[In the following essay, Kushigian explores ways in which Paz uses language, imagery, and subject matter to depict his philosophy of the mutuality and intersection of Eastern and Western culture and philosophy.]

Few would deny Octavio Paz's principal role int he advancement and preservation of Orientalism in Hispanic letters. Paz's interest in the Orient is both historical and anthropological, as he confirms that the Native American is of Asiatic origin, and that this Asiatic origin perhaps explains the numerous similarities between Chinese and American civilizations.¹ His interest is also sociopolitical in nature, as Octavio Paz was ambassador to India for six years beginning in 1962 and resided during her service in New Delhi. It is, in addition, literary, as Paz began to read about the Orient in books obtained in France and continued his scholarly research of philosophies, religions, and literatures of the East (in translation) throughout his career. The result of this intellectual engagement with the East and a defining of his own culture vis-à-vis the Other is a series of critical essays, in addition to numerous collections of poetry.²

There arises from the works of Octavio Paz a dialectic that complements and at times subtracts from the other source, be it poetry or essay. Paz's theory of Orientalism, then, is maintained in a constant state of flux. Let us remember Paz's analogy between movement and immobility within the relationship: “Lo esencial es que la relación no sea tranquila: el diálogo entre oscilación e inmovilidad es lo que infunde vida a la cultura y da forma a la vida”³ (“The essential thing is for the relationship not to be a tranquil one: the dialogue between oscillation and immobility is what gives a culture life and form”).⁴ This movement and combination of elements will be shown to represent Paz's search for the metaphysical meaning of poetic image, erotic love, and the sacred being, giving evidence that East and West blend, are contiguous, separate, and then reflect each other. One need only refer to the first title (the title in the superior position over the names of the author and the collection) of Ladera este to comprehend the interrelationship of the East and West in Octavio Paz's work: “las dos orillas” (the two shores). Manuel Durán, among other critics, has noted the significance of the pervasive image of “la otra orilla” (the other shore) in Paz's poetry as a symbol of the momentary fusion of opposites.⁵ While la otra orilla is a highly significant image in Octavio Paz's poetry, las dos orillas is a more satisfying and profound representation of Hispanic Orientalism. La otra orilla does imply the existence of an opposite shore, but its focus is directed to the Other, which is reinforced by Paz's surrealist perspective. Las dos orillas implies the confluence of opposing elements and emphasizes their continuity and contiguity in time and space. Rather than situating the image in a topology that is binary, the image of the two shores, arrived at through one shore's relationship to the other, suggests the blending and separation of opposites. The symbolic orilla implies the Buddhist concept of the symbolic leap to the other shore, providing us with a graphic and metaphorical representation of the touching of the two sides. The water of the river flows rhythmically between the two shores, washing up on both, as its current flows and perpetually merges with that of the other shore. Sarduy employs the geometric image of the Möbius strip to envision the blending of oppositions in Hispanic Orientalism; similarly, Paz appears to subscribe to a figure represented by the river that stretches indefinitely, its body being in constant communication with both shores.

I will attempt to elucidate Paz's Orientalist construct through a dialogue created between his essays and his poetry. This is a significant approach in that many authors and critics, including Carlos Fuentes, have concluded that Paz's essays and poetry are inseparable because they are united philosophically.⁶ Poetry, on the one hand, normally presents a single-sided image in that it speaks unequivocably with the voice of the poet. That is to say, there might arise doubt, conflicts, and polemics in the poem, questioning nature, love, and life, but they are still presented from the single mind of the poet. The voice of the poet is a naive one in that it is unaffected and unencumbered, the most direct communication that can be sustained with the reader. It cannot enter the minds or convey the angst of a variety of protagonists because it speaks through an incontrovertible and singular view. Language is normally present to the poet from within, in the work it does to bring about an effect, through images, musicality, and so on, in the reader. It cannot, because of its timeless quality, be present to the poet from without as a culturally, historically, and socially limited linguistic reality. Poetic style is monologic in nature. The prose writer may distance himself from speech, but the poet cannot.⁷

While it would appear, then, that internal dialogization of discourse is not used in poetic discourse, it does seem that Paz makes use of the many double-voiced images that are dialogized in his Orientalist poetry. These images suggest a dialogue with, and a questioning of, the East that breaks down the images of oneself and the Other, destroying the closed, fixed image we have of both. The instability of the relationship is evident because we can hear another's voice in a word or phrase given. It may even be the voice of the poet transformed momentarily into another, bringing to life a strangeness or exoticism in the poem. In order to avoid alienating the reader, Paz includes in the Joaquín Mortiz edition⁸ a list of terms to clarify allusions and make concepts less exclusionary and distant, encouraging the reader to approach the Other. Moreover, this blending, separation, and further blending with the Other represents Paz's view of Hispanic Orientalism both linguistically through dialogue with the East, and aesthetically through the spatial relationships of the words that are imitative of Oriental poetry, philosophy, and art.

