Paz, Octavio (Vol. 4) - Paz, Octavio 1914–
Paz, Octavio 1914–
Paz, a Mexican, is a brilliant poet, essayist, and social philosopher.
Paz has never been one to hold his rhetoric (in prose) on any kind of rein, and I sometimes feel that a very good prose style could be created for Paz if a kindly friend or editor would simply cut out every third sentence he writes. Still, this too is part of being an intellectual in Latin America. There is the constant obligation to keep talking, and one senses that Paz's brilliantly vacuous remarks ("but the differences between civilizations hide a secret unity: man"—that is, human societies are inhabited by human beings) are perhaps a means of bearing the burden without being crushed by it: you take the job, but you don't take it too seriously. Paz has not been bought off by a reactionary government; he has not taken flight into formalism or aesthetics; he has sanctioned neither Stalinism nor terrorism. He has sustained a high critical intelligence where...
[The entire page is 2847 words long]
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