Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
abstract alone citizens fellow great high inhabited insatiable man moral north plateau solitude stone wanders
Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.
mechanism poems reproduce rotary
Poems - crystallizations of the universal play of analogy, transparent objects which, as they reproduce the mechanism and the rotary motion of analogy, are waterspouts of new analogies.
cult future genre harmony hostile innermost modern nature poetry progress
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
found independence war whatever
The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.
active aware closed comparison country inertia mexicans minority selves shaping unchanging
The minority of Mexicans who are aware of their own selves do not make up a closed or unchanging class. They are the only active group, in comparison with the Indian-Spanish inertia of the rest, and ever day they are shaping the country more and more into their own image.
activity concerned object poetic whatever
The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.
discord experience faces great modern monologue poet seem universal walt whitman
Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.
accomplice aware call creates devours nature neither nor surrounds totality
Yes, I am well aware that nature - or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us - is neither our accomplice nor our confidant.
sleep mexican toys
The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.
dream your-dreams deserve
Deserve your dream.
house future-happiness prison
The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not Yet,' and thus denies us... Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.
views civilization differences
What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life
loneliness being-alone men
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
death civilization ends
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.