Spatial relationships on the page, key to the understanding of the haiku form of poetry, in addition to the physical folding of pages and the paper selected for printing, combine to superimpose one linguistic, aesthetic system over a distinct literary and cultural system. This is the case with the poem “Blanco,” which, as Paz's note in Ladera este⁹ explains, could not be reproduced as in the original edition whose typography and binding underscored not so much the presence of the text but the space that supported it. In the original, boxed edition the poem is read as it is unfolded, so that space and time disperse with the fixed image, calling the reader in to decipher the mandala.¹⁰ As this act is not possible in the mass-marketed edition of Ladera este, the poet offers instead six possible readings of his poem, incorporating distinctions by columns, parts, or placement on the page. Superimpositions such as these of cultural and linguistic systems open a dialogue and force an interaction of values, ideas, and images that are symbols of one's destiny.

One rather natural image that presents itself in the analysis of Orientalism in Paz's work is that of the garden.¹¹ Quite frequently it is through these unheralded, simple images that we are introduced to the most startling literary theories. Paz relates the essence of an essay written by Donald Keene that signals the salient characteristics of one example of art from both Eastern and Western cultures: Ryoanji's garden and the Sistine chapel. The difference between the two is that the Sistine chapel is presented as something complete and perfect so that it keeps us at a distance. The garden of Ryoanji (like all Buddhist contemplative gardens) brings us into its design: “hecho a piedras irregulares sobre un espacio monocromo, nos invita a rehacerlo y nos abre las puertas de la participación”¹² (made with irregular stones over a monochrome space, it invites us to recreate it and opens the doors to participation). Paz then draws together the worlds of literature and art: “poemas, cuadros: objetos verbales o visuales que simultáneamente se ofrecen a la contemplación y a la acción imaginativa del lector o del espectador”¹³ (poems, paintings: verbal or visual objects that simultaneously are offered to the contemplation and to the imaginative activity of the reader or the spectator). This wilful denial of the finishing act, as Paz refers to this obvious imperfection, appears to reinforce the fragility of life in the flowing from one experience/interpretation to another. The meditation on the stones represents one method of interior liberation through spirituality and through imperfection, which implies a constant movement toward the state of perfection (on the other shore).

Poetry remains for Paz a spiritual exercise, another method of interior liberation, because each poem is unique and contains the vital elements of all poetry, just as each stone in the garden bears something of all stones. Each poem, then, is in dialogic relationship to other poems. The language of the poet is infused with multivoiced images, at times opposing, then reinforcing and questioning the potentiality of the representation. The Western literary word is viewed in light of the Eastern image, and is seen therefore through that image, which leads ultimately to knowledge of the self.¹⁴ The cultures and languages interanimate each other, renewing and unifying these images that stylistically had been held at a distance before.

The image of the garden flourishes in the collection of poetry titled Ladera este (1962-1968). The poems that best convey the Eastern concept of garden and the images of imperfection, liberation, and contemplation are “Concierto en el jardín” (“Concert in the garden”); “Lo idéntico” (“One and the same”); “Viento entero” (“Wind from all compass points”); and “Cuento de dos jardines” (“Fable of two gardens”).“Concierto en el jardí” and “Lo idéntico” demonstrate the blending of opposites commonly found in Tantric and Mahayana Buddhism. “Concierto en el jardín” also displays influence from haiku poetry,¹⁵ and more distinctly from José Juan Tablada, who, according to Paz, was probably the first Latin American Orientalist of merit.¹⁶ This stanza—

Se abre, flor doble, el mundo:
Tristeza de haber venido,
Alegría de estar aquí
(The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here)(17)

—recalls the blending of opposing emotions whose search for the state of perfection takes the action back to the center from which perfection may be attained through the void, or nirvana. The last verse of the poem, “Ando perdido en mi propio centro”(“I walk lost in my own center”), reinforces the concept of perpetual, unfinished movement in search of the perfection of the state of being, or possibly the perfection of language.¹⁸ “Viento entero” unites Paz's themes of erotic love and spirituality, where opposites such as beauty and violence are joined with the metaphysical theme of the timelessness of existence. In this long and complex union of dissonant notes we find a symbolic mention of the garden:

                                                            Dos o tres pájaros
Inventan un jardín
                                                            (Two or three birds
invent a garden).(19)

Once the poet has removed from language its customary associations, the dynamic quality of language transforms each poem into a new object. The impreciseness of the number of birds, in juxtaposition to the exact date and the announcement of the arrival of spring, is coupled with the concept of creating or inventing the garden and rearranging the stones with every renewed glance.

