for it to be understood is, again, for the reader to look beyond language to ideas that reside in the subconscious. Paz is relying on the reader's ability to move beyond the confines of the literal word and the conscious mind to be able to make free associations with images and ideas to understand the truth behind his words.

The series of surprising images that are offered in lines 8 to 10 also require readers to move beyond discursive thought to be fully appreciated. The visual descriptions given are of insects that are jewels, heat that lays down to rest, rain that is the hair of a tree, and a tree that grows out of somebody's hand. All these representations cannot be explained in rational language or justified in terms of what the conscious mind knows to be true. But the existence of these things is possible in the subconscious. Just as in dreams when strange and disparate images come together to tell a story that is understood by the dreamer, these images come together to tell a story if the mind allows itself to be open to it. The use of direct metaphors (the rain is not simply like the hair of a willow tree but is the hair of a willow tree) creates a sense of fusion, oneness, and synthesis among all things in the universe. And once more the free association between images allows readers to understand this unity without it being explicitly stated.

The tree growing from within a hand is a fantastic picture. As Rachel Phillips points out in her study of Paz's work, the image of the tree in Paz's poetry often symbolizes humans' rootedness and is used to stand for humans' physical bodies. Here there are no roots in the earth (as was pointed out earlier, earth is noticeably absent from the landscape), which reinforces the idea of freedom and possibility. But the symbol of the tree seems to indicate a sense of belonging, suggesting that there is some real connection between humans and this marvelous and dreamlike world.

The various associated images in the first part of the poem combine to create a sense of a landscape or time or place that is at once fabulous but strangely familiar. Making sense of these images has required the reader to exercise certain non-rational powers, and the place being understood using those powers feels oddly close to home. This is because what is being described in the poem is in fact that place from which these powers spring—the subconscious. The poem uses the reader's imagination and the immediate experiences he or she has had in calling upon associations to build, without using overt explanation, a most vivid picture of the subconscious mind. This depiction of the subconscious is shown through language on the one hand, since the medium is the poem. But in another way poetry cuts through the confines and clumsiness and inexactness of discursive language to speak to the subconscious in a voice that it can better understand—and allows it to recognize itself.

In the latter part of the poem the imagery shifts from being visual to being abstract. Although the images are still unusual, the tone of the poem changes so that the reader is no longer left with a strange but familiar feeling but must try to understand what is going on in the poem in a quite different way. It is explained that this world that has been depicted is a single, unified world: "Everything belonged to everyone / Everyone was everything." These two lines have overtones of a socialist utopia, where there is no ownership and there is perfect harmony. The lines call up associations, but they are not the same sorts of sensuous, basic images that were given earlier in the poem. The reader does not even have to make any associations to understand these lines; they are simple and expository. The very tone indicates a movement out of the realm of the subconscious to a more conscious understanding.

The poem goes on to say that in this world only a single word existed. It was immense and without opposite. Everything that may be described or talked about existed within that single word. Returning to the earlier discussion of the "word," this can be seen as showing that in this subconscious, primitive world, there is a true expression of how things "are," of what deep human experiences feel like, of what truth without the rules of consciousness is in actuality. But this word that expresses all things and the harmony of the world explodes into fragments. All that there is now are pieces of a mirror that reflects partially and statically the truth that before was whole. The truths of the subconscious mind cannot be told literally. Once this is even attempted, the images that are projected are not reflective of that deep reality, but of the world seen by the conscious mind.

That Paz uses the medium of a poem to express this idea of the limits of language might be seen as undercutting what he says in the last lines of the poem about a splintered reality viewed through language. But the presence and form of the poem itself works as a very important factor in "Fable." Most forms of language cannot describe those feelings and ideas that well up from the unconscious or even explain the subconscious in any meaningful way at all. When a person tries to describe a dream he or she had at night to someone else the next day there is simply no way the experience can be conveyed fully. Even the person who had the dream might remember his or her own experience in a dim way in the light of conscious thought. But poetry, like the original "word," does not do such disservice to the ideas of the subconscious. Poetry does not offer a fragmented reality because it not only uses language but the silences between words. It allows the mind to reach down into itself and understand the world not only at a conscious level but at an unconscious one as well. It reveals the truth to us that is behind our rational thoughts, by opening up our minds. Paz does not explain this in any of the words of "Fable" but shows it by having the poem itself work on the reader's subconscious to better understand itself.

Source: Uma Kukathas, in an essay for Literature of Developing Nations for Students, Gale, 2000. Kukathas is a freelance writer and a student in the Ph.D. program in philosophy at the University of Washington, where she is specializing in social, political, and moral philosophy.

