Mexico City and was married to her in
1937, they were together until 1959. They had a daughter Helena Laura Paz Garro. In 1965, he married MarieJos Tramini, a French woman who would be his wife
for the rest of his life. In October 1968, he resigned from
the diplomatic service in protest of the Mexican governments massacre of student demonstrators in the Plaza de
las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco.[6]
After staying in Paris for refuge, he returned to Mexico in
1969. He founded his magazine Plural (19701976) with
a group of liberal Mexican and Latin American writers.
From 1969 to 1970 he was Simon Bolivar Chair Professor at Cambridge University. From 1970 to 1974 he lectured at Harvard University, where he held the Charles
Eliot Norton professorship. His book Los hijos del limo
(Children of the Mire) was the result of those lectures.
After the Mexican government closed Plural in 1975, Paz
founded Vuelta, another cultural magazine. He was editor of that until his death in 1998, when the magazine
closed.
He won the 1977 Jerusalem Prize for literature on the
theme of individual freedom. In 1980, he was awarded
an honorary doctorate from Harvard, and in 1982, he
won the Neustadt Prize. Once good friends with novelist Carlos Fuentes, Paz became estranged from him
in the 1980s in a disagreement over the Sandinistas,
whom Paz opposed and Fuentes supported.[7] In 1988,
Pazs magazine Vuelta published criticism of Fuentes by
Enrique Krauze, resulting in estrangement between Paz
and Fuentes, who had long been friends.[8]
A collection of Pazs poems (written between 1957 and
1987) was published in 1990. In 1990, he was awarded
1

WRITINGS

the Nobel Prize for Literature.[9]

He died of cancer on April 19, 1998, in Mexico
City.[10][11][12]
Guillermo Sheridan, who was named by Paz as director
of the Octavio Paz Foundation in 1998, published a book,
Poeta con paisaje (2004) with several biographical essays
about the poets life up to 1968.

Aesthetics

The poetry of Octavio Paz, wrote the critic Ramn

Xirau, does not hesitate between language and silence;
it leads into the realm of silence where true language
lives.[13]

Writings

A prolic 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 by Samuel Beckett, Charles Tomlinson,
Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser and Mark Strand. His
early poetry was inuenced by Marxism, surrealism, and
existentialism, as well as religions such as Buddhism and Octavio Paz
Hinduism. His poem, Piedra de sol (Sunstone), written in 1957, was praised as a magnicent example of
surrealist poetry in the presentation speech of his Nobel sacramentales, and the poetry of William Butler Yeats.
The plays opening performance was designed by the
Prize.
Mexican painter Leonora Carrington. In 1972, Surrealist
His later poetry dealt with love and eroticism, the nature author Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues translated the play
of time, and Buddhism. He also wrote poetry about his into French as La lle de Rappaccini (Editions Mercure
other passion, modern painting, dedicating poems to the de France). First performed in English in 1996 at the
work of Balthus, Joan Mir, Marcel Duchamp, Antoni Gate Theatre in London, the play was translated and diTpies, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roberto Matta. As an rected by Sebastian Doggart and starred Sarah Alexander
essayist Paz wrote on topics such as Mexican politics and as Beatrice.
economics, Aztec art, anthropology, and sexuality. His
The Mexican composer Daniel Catn adapted the play as
book-length essay, The Labyrinth of Solitude (Spanish:
El laberinto de la soledad), delves into the minds of his an opera in 1992.
countrymen, describing them as hidden behind masks of Pazs other works translated into English include sevsolitude. Due to their history, their identity is lost be- eral volumes of essays, some of the more prominent of
tween a pre-Columbian and a Spanish culture, negating which are Alternating Current (tr. 1973), Congurations
either. A key work in understanding Mexican culture, it (tr. 1971), in the UNESCO Collection of Representagreatly inuenced other Mexican writers, such as Carlos tive Works,[15] The Labyrinth of Solitude (tr. 1963), The
Fuentes. Ilan Stavans wrote that he was the quintessen- Other Mexico (tr. 1972); and El Arco y la Lira (1956; tr.
tial surveyor, a Dante's Virgil, a Renaissance man.[14]
The Bow and the Lyre, 1973). In the United States, Helen
of Alternating Current won a National
Paz wrote the play La hija de Rappaccini in 1956. The Lane's translation
[16]
Book
Award.
Along
with these are volumes of critplot centers around a young Italian student who wanders
ical
studies
and
biographies,
including of Claude Lviabout Professor Rappaccinis beautiful gardens where he
Strauss
and
Marcel
Duchamp
(both, tr. 1970), and The
spies the professors daughter Beatrice. He is horried
Traps
of
Faith,
an
analytical
biography
of Sor Juana Ins
to discover the poisonous nature of the gardens beauty.
de
la
Cruz,
the
Mexican
17th-century
nun,
feminist poet,
Paz adapted the play from an 1844 short story by Amermathematician,
and
thinker.
ican writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was also entitled "Rappaccinis Daughter". He combined Hawthornes His works include the poetry collections guila o sol?
story with sources from the Indian poet Vishakadatta (1951), La Estacin Violenta, (1956), Piedra de Sol
and inuences from Japanese Noh theatre, Spanish autos (1957), and in English translation the most prominent in-

6.2

Book translations

clude two volumes that include most of Paz in English:

Early Poems: 19351955 (tr. 1974), and Collected Poems, 19571987 (1987). Many of these volumes have
been edited and translated by Eliot Weinberger, who is
Pazs principal translator into American English.

