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Octavio Paz was the first Mexican citizen to win the Nobel Prize for literature, but
in many ways his life and work embraced a profundity that transcended geography, politics,
or awards. Paz's acute sensitivity and mature relationship with the world were forged in
the smithy of experience. As a reporter, ambassador, essayist, poet, and thinker (in the
uncompromising classical sense) he endeavored to see our world freed from its veil.
Paz, a devoted student of the Enlightenment, witnessed and commented on modernity ---
faults and all.
ITINERARY: An Intellectual Journey, although just two short essays, contains all of the
elements that make reading Paz so illuminating: the poetic simplicity and seduction of his
language, his insights into the labyrinth of human history, and the genius to hold that
history in his careful hands. Paz described his final work as "an intellectual
biography" because, ostensibly, it follows the path of its author --- while carefully
examining the development of his ideas. Yet, ITINERARY is neither a memoir chiseled in
stone, nor a hastily conceived coda to a brilliant life, but rather a river of thought
intended to flow through this century and beyond. His analysis of modern culture,
politics, and society is free from the clutter of intellectual wrangling and always
emphasizes the need for a careful, critical perspective on the world. Jason Wilson, Paz's
friend and translator, captures these elements with elegiac clarity, "Paz defined his
task of making poetic inspiration the means to change history...To become a poet meant
opening his awareness to the social tragedy, exposing the life-denying ideologies, the
fossilized languages, the numbed responses."
The first essay focuses primarily on THE LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE, a work that was published
in 1950 (hardly out from the shadows of the second world war) after a long gestation
period in which Paz traveled to the United States, Spain, and Paris. Distance from his
home allowed Paz to interpret Mexican history and its situation in the modern world. In
this very personal essay, Paz revisits his investigation into the labyrinth of Mexico,
almost like an archaeologist reopening a tomb. With the advantage of hindsight he
reexamines its history, myths, and desires. Since the explorations of the Spanish and
Portuguese, Mexicans have been a fragment of world history. Paz considers the phantoms of
Spain, whose psychological presence haunts Mexico's memory, and of the United States,
whose mythic proportions and opportunities have almost become an unconscious obsession.
Among the images and rites of the Mexican culture he tries, as he describes it, to
"rip the veil apart and see." The first essay comments on his reasons for
contemplating Mexico's place on the world stage and serves to introduce themes that are
dealt with in much greater detail in the second essay, "Itinerary." Among the
most engaging of Paz's themes are the role of literature; the political, historical and
philosophical implications of revolutions; the false dreams and legacies of communism; and
the rarely examined complexity of sustaining democracies. Individually, such topics might
seem the subject of doctoral dissertations, but Paz seamlessly weaves them together with
the economy and precision of a poet.
The second essay concentrates the arguments of the first and, like many of the Platonic
dialogues, poses as many questions as it answers. Based on the premise that revolution is
an undeniable characteristic of the modern age, Paz endeavors to make sense of historical
change. He begins with the Greeks, the inventors of democracy, who viewed change with
suspicion, even horror. In general, ancient societies embraced the absolute --- whether an
archetypal past or an anthropomorphic divinity --- and scorned relativism. The deliberate
religiousness of Paz's analysis dovetails neatly with his next premise --- that revolution
in the modern age has been used as a proxy for religion, i.e., they share a dual
function: to change people's behavior and give meaning to their lives. Like many other
European and Latin American intellectuals, Paz fell in love with the concept of revolution
but gradually became disenchanted with the disparity between concept and realization,
"These pages are the witness of a Mexican writer who...lived those hopes and
disillusions, that frenzy and that disappointment." What is exceptional about
ITINERARY is that Paz depicts the ardent support for revolution that galvanized his youth
without restraint, free from intellectual pride or compunction. He confesses that his love
for revolution equaled his love of poetry; in fact, they were, "two wings of the same
passion." And, although Paz recognized communism as a faulty mechanism, he was
nonetheless taken in by its promises ("it was the sole door out of the impasse
of our century") and forgave its chimerical logic. Throughout ITINERARY Paz derides
communism as a false religion responsible for making efficiency into a god --- a god
demanding "the sacrifice of each one's conscience" but returning nothing to fill
the void.
Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, the year after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. One might easily assume that the fall of communism and the victory declared on
behalf of democracy and capitalism were the punctuation mark for the shift in Paz's
thought. However, Paz refused to spare modern democracy from the same scrutiny he applied
to communism, "Defending modern democracy, I must admit, has not been and is not
easy." Paz believed that the engines of modern democracies are fueled by relativism,
which in its purest form assures the coexistence of people, ideas, and beliefs. Yet, at
the core of our relativistic societies is a hollow, a void that replaces coexistence with
conformity. Capitalism has created the indifferent market, a zero-sum game, simultaneously
creating abundance and poverty. Its effortless mantra --- produce, consume, work,
spend --- echoes the religious and efficient aspects of communism. In the closing
pages of ITINERARY Paz acts as a voice for humanity, exhorting us to find ways of
enlightening the market before it devours us. In the age of globalization, with armies of
proponents and detractors facing off in Seattle, Prague, and elsewhere, Paz's words
resound with experience, authority, and prophecy.
If Dante had Virgil to lead him through the dark wood it is clear that Paz relied on
Spanish literature and the poetry of T. S. Eliot to guide him through the labyrinth of our
century. Paz arrived in Spain amidst the chaos of General Franco, when the literary
movement was incited by the recent execution of Federico García Lorca. Writers like Juan
Ramón Jiménez, Jorge Guillén, and the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda were critical in
nurturing Paz's political and aesthetic sensitivity. For Paz, unlike other Mexican
intellectuals, the Spanish tradition was a path, not an obstacle, to modernity. The
English tradition was equally important. Throughout these essays and elsewhere Paz freely
alludes to Eliot's work (particularly "The Hollow Men"). He asserts that
"The Waste Land" was seminal to his thought and maintains that even today it
"continues to be deeply topical." This final chapter of a brilliant career is
social commentary that never loses sight of the relevance of literature. Once again Paz
has proven himself an able guide.
---Reviewed by Joel E. D. Wells
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