Similarly, the garden as theme surfaces in “Cuento de dos jardines,” written during Paz's sea voyage between Bombay and the Canary Islands. “Cuento de dos jardines” symbolizes prophetically the feeling of drifting between las dos orillas and the vertiginous blending of opposites. In the remembering, even the gardens flow (“fluyen los jardines”),²⁰ unfolding one memory over the other. The two gardens are remembrances of real gardens in Paz's life: the Western garden is from Mixcoac where Paz spent his childhood, and the Eastern garden is one in India where Paz remarried. The poet begins the mythic voyage between gardens with that which brings to mind Bachelard's phenomenological approach to the memory of roads and houses:

Una casa, un jardín,
                                                            No son lugares:
Giran, van y vienen.
                                                            Sus apariciones
Abren en el espacio
                                                  Otro espacio,
Otro tiempo en el tiempo.
(A house, a garden,
                                                            Are no places:
They spin, come and go.
                                                                                Their apparitions
Unfold in space
                                        Other space
Other time within time.)(21)

The garden becomes a poetic image in which the reader is asked to participate, opening up to a spatialization of time and memory where the image spins around (collides with?), goes to, and comes back from the Other.²² This movement is emphasized also by the graphic spatialization of words on the page, indicated by the typography and enhanced by punctuation, that have the eyes spin (like prayer wheels) and move in a backward and forward motion. Its space is another, as we are removed from the familiar and taken to another space or possibly another series of spaces, each one echoing the one that precedes it or the one that follows; and this holds true again for time. The negation of the passage of time, central to the Hindu experience (standing in direct opposition to the Western concept of linear time and progress),²³ is illuminated in the phrase “El presente es perpetuo”²⁴ (The present is motionless) from “Viento entero,” and reinforces the possibility of many “times.” The questioning of time in its linear or circular combinations interjects an element of relativity and becoming in contrast to the stagnancy of an immovable image. The poet is connected through a dialogic opening to other traditions and cultures, seeking to defeat limitable linguistic boundaries that distinguish the cultures in evidence. Their thoughts are valued, even if their linguistic systems cannot be shared. Sarduy bridges the gap between Eastern thought and Western images through cultural displacement, but Paz achieves the same effect through the genre of poetry, making the world “real” through the word.

In the essay El mono gramático (The monkey grammarian), which recreates a trip down a metaphorical road toward creation, the theory of time is further elaborated, complementing poetic reasoning. The grammarian monkey, Hanumān, is said to jump from India to Ceylon in one bound: “Es la visión de Hanumān al saltar (géiser) del valle al pico del monte o al precipitarse (aerolito) desde el astro hasta el fondo del mar: la visión vertiginosa y transversal que revela al universo no como una sucesión, un movimiento, sino como una asamblea de espacios y tiempos, una quietud”²⁵ (“This is the vision of Hanumān as he leaps [a geyser] from the valley to the mountaintop or as he plunges [a meteorite] from the star to the bottom of the sea: The dizzying oblique vision that reveals the universe not as a succession, a movement, but as an assemblage of spaces and times, a repose”).²⁶ The poetic images of the garden respond to the concept of an assembly of spaces and times, because in Paz's vision of poetry one image is the echo of another, and therefore: “No hay fin y tampoco hay principio: todo es centro. Ni antes ni después, ni adelante ni atrás, ni afuera ni adentro: todo está en todo”²⁷ (“There is no end and no beginning: everything is center. Neither before nor after, neither in front of nor behind, neither inside nor outside: everything is in everything”).²⁸ The poem “Cuento de dos jardines” continues the search for the complete center:

                                        Un jardín no es un lugar:
Por un sendero de arena rojiza
                                                                                Entramos
En una gota de agua,
                                                            Bebemos en su centro
Verdes claridades
                                        (A garden is no place:
By a footpath of russet sand
                                                                                We enter
a water-drop,
                              We drink at its centre
Green clarities).(29)

The drop of water that contains something of all drops is a center, that is, a center from which we drink in search of Perfect Knowledge. The first specific garden to which we are introduced is the garden of Mixcoac, the garden from Paz's childhood, that was about to “collapse.” Negative images abound in that comparisons are drawn between a boat run aground and the poet's grandfather. Mexico is characterized as a land of darkness:

                                                            El galope negro del aguacero
Cubre todo el llano.
                                                            Llueve sobre lavas.
México: sobre la piedra ensangrentada
                                                                                          Danza el agua.
                                                            (The black gallop of downpour
Covers all the plain.
                                                            Rains on the lava.
Mexico: over the bloodstained stone
                                                                                          Dances the water.)(30)

The colon after the identifying term, Mexico, appears to establish a wall or a mask from behind which Mexico has not been able to stray throughout its history. The lament is felt in very personal expressions, including the prophetic phrase that apparently announces the end to gardens and the future solace they may provide:

                                                            Sed, tedio, tolvaneras:
Impalpables epifanías del viento.
Los pinos me enseñaron a hablar solo.
En aquel jardín aprendí a despedirme.
Después no hubo jardines.
                                                            (Thirst, tedium, sandstorms:
Impalpable epiphanies of wind.
The pines taught me to talk to myself.
In that garden I learned to say good-bye.
Afterwards there were no gardens.)(31)

