“About Oaxaca”: Literature

Octavio Paz was a Mexican writer and poet-diplomat. Paz was known especially for his surrealist and existentialist work as well as his involvement in Mexican politics. Born in 1914, Paz was introduced to literature at a very early age through his grandfather’s extensive library containing many works of classic Mexican and European literature. After publishing his first poem, “Cabellera” as a teenager in 1931, Paz later when on to publish his first collection of poems, Luna Silvestre, two years later.

In 1937, Paz traveled to Valencia, Spain to participate in the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers and in 1938 when he returned to Mexico he started the journal Taller. This new magazine catalyzed a new movement of writers and literature in Mexico.

In 1945, Paz joined the Mexican diplomatic service and was sent to France to where he started writing his study of Mexican identity in his work The Labyrinth of Solitude. In his essay, Paz explores the Mexican identity and the concept of solitude and its effects on man. One excerpt from his essay: “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature – if that word can be used in reference to man, who has 'invented' himself by saying 'no' to nature – consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude” (Paz).

About twenty years after publishing his major essay, Paz was appointed Mexican ambassador to India where many of his works were influenced by his stay there. However in 1968, Paz resigned in “protest against the government's bloodstained suppression of the student demonstrations in Tlatelolco during the Olympic Games in Mexico” (“Octavio”). After resigning, he continued to work on other pieces such as Plural and Vuelta and in 1980 was named honorary doctor at Harvard. Paz died in Mexico City, Mexico in 1998, at the age of 84.

Works Cited

Paz, Octavio. The Labrynth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. London: Allen

Lane. The Penguin, 1967. Print.

"Octavio Paz - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 6 Nov 2015.

<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1990/paz-bio.html>