One of the principal reasons for the success of the poetry of Octavio Paz is that it can be meaningful without being inaccessible and highly refined in form without being meaningless. It is axiomatic that the poet of the 20th century, no matter what language he uses to declare himself, must express his personal feelings and reactions. Even when discoursing on absolutes and infinites, he must maintain a close relationship between his views and his own experiences. The demands on his readers, accordingly, have been proportionately greater, and in Mexico as in the United States, have made the reading of vanguard poetry a trying task in the last quarter of a century. The reader never knows what kind of intellectual wardrobe he may be called upon to pack for his esthetic voyages. But recent years have seen a return to sanity in poetry, not only by individual poets who write understandably, but also as a perceptible literary movement. For many mid-century poets, this signifies the ability to blend the personal and the universal, the particular and the general, and to strike a balance in technique as well as in choice of subject.

The fact that the new poetry is accessible, however, does not mean that it is easy; there are still many aspects of it that remain obscure. Although there is seldom one explanation which clarifies everything in a poet's work, there are frequently key ideas that can be of help, and it is with one of these, the device of the mirror, that we wish to concern ourselves here. What we propose is to observe the ways in which the poet has used the mirror as image and as theme, and to deduce from these uses conclusions which may be applied to all of Paz's work, especially with respect to his concept of reality and his reaction to it.

There are two primary reasons for selecting the mirror as the point of departure instead of other abstractions which the poet also dwells upon. First is the fact that the mirror is referred to with much greater frequency and intensity than any of the others, particularly in Libertad bajo palabra, in which the mirror occurs in the introduction, the last section of the concluding poem, and repeatedly in the pages in between, to such an extent that the reader's first impression is that the mirror is an obsession or at least a fixation of Paz. Its importance for the poet is also indicated by its repeated appearance in articles and in poetry published subsequent to Libertad bajo palabra. Secondly, Paz has given the problem of reality a dominant place in his work, and the mirror, as tradition would lead one to expect, is ideally suited for the exploration of this subject.

There is no significant appearance of the mirror in Paz's collections of poetry before A la orilla del mundo or in his latest volume of poems (1954). The poems which concern us most here, therefore, are those of A la orilla del mundo and Libertad bajo palabra. In fact, the former contains only a limited number of references to the mirror, and of these the majority apply to descriptions or to objects not having a direct and close relationship to the poet's interior life; in these cases, the mirror, if it is mentioned at all—it is suggested more frequently than stated—tends to be a brief image which is engulfed in the procession of other images and other subjects which follow it in close order. Such is the case in "Palabra":

Palabra, voz exacta
y sin embargo equívoca;
oscura y luminosa;
herida y fuente: espejo;
espejo y resplandor;
resplandor y puñal,
vivo puñal amado,
ya no puñal, sí mano suave: fruto.

In any case, glimpsed briefly or not, the mirror in A la orilla del mundo is always subordinate to the description of something else, as a secondary element of the poem, an incidental instrument of poetic reconstruction applied to something beyond the limits of the poet's emotional life. We might say that the mirror, in the small space it occupies in this book, only foreshadows a larger concept which Paz was to form at a later date.

Surveying the cases in which the mirror is used as an image in Libertad bajo palabra, we observe that there is one common denominator which stands out above all others: the vision of the mirror as an object which suggests absence of limits, an object which by definition is not subject to the usual laws of spatial measurement. "Atrás mis uñas y mis dientes caídos en el pozo del espejo," for example, suggests the irretrievable loss.

"Un olvido reciente y ya olvidado, espejo en un espejo" postulates the endless repetition of two mirrors reflecting each other. "Su propia soledad doblada: un desolado espejo negro" conveys the idea of solitude extended to infinite proportions. Repeatedly the image of the mirror involves the opening of a new dimension, a dimension of endlessness, spacelessness, so that its use here might be termed a kind of window into infinity:

Insomnio, espejo sin respuesta
Anegado en mi sombra-espejo
La conciencia, laberinto de espejos,
hipnótica mirada en sí misma abstraída
La noche nace en espejos de luto
El silencio es un espejo negro
donde se ahogan todas las preguntas
Adiós al espejo verídico,
donde dejé mi máscara
por descender al fondo del sinfín
Mas a solas de pronto
un espejo, unos ojos, un silencio,
precipicios abrían, inflexibles
El mal sabor del mundo, el impasible,
abstracto abismo del espejo a solas

These passages also suggest that a look through the window into a dimension that is formless and timeless can only be disquieting to the subject. In some cases this uneasiness becomes a more extreme emotion, and the image of the mirror is used to suggest resentment, hostility, and fierceness. The poet's fear of the void is thus expressed in his antagonism towards the object which represents it. The poet wishes to "probar la soledad sin que el vinagre / haga torcer mi boca ni repita / mis muecas el espejo, ni el silencio / se erice con los dientes que rechinan," the night is filled with "espejos que combaten," or the sea is wrecked by its own "voraz espejo." It is not the concrete reflection in the mirror which is feared as destructive, but what the reflection does towards nullifying the poet's vision of his own identity and independent existence. "El espejo que soy me deshabita." Since what he sees furnishes no answer, but merely repeats a question or statement, the poet's attitude is one of hostility. In two cases where the mirror is not named but is implied, Paz declares: "Lo que devoras te devora, / tu víctima también es tu verdugo"; "Frente de mí yo mismo, devorado."