The next garden mentioned, the garden of India, is introduced immediately after the announcement of no more gardens, which is to say that within the same space of the poet's two metaphysical moments of awareness, where he is invited in the second instance to the Beginning (the capitalization reinforces the recognition of the moment), there are no other such moments. Life is conceived of as proliferation and repetition in time and space (this concept of repetition and multiplicity is also seen by Susnigdha Dey in her study on the influence of India on Paz's poetry).³² A play of reflections, repetitions, and echoes of light and sound follows:

                                                            Un día,
Como si regresara,
                                        No a mi casa:
Al comienzo del Comienzo,
                                                            Llegué a una claridad,
Ancha,
                    Construida
Para los juegos pasionales de la luz y el agua.
                                                            (One day,
As if I were returning,
                                                  Not to my house:
But to the beginning of Beginning,
                                                                                          I reached a clarity.
Wide-open,
                              Built
For the impassioned play of light and water.)(33)

The following verse, “Dispersiones, alianzas” (“Dispersions, alliances”) brings to mind the rhythmical separation and union in the cosmological perception of the universe in ancient China, which is conceived of as a cyclical combination of two rhythms—yin and yang. In cosmological terms, the woman symbolizes the elements, for example, water, and man symbolizes light, among other positive elements. Woman and man are the subjects of the passionate games, the dispersal and the union of the opposing forces of which the poet speaks. These are important manifestations of liberation and, ultimately, samsara, or rebirth.

The nim tree is the focal point of the garden of India, because, on the one hand, as Paz concludes in El mono gramático, trees repeat trees, perhaps visually and biologically, and on the other, it may symbolize the sacred tree beneath which Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, achieved enlightenment. It is at the foot of the nim tree where Paz learns: “Negarse es crecer” (“And self-denial is growth”),³⁴ which is a form of enlightenment. With respect to Buddhist and Hindu doctrine and their parallels as presented by Paz in more than one collection of essays, it is curious that Octavio Paz at times will not distinguish among the three fundamental religious philosophical positions in India, referring to at once the entire country, “La India,” but on other occasions will go to great lengths to stress their distinctions, as in, for example, the differences between Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism. In Corriente alterna Paz refers to negation as one of the principal features of Indian thought in both the Hindu and the Buddhist branches of Tantrism. To summarize, even superficially, India through its practices and religious sentiments negates change, and therefore negates the passage of time. The path to liberation is achieved through a negation of the empirical world. Nagarjuna, one of the Greater Vehicle philosophers, held that reality is essentially empty, or void. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude, as Paz does: “La India ha inventado la liberación por la negación y ha convertido a ésta en la madre sin nombre de todos los seres vivos. … El hindú ejerce la negación como un método interior: no pretende salvar al mundo sino destruir en sí mismo al mundo”³⁵ (“India has invented liberation by way of negation and made it the nameless mother of all living creatures. … The Hindu practices negation as an inner method: his goal is not to save the world but to destroy the world within himself”).³⁶

With the theory of negation in mind, two other references Paz makes to the garden become more expressive:

Un jardín no es un lugar:
                                                            Es un tránsito,
Una pasión:
                                        No sabemos hacia donde vamos,
Transcurrir es suficiente,
                                                            Transcurrir es quedarse.
(A garden is no place:
                                                            It is a transition,
A passion:
                                        We know not where we go,
To elapse is enough,
                                                            To elapse is to remain.)(37)

If reality is a void, then the garden is not a place but rather a transition, a movement like the movement between the forces of the cosmos, or the movement between opposing forces presenting a nontranquil relationship. I believe this is what Paz means by “transcurrir es suficiente” (“to elapse is enough”). At a later point the poet realizes:

El jardín se ha quedado atrás.
                                                            ¿Atrás o adelante?
No hay más jardines que los que llevamos dentro.
¿Qué nos espera en la otra orilla?
                                                                      Pasión es tránsito:
La otra orilla está aquí,
                                                  Luz en el aire sin orillas:
Prajnaparamita,
                                        Nuestra Señora de la Otra Orilla
(The garden has been left behind.
                                                                      Behind or ahead?
There are no gardens save those we carry within us.
What awaits us on the other shore?
                                                                           Passion is transition:
The other shore is here,
                                                  Light in the shoreless air:
Prajnaparamita,
                                        Our Lady of the Other Shore).(38)

