Octavio Paz: life, works and diplomatic career

We explain who Octavio Paz was, what his main contributions to Mexican literature were, and in what historical context he carried out his diplomatic career.

Octavio Paz was the first Mexican writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1990).

Who was Octavio Paz?

Octavio Paz was a Mexican writer and diplomat, considered as one of the most important Latin American authors of the 20th century and a key figure in contemporary Spanish-language literature. His career as a poet and essayist earned him numerous national and international awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Cervantes Prize.

Along with the Chilean Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) and the Peruvian César Vallejo (1892-1938), Octavio Paz was a central reference in post-modernist Hispanic American poetryHe was also a renowned intellectual, with important work in reflection, translation and literary criticism, and an enthusiastic promoter of Mexican literature, involved in the creation of various poetic groups and literary magazines.

Throughout his life, Paz expressed his cosmopolitan interests and social commitment, particularly during his stay in Spain, where he became involved in the Spanish Civil War and was part of the anti-fascist movement. As for his personal life, he had two marriages: the first with the famous Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1998), with whom he had his only daughter, and the second with the French artist Marie-José Tramini (1934-2018), with whom Paz lived until his death in 1998.

Childhood and formative years of Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, on March 31, 1914, into a family of intellectuals. These were the years of the Mexican Revolution and his father, the lawyer and journalist Octavio Paz Solórzano (1883-1935), was part of Emiliano Zapata’s faction, so the rest of the The family spent entire periods of time with their paternal grandfather, Irineo Paz (1836-1924), who was an intellectual and novelist.In his home in the Mixcoac neighborhood, the young Octavio Paz had access to a large library and made his first significant literary readings.

In 1916, Octavio Paz’s father had to settle in Los Angeles, United States, and his family accompanied him during the years of exile, which culminated in 1919 after the death of Emiliano Zapata. Back in Mexico, Paz began his studies at the National Preparatory School and later at the National University of Mexico (now the UNAM), where he studied law, philosophy and literature.

During those years of youth, Paz also received political training. He identified himself with the political project of José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), former rector of the UNAM and Secretary of Public Education, whose presidential candidacy was supported by the great intellectuals of the time and the university sectors. He also met the young Catalan anarchist José Bosch (1872-1936) and He began to be active in various student and worker movements.

His literary interests were also precocious. At the age of sixteen he published his first articleentitled “Ethics of the artist”, in which he reflected on the morality of art and the dilemma between social commitment and “pure” art. In that same year he joined the founding group of the magazine Railing (1931), together with Rafael López Malo, Salvador Toscano and Arnulfo Martínez Lavalle, and two years later he published his first book of poems: Wild moon (1933).

In 1937, already married to Elena Garro, Paz left for Mérida, Yucatán, where he took part in the construction of a school for workers’ children, planned by the government of General Lázaro Cárdenas. While there, he received an invitation from Rafael Alberti (1902-1999) and Pablo Neruda to the II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture, to be held in Spain during the Second Republic.

Marriage with Elena Garro

Octavio Paz and Elena Garro were two of the greatest Mexican writers of the 20th century.

Octavio Paz and Elena Garro’s marriage lasted thirteen years, during which they had their only daughter: Laura Helena Paz Garro. After their divorce in 1950, Garro’s work was overshadowed by the acclaim of Paz’s work. Today, however, she is recognized for her enormous importance in Mexican narrative and dramaturgy, and is considered the second most important writer in Mexico, surpassed only by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

The trip to Spain was very important in the life of Octavio Paz. There he met Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948), Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989) and other prominent intellectuals of the generation of 98 and the magazine Spanish time. Besides, He visited the front of the civil war and openly supported the republican causealthough his political ties with the international left were always conflictive, following the repression of the Marxist Unification Workers’ Party in Catalonia and then the crimes committed in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin (1878-1953).

Diplomatic career of Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz returned to Mexico in 1938, after the tragic death of his father, who was run over by a train. There he became an essential part of the literary magazines Workshop (1938), Our land (1940) and The prodigal son (1943), all of importance in Mexican literary history. During this period he wrote his most important literary work.In 1943 he won a Guggenheim Scholarship to resume his studies in Berkeley, United States.