If it is true that the principal quality of the mirror as Paz sees it is infinite repetition, it is equally true that this repetition is never utilized to glorify the subject's vanity. There is never the slightest implication that the face in the mirror is an object of admiration. The person who looks in the mirror, on the contrary, rarely sees what we would expect him to see, and what is reflected to him, far from being a source of satisfaction and pleasure, is the cause of a variety of adverse reactions ranging from boredom through rejection to the deepest despair. The lack of any trace of narcissism in poetry which is constantly haunted by the appearance of the mirror is in itself distinctive and sets Paz apart from other writers such as Paul Valéry, a narcissist of the intellectual variety, or a newly popular Mexican contemporary of Paz, Guadalupe Amor, who frankly admits her narcissism in her fondness for mirrors.

What the image of the mirror constantly suggests here, then, is its use as an entry into a dimension of infinite repetition, which the poet frequently associates with a bottomless void and which is related to an emotional reaction of strife and violence. The mirror as repetition, as a world of its own, is not particularly illogical nor far removed from the realm of experience. Considerably less clear so far is the poet's reaction to this concept; the reader may find himself confused when he tries to determine why the mirror is disturbing to the poet. The possible cause of the restlessness, the feelings of violence, is not revealed in the imagery itself. The fuller symbolic significance of the mirror is reserved for several entire poems—or sizable sections of poems—where it appears as the theme. These do not contradict or amend the ideas which we have pointed out as characteristic of the mirror up to this point; they add the philosophical implications, particularly relating to the poet's vision of reality, which are too extensive to be summed up completely by the image alone.

Before turning to an analysis of the mirror as theme, we should note the significance of another theme which has a relationship to it, that dealing with Paz's concept of poetry. It is not due to caprice that "La poesía," the concluding poem of A la orilla, appears in a revised form as the first poem of Libertad bajo palabra, the only item in these two collections of his verse which the author has chosen to honor by repetition. Throughout both books, indeed, there is a predominant concern for the form that the poems are taking in the author's mind; he gives us a picture of a man constantly aware of the demands of his craft while he is in the throes of creation. Part of this concern centers around the forging of a language which will express his personality, which he seems to view as a means of personal revelation more than as a literary medium. Even more important than this, perhaps, is his view of poetry as a source of order and meaning in a disordered world. To the extent that he succeeds in finding words to express himself, to that extent does he shape a part of life and control a segment of existence:

El arte opera con la vida real como Dios con
el tiempo.
No sólo da unidad a la vida dispersa, abandonada
a su propio
fluir o a los estrechos cauces en que el hombre
la encierra;
también le "pone un hasta aquí’' a esa
inagotable marea.

The great reverence for the mission of poetry helps to explain the absence of the narcissistic variety of self-contemplation which has already been noted in the imagery. Just as the poet is not content with the appearances of the world as he finds it, so does he reject the first appearances of his own personality as superficial. If poetry must give order to life, it will seek what the face in the mirror implies rather than dwell on a description of it as it is. In fact, a self-centered interpretation of the face in the mirror would be incompatible with the poet's reverence for the aims of art.

It is particularly in reference to time—or rather to the suspension of time—that a transformation of reality is felt. This experience is what the poet treats in "Arcos," in which he looks at the process of artistic creation with a schizophrenic eye by identifying himself with the river of his own poetry. The river flows along, divides, and goes separate ways to find itself once again. Although the mirror is not mentioned, it is strongly implied in the poet's reflection of himself in the river of imagery. The idea of a somewhat mystic union with poetry, a union which suspends time, helps to clarify passages of the poem:

¿Quién canta en las orillas del papel? Inclinado, de pechos sobre el río de imágenes, me veo, lento y solo, de mí mismo alejarme; oh letras puras, constelación de signos, incisiones en la carne del tiempo, ¡oh escritura, ray a en el agua!

Writing itself may be as fleeting as a line in the water, but the effect it achieves, "incisiones en la carne del tiempo" puts experience out of time's reach. This immobilization of time, moreover, is involved in the paradox (a device which Paz is obviously fond of) which he suggests in "me veo, lento y solo, de mí mismo alejarme," a situation which would be impossible except in a timeless world. The same kind of magic is applied to the river, which also has paradoxical characteristics ("que se desliza y no transcurre") and which, like the poet, is in two places at once, leaving itself to find itself, just as the poet, not only here, but in other poems, leaves his identity to find it, most often with the aid of the mirror:

Voy entre verdores
enlazados, voy entre transparencias,
entre islas avanzo por el río,
por el río feliz que se desliza
y-no transcurre, liso pensamiento.
Me alejo de mí mismo, me detengo
sin detenerme en una orilla y sigo,
río abajo, entre arcos de enlazadas
imágenes, el río pensativo.
Sigo, me espero allá, voy a mi encuentro,
río feliz que enlaza y desenlaza
un momento de sol entre dos álamos,
en la pulida piedra se demora,
y se desprende de sí mismo y sigue,
río abajo, al encuentro de sí mismo.

