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
kissing two people
The world is born when two people kiss
almost art higher lays says unfaithful work
The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.
bridge changes decisive environment man modern nature neutral radical technology throws time work
Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature of modern man; it is our environment and our horizon. Of course, every work of man is a negation of nature, but at the same time, it is a bridge between nature and us. Technology changes nature in a more radical and decisive manner: it throws it out.
future judgment moral opinions peace present rejections war
Our judgment and moral categories, our idea of the future, our opinions about the present or about justice, peace, or war, everything, without excluding our rejections of Marxism, is impregnated with Marxism.
attitude critical longer lose modernity
The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.
include leads orthodoxy tribunal understanding work
An understanding of Sor Juana's work must include an understanding of the prohibitions her work confronts. Her speech leads us to what cannot be said, what cannot be said to an orthodoxy, the orthodoxy to a tribunal, and the tribunal to a sentence.
archaic belong centuries distant letting permits picasso places posterity time
Picasso is what is going to happen and what is happening; he is posterity and archaic time, the distant ancestor and our next-door neighbor. Speed permits him to be two places at once, to belong to all the centuries without letting go of the here and now.
cause ease fact games less minds perverse relations rhetoric twisted
The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern.
historical history image mexico period plateau separated surrounded tall truth
The truth is that the history of Mexico is a history in the image of its geography: abrupt and tortuous. Each historical period is like a plateau surrounded by tall mountains and separated from the other plateaus by precipices and divides.
areas discovered discovery invention lies novel unfamiliar unknown value work worlds
To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.
century favor freedom man
For a man of my generation, our century has been a long intellectual and political struggle in favor of freedom.
across cultural distant indian pure time
We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.
easily mexican shuns therefore
The Mexican succumbs very easily to sentimental effusions, and therefore he shuns them.
against constant continuity contrast feature modernity
The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.