The blending of the girl the poet meets into Mother India in the first instance, then into prajnaparamita, or Perfect Knowledge, the other shore, and then into “Nuestra Señora de la Otra Orilla” reinforces the blending of the East and West in Octavio Paz. As Borges recalls the image of Allah, asking direct participation in order to liberate him from transgression, Paz invokes the presence of prajnaparamita to liberate the bounded image of perfection, whether it reflect absence of sin or the void. The insertion of prajnaparamita is similar to the introduction of another language or socioideological system into a dialogue of intersecting “languages,” disclosing the heteroglot nature of Hispanic Orientalism. Paz conjures a very strong image when he calls up the presence of prajnaparamita, translating the restricted bodily image into a dialogue or colliding of images. It is significant that the figure of prajnaparamita becomes Our Lady of the Other Shore, a female image that embodies the metaphysical search for the Other with whom the poet may fuse or become one. The sense of the erotic goes beyond the corporeal and is satisfied metaphysically when it searches for the Other Shore.³⁹ What do we wait for? The closed, single image is dead; we have already begun down the path of becoming. In effect, “the other shore is here,” as Paz concludes in the poem. The dialogue with the Other renders a powerful fusion of two supreme philosophical symbols in one, impelling the birth of the new, the greater, the more complete.

The internal dialogization in “Cuento de dos jardines,” which in one instance is made obvious through the plaintive questions posed, is in evidence in much of Paz's poetry even though it normally is excluded from the poetic genre. The persistent dialogue with the East allows the images to join but they are never restricted by absolute fusion, because even though the images are brought closer through dialogue, the stylized word is necessarily distanced, as the poet speaks from within. That is to say, the poet significantly takes responsibility not only for the ideas, the images presented, but also for the language at work in all of its aspects and nuances.⁴⁰ But even though the full weight of the language is always felt, it can be said that Paz is in dialogue with the Other rather than simply reproducing it. The images (prajnaparamita, Nuestra Señora de la Otra Orilla, etc.) interanimate each other so that Paz's language moves to reflect a worldview or global image in itself.

The image of the garden does not represent a place but rather a state of being that we carry inside, which would appear to symbolize the blending of the two opposing forces into one, then one into nothing. The East is transfigured into the West, and the architecture that is ready to topple over is mixed with the architecture without weight. In the resolution of the self/Other, East/West, the elements fuse and the distinctions are erased, absorbed, momentarily one into the other. In this manner Paz brings to a close “Cuento de dos jardines”: “Los signos se borran: yo miro la claridad” (“The signs are blotted out: I stare into clarity”).⁴¹

The short poem titled “Efectos del bautismo” (“The effects of baptism”) brings a smile or produces laughter at every reading:

El joven Hassan,
Por casarse con una cristiana,
Se bautizó.
                                        El cura,
Como a un vikingo,
Lo llamó Erik.
                                                  Ahora
Tiene dos nombres
Y una sola mujer.
(Young Hassan,
in order to marry a Christian,
was baptized.
                                        The priest
named him Erik,
as though he were a Viking.
                                                                      Now
he has two names
and only one wife.)(42)

Baptism, among other rites, prepares us to reach the other shore, leaving behind what we were so that we may join the Other. Paz expands on the intention of these rites:

Pocos realizan la experiencia del salto, a pesar de que el bautismo, la comunión, los sacramentos y otros ritos de iniciación o de tránsito están destinados a prepararnos para esa experiencia. Todos ellos tienen en común el cambiarnos, el hacernos “otros”. De ahí que consistan en darnos un nuevo nombre, indicando así que ya somos otros: acabamos de nacer o de renacer. El rito reproduce la experiencia mística de la “otra orilla” tanto como el hecho capital de la vida humana: nuestro nacimiento, que exige previamente la muerte del feto. Y quizá nuestros actos más significativos y profundos no sean sino la repetición de este morir del feto que renace en criatura. En suma, el “salto mortal”, la experiencia de la “otra orilla”, implica un cambio de naturaleza: es un morir y un nacer.⁴³

(Few attain the experience of the leap, in spite of the fact that baptism, communion, the sacraments, and other rites of initiation or passage are intended to prepare us for that experience. They all aim to change us, to make us “others.” Thus we are given a new name, to indicate that now we are others: we have just been born or reborn. The rite reproduces the mystical experience of the “other shore” as well as the capital event of human life: our birth, which requires the previous death of the fetus. And perhaps our deepest and most meaningful acts are merely the repetition of this death of the fetus that is reborn as an infant. In short, the “mortal leap,” the experience of the “other shore,” implies a change of nature: it is a dying and a being born.)⁴⁴

Baptism, then, pushes us outside of ourselves in search of the other shore, and, in effect, in search of the self. What sweeps us to the other shore culminates in an act of unity, of reconciling the self with oneself and of communing with the self. Although Paz emphasizes in Conjunciones y disyunciones the contradictory components of the smile, as opposed to loud laughter (in terms of the participation of others), both smiling and laughing fuse the self with the Other. Ramón Xirau, in his study on Octavio Paz, notes that in Ladera este Paz introduces a sense of irony in his short epigrammatic poems.⁴⁵ In Buddhism and Hinduism life is viewed in terms of oppositions of polarities that are resolved through their fusion. The “uncrowning” of Hassan, giving him another name and thereby forcing upon him another cultural system, brings him closer and makes him familiar to us. Through irony the blending that takes place in the object is ridiculed and examined openly, unframing the fear that normally compels us to keep our distance when coming into contact with the Other. In this poem, the hero Hassan is free to improvise, to put on a mask (to use a familiar metaphor in Paz).