The river of art, then, is not a reflection of life, but a distillation:

El arte no es un reflejo de la vida. Tampoco es solamente una profundización de la vida, una visión más pura y limpia. Es algo más; limita el acontecer, extrae del fluir de la vida unos cuantos minutos palpitantes y los inmoviliza, sin matarlos.

This same impression of the blissful suspension of time which the poet feels when he is successful in achieving self-expression is also observable in "Delicia":

... naces, poesía, delicia,
y danzas, invisible, frente al hombre.
El presidio del tiempo se deshace.

The release from the domination of time, which the author continues to develop in the stanza following this, emerges in the concluding lines as the principal theme of the poem, and fully defines the nature of "delicia."

The poet's search is not always so well rewarded, and the references to his work are not always the reflection of satisfaction in his mission, as can be seen in "La poesía" and "Las palabras." Occasionally the poet finds poetry not a reward but a punishment, and his feelings indicate frustration, uncertainty, and disillusionment. Such is the case of "El sediento," in which the hopeful search for poetry ends in failure when the poet faces reality. The reality here is of special interest to us because it takes the form of the mirror, and connotes the barriers of the poet's own personality which he feels he must break to attain his aims:

Por buscarme, Poesía,
en ti me busqué:
deshecha estrella de agua,
se anegó mi ser.
Por buscarte, Poesía,
en mí naufragué.
Después sólo te buscaba
por huir de mí:
¡espesura de reflejos
en que me perdí!
Mas luego de tanta vuelta
otra vez me vi:
el mismo rostro anegado
en la misma desnudez;
las mismas aguas de espejo
en las que no he de beber;
yen el borde del espejo
el mismo muerto de sed.

The thirst is the poet's desire to lose himself in poetry (see "Destino del poeta" for another variation on the theme of "Delicia"), the mirror is his hope of attainment (and his attainment of his hope) in his goal, and the conclusion is his forlorn objective glimpse of himself in the action of the search.

It is this consciousness of himself in the act of creation which unites the theme of poetry with the theme of the mirror, although not always as concretely as Paz has mingled them in "El sediento." There is a significant relationship between the two suggesting that perhaps they represent, not separate problems, but different aspects of the same problem—perhaps the unique and gigantic problem in the case of Paz—which the poet is called upon to solve. Paz is probably aware in his discussion of Quevedo's poetry of the significance of this question for an understanding of his own work:

En los salmos y sonetos que forman las "Lágrimas de un Penitente," Quevedo expresa la certidumbre de que el poeta ya no es uno con sus creaciones: está mortalmente dividido. Entre la poesía y el poeta, entre Dios y el hombre, se opone algo muy sutil y muy poderoso: la conciencia, y lo que es más significativo: la conciencia de la conciencia, el narcisismo intelectual. Quevedo expresa este estado demoníaco en dos versos:

las aguas del abismo
donde me enamoraba de mí mismo.

It is no coincidence that Paz uses the same term "abismo" to refer to his own search for himself, and that his comments here are in essence an exact paraphrase of "El sediento."

Continuing his discussion of Quevedo's poetry, Paz remarks that Quevedo is the first of modern poets to attribute a sinful content to "conciencia," not because it sins in imagination, but because it tries to sustain itself by itself, and, all alone, to satiate its thirst for the absolute. While Paz may not take the bitter and proud pleasure in "conciencia" which he finds in Quevedo, his attitude partakes of the same solitude, the same sin of isolation. When he declares "contemplo el combate que combato," or when he addresses poetry to say "Insiste, vencedora, / porque tan sólo existo porque existes," he is simply bearing witness to the lucidity, almost unbearable in its brightness, of his sense of awareness. As was true in the case of his tribute to poetry, here too the mirror serves as a link between his ideas:

Romperé los espejos, haré trizas mi imagen—que cada mañana rehace piadosamente mi cómplice, mi delator—La soledad de la conciencia y la conciencia de la soledad, el día a pan y agua, la noche sin agua. Sequía, campo arrasado por un sol sin párpados, ojo atroz, oh conciencia, presente puro donde pasado y porvenir arden sin fulgor ni esperanza. Todo desemboca en esta eternidad que no desemboca.