At the end of World War II, Paz was offered a position in Mexican diplomacy. Until 1951 he was part of the consular delegation of his country in France, and in Paris he came into contact with the nascent surrealist movement. He also collaborated with the famous magazine Spiritfounded by Emmanuel Mounier in 1932, and established relationships with Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Albert Camus (1913-1960) and André Breton (1896-1966).

His work in Mexican diplomacy led him to India in 1952 and then to Japan, as chargé d’affaires, which allowed the two nations to resume their diplomatic relations, suspended during World War II. In these nations, Paz had contact with Asian religions and Eastern mysticismmatters of importance within his literary work.

Between 1953 and 1959, Paz returned to Mexico and headed the International Organizations office of the Mexican Foreign Ministry. He also had a prominent participation in the Mexican Literature Magazinewho promoted the idea of ​​a third way, intermediate between the left and the right, and participated in the poetic-theatrical group “Poesía en voz alta” and in the magazine The feathered horn.

In 1959 he was sent back to Europe, and in Paris he met his second wife, Marie-José Tramini. Three years later he was appointed Mexican ambassador to India, a post he held until 1968. That year the Tlatelolco y Paz massacre took place in protest, He was the only Mexican ambassador who formally resigned from his postFrom then on, he taught various university courses in the United States.

Last years of Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. This was his full speech.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Octavio Paz continued to be an important voice within the Mexican intelligentsia. He founded and directed the magazines Plural (1971) and Lap (1976), in which he embraced literary experimentation and He was critical of human rights violations by both right-wing and communist regimes. of the moment.

In fact, in an interview conducted by the newspaper The country In 1984, Paz said: “When I compared Castro to Pinochet, I did so because both are dictators. If one criticizes a dictatorship, one must also criticize all dictatorships.” This alienated him from a large part of the Mexican and Latin American intellectual community.

His work, however, continued to be recognized. In 1981 he received the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary distinction in the Spanish language, and in 1990 the Nobel Prize for Literature..

In 1996, his apartment was destroyed by fire, along with much of his library. Paz was transferred by the Mexican government to the historic Casa de Alvarado in Coyoacán, where he lived until his death on April 19, 1998, at the age of 84.

The poetry of Octavio Paz

In his “topoems”, Octavio Paz combined the visual and the linguistic.

The poetic work of Octavio Paz It is difficult to classifyas it reflects the vastness and depth of his interests. It encompasses the major poetic trends of the 20th century, such as Romanticism, Modernism, Symbolism and the Avant-garde, as well as themes as varied as eroticism, social change, esotericism, Eastern mysticism, and especially the loneliness and lack of communication of the individual.

On the other hand, His poetry oscillates between the search for formal perfectionthrough traditional metrics and formats, and the experimentation inherent to surrealism and avant-garde movements. In fact, Paz is the creator of the topoems (of moles“place” in Greek, and poem), an intellectual form of poetry, in which visual signs different from those of traditional writing are used.

This complex panorama has led various critics to classify Paz’s poetry as existentialist, neo-modernist, surrealist and metaphysical, all at the same time. It is a cosmopolitan poetry that, according to the Chilean writer and diplomat Jorge Edwards (1931-2023), “accompanies thought, provokes it, prolongs it and at the same time summarizes it.”

The essayistic work of Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz’s essay work is as well known and celebrated as his poetic work, if not more so. In his essays, Paz addresses various topics of sociological, anthropological, political, historical and literary interest.which led his biographers to dub him a “man of his century,” that is, an individual in tune with the concerns of his time, whose interests transcended the strictly national.

On the other hand, for many his essay work reaffirmed, in a context of profound changes in Western culture such as the 20th century, the validity and value of the essay as a literary genre, that is, as an art form and not only as a scientific and objective means.

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References

• Edwards, J. (sf). In the eyes of Jorge Edwards. Zona Paz.