The mask in “Máscaras mexicanas” from Laberinto de la soledad (Mexican masks in Labyrinth of solitude) signifies a distancing in that the mask hides the nature of the user, thereby allowing the user to assume any identity, any destiny, by not opening up to others and revealing a true nature and destiny. The theme of the mask is perhaps the most complex theme of folk culture. The mask, based on a peculiar interrelation of reality and image, unites joy and negation—joy in change and metamorphoses and negation of uniformity, similarity, and even conformity to oneself.⁴⁶ The fusion of opposites is symbolic of our duality and opens itself to the element of laughter. Paz conceives of the smile as a sign of our duality that allows for laughter and even making fun of oneself, because we perpetually represent the self and the Other. As he concludes in Conjunciones y disyunciones: “Ambos, el chiste y el poema, son expresiones del principio de placer, victorioso por un instante del principio de realidad”⁴⁷ (“Both the joke and the poem are expressions of the pleasure principle, which for a moment, wins out over the reality principle”).⁴⁸ The idiom of laughter cannot be used for destructive purposes; it triumphs over death and oppression, manifesting the unyielding character of the human psyche while signaling the future.

The fusion of contraries (at times polarities in the branch of Tantric thought) is the basis of the stream of religious thought in Hinduism and Buddhism, and it is only through this relationship that the terms make sense. Paz employs India as an example: “La India acentúa los extremos: la casta exagera el vínculo social; el ascetismo exalta el aislamiento. El hindú oscila siempre entre estos dos polos”⁴⁹ (“India creates extremes: the caste system exaggerates the social bond; asceticism exalts the isolation of the individual. The Hindu continually oscillates between these two poles”).⁵⁰ Both Hinduism and Buddhism, at least in their Tantric forms, predicate the achievement of liberation in this life through the fusion of opposing elements: feminine and masculine; light and darkness; life and death; the material and the spiritual; the sexual act and the aesthetic act, that is, body and no-body, which simply symbolizes any binary pair composed of opposing elements. Buddhism and Hinduism exemplify this binary system in India, because even though Buddhism almost completely disappeared from India in the eleventh century, crushed by the Muslim invasion, it is kept alive today through its architecture and through the efforts of the many Tibetan monks and other natives of Tibet who have been living in exile in India since the Chinese invasion of their country. Liberation, realizing the void, is possible here and now according to the practices in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and this is achieved through the absorption or fusion of contrasting elements. This is what the Orient, or India in particular, offers to Octavio Paz and his critical approach to Orientalism in Latin America.⁵¹

The reconciliation of a binary, oppositional structure is curiously evident in Paz's statements on the Orient as well as in the structure itself of Ladera este. We notice that beginning with page 64 of the Joaquín Mortiz edition, Paz has opposed/juxtaposed poems of Western theme with those of Eastern theme. The poems of Western theme are titled “Intermitencias del Oeste” and represent intermissions, breaks in the presentation of the Orient to reaffirm the presence of the West, so that we are not tempted to isolate the East and consider it alone, thereby negating the constructs of Orientalism. Some critics refer to these binary structures as paradoxes of the East. In my mind, this minimizes the polarity and the visual expressiveness of the opposition of East and West, because paradoxes hinge on the “seemingly” contradictory nature of a statement that may in fact be true. The question of truth does not enter into the debate on Hispanic Orientalism, or into the oppositional structure defining East and West. One term is not more “true” or “valid” than the other. This is in accordance with the premise “cuerpo/no-cuerpo” (body/no-body), which does not represent the affirmation and negation of the same concept, but rather the possibility of an opposition of terms. Dialogical relationships, after all, are infused with these concrete semantic expressions, but they are not reducible to oppositional structures because they have their own specificity.⁵²

“Viento entero” is an example of a poem that combines binary oppositional statements contrasting East and West, through an inquiry into Oriental philosophies that are compatible with the metaphysics of Octavio Paz. “Viento entero” begins:

El presente es perpetuo
Los montes son de hueso y son de nieve
Están aquí desde el principio
El viento acaba de nacer
                                                                                Sin edad
Como la luz y como el polvo
(The present is motionless
The mountains are of bone and of snow
They have been here since the beginning
The wind has just been born
                                                                                          ageless
as the light and the dust).(53)