When the poet is confronted with his awareness of the world, which he tries to view objectively, he ends by asking himself where reality lies. The nature of the question is such that only a paradox can be the answer. "Epitafio para un poeta" at first glance is mere word play, but in fact contains a rather profound riddle:

Quiso cantar, cantar
para olvidar
su vida verdadera de mentiras
y recordar
su mentirosa vida de verdades.

The clue to the riddle is found in his article, "Poesía de la soledad y poesía de comunión." Quevedo, Paz finds, refuses salvation and denies the grace of poetry because he is absorbed in the world.

"Nada me desengaña, / el mundo me ha hechizado" are lines written by Quevedo which introduce A la orilla del mundo. Paz notes that Quevedo rejects redemption because he is absorbed in appearances:

Y es que no sólo la hermosura vacía del mundo lo sujeta (ni es ella a la que se abraza, en todos los sentidos y con todos los sentidos), sino su conciencia de sí.

This statement recalls the concluding lines of "Insomnio":

Insomnio, espejo sin respuesta, páramo del desprecio, pozo de sangre ardiente, orgullosa conciencia ante sí misma.

It is no wonder, then, given the power of self-awareness and of all that it implies, that Paz's poetry is frequently characterized by anguish, by striving, by unfulfillment, and occasional glimpses of his own kind of paradise. Significantly, Paz uses the mirror to explain what the poet represents in relation to the grace of poetry and the pain of perception:

La poesía es inocencia, pero el poeta no es inocente. De allí su angustia. La poesía es una gracia, un don, pero también es una sed y un padecimiento. La poesía brota del dolor como el agua de la tierra. Con la poesía el poeta recobra la inocencia, recuerda el Paraíso Perdido y come de la manzana antigua. Pero, ¡ qué duros páramos, qué desiertos, hay que atravesar para llegar a la fuente! Una fuente que a veces es sólo un espejo resplandeciente y cruel, en el que el poeta se contempla, sin saciarse, sin hundirse, reflejado por una luz impía. El poeta es una conciencia: la baudeleriana "conciencia del pecado," la conciencia de la embriaguez, la reflexión del vértigo. La conciencia de la existencia. Y de su conciencia brota, no la ceguera ni el abandono, sino una más profunda lucidez, que le permite contemplar y ser contemplado, ser el delirio y la conciencia del delirio.

This too helps to explain what might seem the chaos of lines such as the following:

Vuelvo el rostro: no soy sino la estela de mí mismo, la ausencia que deserto, el eco del silencio de mi grito.

The concluding portion of "Envío" states the same idea with a cool intensity ("ardor helado"), which serves to heighten the effect of a metaphysical mystery. Paz treats this theme more fully and dramatically in "La calle":

Todo está oscuro y sin salida,
y doy vueltas y vueltas en esquinas
que dan siempre a la calle
donde nadie me espera ni me sigue,
donde yo sigo a un hombre que tropieza
y se levanta y dice al verme: nadie

"Encuentro" in Águila o sol is a prose variation of the same subject. Seen in connection with the poet's pain of awareness, the device of the mirror acquires philosophical connotations: it is the symbol of the conflict between his general quest (the search for the absolutes) and his subjective point of view (the knowledge of his own limitations). It is also the point of conflict between the poet's reverence for the mission of poetry in general and his dissatisfaction with the way in which he has chosen to express himself. It is as if Paz held up his written words to see himself reflected in them. The mirror, basically, is Paz's poetry and at the same time, his reaction to his poetry.

This reaction, which can be noted particularly in the poems which have the mirror as a theme, is the source of the dimension of endless repetition and the violence associated with it, which are inexplicable when the mirror images are seen alone. The mirror constitutes an infinity in that it is only through the presentation of an endless series of perspectives in his poetry that the poet can orient his search for an ultimate objective view of reality. Yet he must start his search with himself since he is the only reality he knows. The violence is a result of his frustration at not getting beyond himself in his search, for what he invariably sees is a picture of the poet observing the poet observing the reflection.

There are several entire poems in Libertad bajo palabra which are especially significant for a study of the poet's vision of himself. These are, in addition to some already referred to in the preceding pages, "El prisionero," "Insomnio," "El espejo," "Pregunta," "La caída," the sixth part of "Crepúsculo de la ciudad," "Medianoche," "La calle," and the fourth part of "Cuarto de hotel." In four of these the mirror is specifically mentioned as the source of the reflected image; in the others it is strongly implied. What they all have in common, as a point of departure for the development of the theme, is that the poet uses a reflection of himself as a means of probing the meaning of reality.