1936: No pasarn!
1937: Raz del hombre
1937: Bajo tu clara sombra y otros poemas sobre Espaa
1941: Entre la piedra y la or

Political thought

1942: A la orilla del mundo, compilation

Originally Paz supported the Republicans during the

Spanish Civil War, but after learning of the murder of
one of his friends by the Republicans, he became gradually disillusioned. While in Paris in the early 1950s, inuenced by David Rousset, Andr Breton and Albert Camus, he started publishing his critical views on totalitarianism in general, and particularly against Joseph Stalin,
leader of the Soviet Union.
In his magazines Plural and Vuelta, Paz exposed the
violations of human rights in communist regimes, including Castros Cuba. This brought him 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 Mexican intelligentsia started 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 20th century.
In 1990, during the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin
wall, Paz and his Vuelta colleagues invited several of
the worlds writers and intellectuals to Mexico City to
discuss the collapse of communism. Writers included
Czesaw Miosz, Hugh Thomas, Daniel Bell, gnes
Heller, Cornelius Castoriadis, Hugh Trevor-Roper, JeanFranois Revel, Michael Ignatie, Mario Vargas Llosa,
Jorge Edwards and Carlos Franqui. The encounter was
called The experience of freedom (Spanish: La experiencia de la libertad) and broadcast on Mexican television
from 27 August to 2 September.[18]

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 Jacques
Roubaud, Edoardo Sanguineti and Charles Tomlinson
1975: Pasado en claro
1976: Vuelta
1979: Hijos del aire/Airborn with Charles Tomlinson
1979: Poemas (19351975)
1985: Prueba del nueve
1987: rbol adentro (19761987)

[19]

Paz criticized the Zapatista uprising in 1994. He spoke

1989: El fuego de cada da, selection, preface and
broadly in favor of a military solution to the uprisnotes by Paz
ing of January 1994, and hoped that the army would
soon restore order in the region. With respect to President Zedillos oensive in February 1995, he signed Madrugada
an open letter that described the oensive as a legitimate government action to reestablish the sovereignty
6.2 Book translations
of the nation and to bring "Chiapas peace and Mexicans
tranquility.[20]
1952: Anthologie de la posie mexicaine, edition and
introduction by Octavio Paz

List of works

6.1

Poetry collections

1933: Luna silvestre

1958: Anthology of Mexican Poetry, edition and

introduction by Octavio Paz; translated by Samuel
Beckett
1957: Sendas de Oku, by Matsuo Basho, translated
in collaboration with Eikichi Hayashiya

8
1962: Antologa, by Fernando Pessoa
1966: Poesa en movimiento (Mxico: 19151966),
edition by Octavio Paz, Al Chumacero, Homero
Aridjis and Jose Emilio Pacheco
1971: Congurations, translated by G. Aroul (and
others)
1974: Versiones y diversiones

Awards

REFERENCES

[5] Rule, Sheila (October 12, 1990). Octavio Paz, Mexican

Poet, Wins Nobel Prize. New York Times (New York).
[6] Preface to The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957
1987 by Eliot Weignberger
[7] Anthony DePalma (May 15, 2012). Carlos Fuentes,
Mexican Man of Letters, Dies at 83. The New York
Times. Retrieved May 16, 2012.
[8] Marcela Valdes (May 16, 2012). Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist, dies at 83. The Washington Post. Retrieved
May 16, 2012.
[9] The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990.

Inducted Member of Colegio Nacional, Mexican highly selective academy of arts and sciences
1967[21]
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
National Prize for Arts and Sciences (Mexico) in
Literature 1977

[10] Mxico, Distrito Federal, Registro Civil (20 Apr 1998).

Civil Death Registration. FamilySearch.org. Genealogical Society of Utah. 2002. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
[11] Arana-Ward, Marie (1998). Octavio Paz, Mexicos
Great Idea Man. Washington Post. Retrieved October
3, 2013.

Honorary Doctorate National Autonomous Univer- [12] Kandell, Jonathan (1998). Octavio Paz, Mexicos Man of
Letters, Dies at 84. New York Times. Retrieved October
sity of Mexico 1978[22]
3, 2013.

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 Italian
Republic 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

References

[13] Xirau, Ramn (2004) Entre La Poesia y El Conocimiento:

Antologia de Ensayos Criticos Sobre Poetas y Poesia
Iberoamericanos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura
Econmica p. 219.
[14] Stavans (2003). Octavio Paz: A Meditation. University of
Arizona Press. p. 3.
[15] Congurations, Historical Collection: UNESCO Culture
Sector, UNESCO ocial website
[16] National Book Awards 1974. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
There was a National Book Award category Translation
from 1967 to 1983.
[17] Paz, Octavio. Signs in Rotation (1967), The Bow and
the Lyre, trans. Ruth L.C. Simms (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1973), p. 249.
[18] Christopher Domnguez Michael (November 2009).
Memorias del encuentro: La experiencia de la libertad"". Letras Libres (in Spanish). Retrieved July 10, 2013.
[19] Huschmid (2004) pp127-151
[20] Huschmid (2004) p145

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

vida de Octavio Paz. Mxico: ERA, 2004. p. 27. ISBN
968411575X
[2] Jaime Perales Contreras: Octavio Paz y el circulo de la
revista 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.

[21] Member of Colegio Nacional (in spanish)

[22] Honorary Degree National Autonomous University of
Mexico.
[23] Honorary Degree Harvard University.
[24] Presidency of the Italian Republic. Awards granted to
Octavio Paz by the Italian Republic (in Italian). Retrieved August 13, 2013.

External links
Nobel museum biography and list of works
Boletin Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz The Art of Poetry No. 42 Summer
1991 The Paris Review
Nobel lecture
Recorded in Washington D.C. on October 18, 1988.
Video (1 Hr)
Petri Liukkonen. Octavio Paz. Books and Writers
(kirjasto.sci.). Archived from the original on 4 July
2013.

10

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