We are once again in India and the allusions are to Hindu philosophy, as, for example, the concept of time: “El presente es perpetuo” (“The present is motionless”). Paz sustains the theory that dialectics of opposition and fusion are evident in all civilizations and all times, but in Conjunciones y disyunciones he makes use generally of India and China in opposition to the West for the following reason: “Me serviré de ejemplos extraídos de Occidente, India y China por esta razón: creo que la civilización india es el otro polo de la de Occidente, la otra versión del mundo indoeuropeo. La relación entre India y Occidente es la de una oposición dentro de un sistema. La relación de ambos con el Extremo Oriente (China, Japón, Corea y Tibet) es la relación entre dos sistemas distintos. Así en el caso de estas reflexiones, los ejemplos chinos no son ni convergentes ni divergentes: son excéntricos. (¿Cuál es el otro polo del mundo de China y Japón? Tal vez la América precolombina)”⁵⁴ (“I shall use examples taken from the West, from India, and from China, since I believe that Indian civilization is the other pole of that of the West, the other version of the Indo-European world. The relationship between India and the West is that of an opposition within a system. The relationship of both with the Far East [China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet] is a relationship between two different systems. Chinese examples in these reflections are thus neither convergent nor divergent: they are eccentric. [What is the other pole of the world of China and Japan? Perhaps it is pre-Columbian America]”).⁵⁵

As Paz has always been open to European literary renovations of language and structure, so will he remain open to literary and metaphysical experiences from India. He will not necessarily exclude the Far East from his contemplation of the binary structure, because he believes that perhaps pre-Columbian America may be used as a departure point from which to oppose Latin America and the Far East in an oppositional framework. In Ladera este (East slope), in contrast to his perception of time in Piedra de sol (Sun stone) as total or circular (incorporating symbolism of time from Aztec legends), Paz redevelops a sense of the negation of time that is germane to Hindu philosophy. The perfection of ritual performed continuously, the reversability of terms that allows anything to be itself and its contradiction simultaneously, and the perception of the person's eternal soul existing forever through reincarnation, reinforce the Hindu concept that denies change and the qualifying of the past, present, or future moments. The desire not to change, as experienced in the Hindu segment of Indian civilization, encourages the poet to refer to the present as perpetual; just as air, light, and dust are envisioned in an ageless state.⁵⁶ Paz, curiously, makes reference to the mountains that have existed since the beginning, but because of the corporeal reference to bones, this can be understood as man, who is (through reincarnation) there in the beginning and in the present; there is no change, just as the fresh snow is absorbed into that which came before it, blending into one. Paz reminds us, in his essay “Naturaleza, Abstracción, Tiempo” (Nature, abstraction, time) from the collection Corriente alterna, that: “La naturaleza no conoce la historia pero en sus formas viven todos los estilos del pasado, el presente y el porvenir”⁵⁷ (“Nature has no history, but its forms are the living embodiment of all the styles of the past, present, and future”).⁵⁸ Although the Hindu approaches to the Truth are many, they are not negative in form as in Buddhism, whose ultimate aim is nirvana, the establishing of the void. But they both have parallel representations in Indian life of the negation of history, which is to say the negation of time through the perception of change as the manifestation of the impermanence of life. Paz summarizes the criticism of time in India:

Desde el principio la India se propuso abolir la historia por la crítica del tiempo y la pluralidad de sociedades y comunidades históricas por el régimen de castas. La infinita movilidad de la historia real se transforma en una fantasmagoría centellante y vertiginosa en la que los hombres y los dioses giran hasta fundirse en una suerte de nebulosa atemporal; el mundo abigarrado del acontecer desemboca o, mejor dicho, regresa a una región neutra y vacía, en la que el ser y la nada se reabsorben. Budismo y brahamanismo niegan a la historia. Para los dos el cambio, lejos de ser una manifestación positiva de la energía, es el reino ilusorio de la impermanencia. Frente a la heterogenidad [sic] de los grupos étnicos—cada uno con una lengua, una tradición, un sistema de parentesco y un culto particulares—la civilización india adopta una solución contraria: no la disolución sino el reconocimiento de cada particularidad y su integración en un sistema más amplio. La crítica del tiempo y el régimen de castas son los dos polos complementarios y antagonistas del sistema indio. Por medio de ambos la India se propone la abolición de la historia.⁵⁹

(From the beginning, India set out to abolish history by means of the critique of time and to abolish the plurality of historical societies and communities by means of the caste system. The infinite mobility of real history turns into a shimmering and dizzying phantasmagoria in which men and gods whirl about until they merge in a sort of atemporal nebulosity; the varied world of events leads, or rather returns, to a neutral and empty region, in which being and nothingness are reabsorbed. Buddhism and Brahmanism negate history. For both, change, far from being a positive manifestation of energy, is the illusory realm of impermanence. Faced with the heterogeneity of ethnic groups—each with its own language, tradition, kinship system, and mode of worship—Indian civilization adopts an opposite solution: not the dissolution but the recognition of each particularity and its integration into a broader system. The critique of time and the caste system are the two complementary and antagonistic poles of the Indian system. By means of both, India aims at the abolition of history.)⁶⁰

The desire to abolish history and to concentrate on the instant rather than on the totality of being permeates Paz's “Viento entero” through his understanding of Indian thought. Through language, Paz seeks to make sense of the all-important image or moment, as opposed to understanding an entire history.