It is interesting to note that in all cases the poet does not use the mirror at the outset of the poem. There is an introduction—varying from several words to several paragraphs—before the actual appearance and recognition of the reflection. This gradual approach to the dominant idea has the effect of increasing the impact and heightens the drama of the confrontation when it actually occurs. The meeting takes place without any strong break in the association of ideas, so that the reader suddenly becomes aware, with the same surprise that the poet himself must feel, that another identity, perhaps unbidden, has made an appearance. The passage from "Cuarto de hotel" is representative of all the poems under discussion in the way it slips into the question of dual identity easily, casually, and passively:

Roza mi frente con sus manos frías el río del pasado y sus memorias huyen bajo mis párpados de piedra. No se detiene nunca su carrera y yo, desde mí mismo, lo despido. ¿Huye de mí el pasado? ¿Huyo con él y aquel que lo despide es una sombra que me finge, hueca? Quizá no es él quien huye;....

At first we are told only that the poet is evoking memories; a chain of them which he reviews in his mind's eye. In the second sentence, the poet makes a separation of himself from the procession of memories (a separation which is indispensable for what is to follow, but which suggests nothing more so far than his awareness that there is a part of him which is not actively engaged in the process of evocation). In the question which follows, the separation between memory and himself is sharpened and made more concrete, but as yet does not involve a second personality. But in the next question—and the transition is made even smoother by the parallelism of the form—a subtle but vital change has been effected: the poet has shifted his point of view. Instead of seeing his memories from the vantage point of his consciousness, he has now identified himself with the memories themselves—but without submerging his voluntary consciousness completely, so that he now looks back at the person who was viewing the spectacle. What follows is a perfectly logical and rational doubt, and an implied debate as to the real identity of the poet: "Aquel que fuí se queda en la ribera. / No me recuerda nunca, ni me busca." We have, therefore, been led into the problem somewhat unawares. The poet has begun with a perfectly rational and normal set of circumstances and without our realizing it, has entered the realm of the abstract, a confused world where the standard concepts of reality do not always apply.

In this poem we have observed that the poet's vision of himself is obtained when he identifies himself with his recollections, and that he sees a shadow imitating him. In "La calle," the same sort of subtle change of vantage point is made with the same effect: the poet sees himself as he had described himself a moment before. In "El sediento," after becoming lost in a forest of reflections, the poet finds himself again: "y en el borde del espejo / el mismo muerto de sed." This, the final line of the poem, is particularly interesting, for it signifies that the poet has repeated in objective terms the same desires which he described at the beginning of the poem in very subjective terms. In "Envio" the process we have noted is reversed; instead of proceeding from the subjective view of himself to the objective, he begins with the objective ("Alguien escribe en mí") and concludes with the return to himself ("y vuelve a ser yo mismo"). The general impression, however, is the same: the poet sees himself as another person in his own situation ("Con un ardor helado / contempla lo que escribo"). In "Arcos" ("Sigo, me espero allá, / voy a mi encuentro"), the same situation is repeated, as it is somewhat less clearly in "La caida" ("El espejo que soy me deshabita") and as it is very clearly in "Pregunta," "El espejo," and "El prisionero."

What Paz sees first, then, is a new dimension of his personality —we might call it his unconscious self—which he reveals to us in the contrast between subjective and objective description, and with the exception of "Insomnio" and of "Crepúsculo de la ciudad," all the poems we are discussing here return the image of the poet in the act of observing his image, thus giving an unusual depth of perspective.

There is, of course, a basic paradox here, which Paz has not failed to develop for its poetic effect. For how is it possible for the poet to be at the same time the observer and the observed, the victim and the executioner, the departing one and the person to whom he says farewell?

Estoy con uno como yo,
que no me reconoce y me muestra mis armas;
con uno que me abraza y me hiere
—y se dice mi hijo—;
con uno que huye con mi cuerpo;
con uno que me odia porque yo soy él mismo.

"La caída" summarizes the paradox of the reflection when the poet writes "Frente de mí yo mismo, devorado" and "El espejo que soy me deshabita." Unusual definitions of paradoxical situations are found in the concluding stanza of "Envío":

Pero este juez también es víctima y al condenarme, se condena: no escribe a nadie, a nadie llama, a sí mismo se escribe, en sí se olvida, y se rescata, y vuelve a ser yo mismo ...

and in "Crepúsculo de la ciudad":

Vuelvo el rostro: no soy sino la estela
de mí mismo, la ausencia que deserto, el eco del silencio de mi grito.

Many more examples, not only in the poems built around the mirror, but throughout Paz's work, indicate that he takes pleasure in the exploitation of the paradox. In the case of the mirror, we should add that this device is a fundamental aspect of the poet's vision of himself. It is an organic part of the reflection in the mirror because Paz sees, not a repetition of the same thing in isolation, but a different aspect of reality, and not only a different perspective, but an opposite one:

todo lo que contemplo me contempla y soy al mismo tiempo fruto y labio y lo que permanece y lo que huye.

The paradox at first seems an insoluble riddle, for how can one person be two opposing things at the same time? In the real world of events, in life ruled by an inescapable chronology, there would be no answer, but in the dreamlike world of the mirror, time does not exist, at least not in the form in which we know it. In one passage, as applicable to the question of reality as it is to the question of time, we read: "¿Y somos esa imagen que soñamos, / sueños al tiempo hurtados, / sueños del tiempo por burlar al tiempo?" Lines which Paz wrote for the sixth part of "Cuarto de hotel" could be applied to the mirror:

No hay antes ni después. ¿ Lo que viví lo estoy viviendo todavía? ¡Lo que viví! ¿Fuí acaso? Todo fluye: lo que viví lo estoy muriendo todavía. No tiene fin el tiempo: ...

Like Paz's concept of poetry, the mirror is a world without time (here we are reminded of the Surrealists, who have capitalized on the abolition of limits of time and space), where it is completely appropriate for two opposites to be viewed in conjunction.

As an illustration of the poet's reaction to what he sees in the mirror, the major portion of "Pregunta" is particularly revealing. The first lines of the poem, with the deliberate confusion regarding the identity of the being the poet is addressing, lead up to the presentation of the vision:

Déjame, sí, déjame, dios o ángel, demonio. Déjame a solas, turba angélica, solo conmigo, con mi multitud.

The fact that the same thing can be taken as a god or angel, devil and angelic throng, the paradoxical statement of the poet's being alone with himself and alone with his multitude, prepare us for the dualities which are to follow.

The second stanza is the confrontation "Estoy con uno como yo," which we have already discussed above. The stanza which follows describes Paz's usual reaction to the image in the mirror:

Mira, tú que huyes,
aborrecible hermano mío,
tú que enciendes las hogueras terrestres,
tú, el de las islas y el de las llamaradas,
mírate y dime:
ese que corre,
ese que alza lenguas y antorchas
para llamar al cielo—y lo quema—;
ese que vive entre las aguas,
en un pedazo oscuro de tierra deliciosa;
ese que es una estrella lenta que desciende;
aquel que es como un arma resonante,
I es el tuyo, tu ser, hecho de horas
y voraces minutos?

The question which introduces the fourth stanza is a logical outgrowth of the preceding one. What the poet has seen, we have pointed out, is another facet of his own personality. "¿Quién sabe lo que es un cuerpo / un alma, / y el sitio en que se juntan?" This question, unanswered, leads to still another: "¿Y somos esa imagen que soñamos, / sueños al tiempo hurtados, sueños del tiempo por burlar al tiempo?"

The three questions, all centering around the identity of the reflection, might be reworded, resorting to oversimplification, as follows: Is he my soul? Who knows what body and soul are? Are they both unreal?
This question of identity, the reaction to the vision in the mirror, is primarily an intellectual matter, a rational inquiry, but its secondary effect on an emotional level is one of acute anguish:

Muros, objetos, cuerpos te repiten.
¡Todo es espejo!
Tu imagen te persigue.
El hombre está habitado por silencio y vacío.
¿Cómo saciar esta hambre,
cómo acallar este silencio y poblar su vacío?
¿Cómo escapar a mi imagen?
Sólo en mi semejante me trasciendo . . .

Frequently the question asserts emptiness, as it almost does in ‘‘Pregunta’’ above. Or again:

¿ qué soy, sino la sima en que me abismo,
y qué, si no el no ser, lo que me puebla?
El espejo que soy me deshabita;
un caer en mí mismo inacable
al horror de no ser me precipita.

And again:

Hacia mí mismo voy; hacia las mudas,
solitarias fronteras sin salida:
duras aguas, opacas y desnudas,
horadan lentamente mi conciencia
y van abriendo en mí secreta herida,
que mana sólo, estéril, impaciencia.

In another poem the poet wonders if he is alone in time, if he is only time: ‘‘¿Soy un llegar a ser que nunca llega?’’ One of the concluding sections of ‘‘Pregunta,’’ immediately following the three questions, sums up the extreme discomfort the interrogations have brought about, a discomfort expressed, logically enough, in terms of self-inflicted hurt:

En soledad pregunto,
a soledad pregunto.
Y rasgo mi boca amante de palabras
y me arranco los ojos
henchidos de mentiras y apariencias,
y arrojo lo que el tiempo
deposita en mi alma,
miserias deslumbrantes,
ola que se retira . . . .

What does the questioning lead to? What answer does the poet find? The conclusions he draws in ‘‘El espejo’’ are the conclusions of all the poems with the mirror as a theme:

y entre los juegos fatuos del espejo
ardo y me quemo y resplandezco y miento
un yo que empuña, muerto,
una daga de humo que le finge
la evidencia de sangre de la herida,
y un yo, mi yo penúltimo,
que sólo pide olvido, sombra, nada,
final mentira que lo enciende y quema.
De una máscara a otra
hay siempre un yo penúltimo que pide.
Y me hundo en mí mismo y no me toco.

This is equivalent to an admission of failure, to a certain extent, failure at least in an inability to determine the nature of reality. The reflection is false, and after observing it carefully, the poet feels that what it reflects is false too. Both then are masks, as he has declared above. ‘‘Y entre espejos impávidos un rostro / me repite a mi rostro, un rostro / que enmascara a mi rostro.’’ He ends up being a reflection of a reflection. Yet with all this, in spite of the rejection of both faces, of all the faces that he may see, the poet is aware of his own observation and of his own unsatisfied need for something else. Between one mask and another, ‘‘hay siempre un yo penúltimo que pide,’’ which asserts the existence of the ‘‘último yo,’’ the object of his search.

The mirror illustrates, in its connection with reality, an idea fundamental for all of Paz’s poetry: the pursuit of the absolute, which frequently leads to feelings of anguish at its unattainment. What underlies the majority of his poems, analogous to his search for his true reflection in the mirror, is a desire to define the subject with which he is dealing. Definition seems to involve, first, a rejection of the appearances, and then a simplification, a stripping away of superfluous attributes, in an impassioned effort to arrive at the heart of things. Finally, the poet in most cases is left with the feeling of frustration that comes when he sees that somehow there is a reality beyond his reach.

Whether he is dealing with a chair, the Mexican landscape, or love, Paz cannot help but be an abstractionist in his treatment of the topic. This does not mean generalizing, so that he attempts to write
about all chairs, all the landscape, all love, but rather to find the essence of his own vision of the subject.
If it can be found, he seems to say, in it will be found the common ground which is universality. For all of
his vision of reality, as for his search in the mirror, his aim is to find an absolute value—not so much in himself as through himself.

Quite clearly the goal has not been attained in his poems dealing with the mirror. The reality he seeks usually concludes in the nothingness the poet feels at the conclusion of ‘‘El espejo’’ and which in another poem, he has described in similar terms:

Adiós al espejo verídico,
donde dejé mi máscara
por descender al fondo del sinfín
(y nunca descendía:
¿ no tienes fondo, sólo superficie?)

It is the same negative result that gives rise to another thought which occurs several times to the poet: perhaps we do not exist even in the form that we imagine we exist in:

olvidos que alimentan la memoria,
que ni nos pertenecen ni llamamos,
sueños del sueño, súbitas presencias
con las que el tiempo dice que no somos,
que es él quien se recuerda y él quien sueña.

An interesting parallel to this concept of man as related to idea is found in the work of Paul Valéry, who was also fascinated by the mirror. Valéry, too, suggested that it is not the self that finds the idea, but the idea that adopts the self. The similarity between the two writers, moreover, does not end there; the mirror, as a method of encouraging complication in order to think better, is a token of a great area of thought which the two have in common. Like Paz, Valéry had moments of annoyance with the defectiveness of words and the meaning they convey; like Paz, too, and as the title of Elizabeth Sewell’s
interesting study indicates, Valéry was bewitched by the sight of his own mind in action: ‘‘Je suis étant et me voyant, me voyant me voir.’’

There is at least one notable difference between the two, however. Paz probably would agree with Valéry that we have the faculty of producing an inner antagonism against ourselves. In Paz, however, it is produced, not while looking at his image in the mirror, but before, and it is the frustration of not being able to overcome it which takes the form of resentment against the image in the mirror. Hence when Valéry speaks of the mind vibrating in an infinity of mirrors, he is speaking of creation and movement, of a pleasurable sensation. The same image for Paz is one of frustration, limitation, and anguish.

Although Paz’s only firm conclusion after looking in the mirror is a negative one, the certainty of nothingness, we may well suspect that he seeks certainty of a different kind. The thirst for eternity which torments him seldom appears in his poetry in positive form. One of these few cases of blissful longing occurs in ‘‘Himno entre ruinas,’’ the concluding poem of Libertad bajo palabra:

La inteligencia al fin encarna en formas,
se reconcilian las dos mitades enemigas
y la conciencia-espejo se licúa,
vuelve a ser fuente, manantial de fábulas:
Hombre, árbol de imágenes,
palabras que son flores que son frutos que
son actos.

Some lines of William Butler Yeats, from a poem which is not particularly metaphysical (‘‘Before the World Was Made’’), perhaps provide a definition of Paz’s goal:

From mirror after mirror,
No vanity’s displayed.
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

Paz’s search in the mirror, then, is a search typical of 20th-century man. It is paradoxical, as many of Paz’s ideas are, that the more personal his search becomes, the more it acquires characteristics of the universal. This is not the unfathomable, intricate labyrinth of the ego that we often find in the Surrealists, but a search that concerns many men of today’s world.

Source: John M. Fein, ‘‘The Mirror as Image and Theme in the Poetry of Octavio Paz,’’ in Symposium, Vol. X, No. 2, Fall, 1956, pp. 251–70.