The culturally charged moment Paz has chosen to examine is one bursting with oppositional statements. The “Príncipes en harapos” (Princes in tattered clothes) stand on the shore of the river and “Rezan orinan meditan” (“Pray pee meditate”),⁶¹ which would appear in Western thought to be an unholy combination of licit and illicit acts but should rather be appreciated as the prerequisite for Tantric ritual. Tantrism abandons generally acknowledged morality and proposes instead a total experience that is carnal and spiritual at the same time. From the mixture of human flesh and excrement, the foul and impure are mixed, purified, burnt, and then eaten during one of the violent rituals of the Tantric banquet.⁶² Ritual is an important function of eroticism also: “What is normally considered wrong and seductive (for the sweet fruits tend to get forbidden, though, of course, not all sweet fruits) is performed under controlled conditions, in the course of a ritual occasion. For instance, sexual intercourse was used as a controlled means of symbolizing the nondual mystical experience: for the fleshy union and ecstasy bring about, for the moment at any rate, a merging of two beings.”⁶³ The erotic experience begins when the poet meets, in Paris, “Una muchacha real / Entre las casas y las gentes espectrales” (“A real girl / among wraithlike houses and people”).⁶⁴ Cultural displacement is in evidence, as images of the marketplace at Kabul blend with that of a neighborhood in Paris, and then alternate with those of northern India, western Pakistan, and Afghanistan, later returning to Latin America with references to Santo Domingo and Mexico respectively: “En Santo Domingo mueren nuestros hermanos / Si hubiera parque no estarían ustedes aquí” (“Our brothers are dying in Santo Domingo / ‘If we had munitions / You people would not be here’”).⁶⁵ The juxtaposition of cultural and historical references of the East and West underscores Paz's Orientalist principles, in that he achieves rhetorically in his work an approximate duplication of Oriental philosophic and theoretical practice, which involves opposition, absorption, fusion, and opposition ad infinitum, maintaining the relationship in a constant state of flux while integrating it into an ever-broadening system.

Opposition comprises the physical description of the woman with whom the poet is in love: “Si el agua es fuego / Llama / En el centro de la hora redonda” (“If water is fire / flame / dazzled / in the center of the spherical hour”).⁶⁶ The erotic quality of the siting of the woman on a red quilt is enhanced by nature's touching of the loved one: “El sol se ha dormido entre tus pechos” (“The sun has fallen asleep between your breasts”),⁶⁷ for just as nature discredits time, the lovers will also ignore time, in an erotic embrace.⁶⁸ The idea that for Octavio Paz poetry is a revelation of love (eroticism), the sacred, and the poetic image is supported by Saúl Yurkievich's statement: “En Paz poética y erótica se abrazan y confunden como la pareja primordial”⁶⁹ (In Paz the poetic and erotic embrace and are entangled like the primordial couple). It should be remembered that the doctrine of Eros is fundamentally a doctrine of salvation. Anders Nygren stresses the similarities between the ideas grouped around the Eros motif and those around the ancient mysteries, such as the belief in the transmigration of souls.⁷⁰ The “mystical-ecstatic” way of salvation, in addition to asceticism, unites the theory of Eros to Oriental doctrines, reconciling in this manner both philosophies. The sense of desire, of longing for what one does not have, leads the poet to seek satisfaction in a higher state.

Paz will also recall the Orient to reinterpret a theme that would support his vision of the material and poetic world. The act of copulation unites opposing elements—man/woman, samsara/nirvana, existence/void, and so on—according to Tantric ritual, and even seeks to reconcile the opposing elements within each one of us (e.g., in each man there is something of the woman and vice versa). According to Manuel Durán, the addition of historical elements is an intended effect that reinforces Paz's poetic intuitions.⁷¹ The poet's pleasure is curiously hindered by descriptions of human suffering, as examples are derived from the countries of Santo Domingo, Mexico, and also from instances of Muslim cruelty, blending death and violent tragedy with eroticism in very close proximity. Even the erotic moment that presents the union of the two lovers—

Abajo
                    El desfiladero caliente
La ola que se dilata y se rompe
                                                                      Tus piernas abiertas
El salto blanco
La espuma de nuestros cuerpos abandonados
(Down there
                                        the hot canyon
the wave that stretches and breaks
                                                                                your legs apart
the plunging whiteness
the foam of our bodies abandoned)(72)

—is tinged by the sight on the other side of the river: “En la barcaza el batelero estrangulaba pollos” (“The boatman / on the barge was strangling chickens”).⁷³ This is followed by a description of India:

El país es una mano abierta
                                                                      Sus líneas
                              Signos de un alfabeto roto
(The countryside is an open hand
                                                                                its lines
                                                            marks of a broken alphabet).(74)

These signs of a broken alphabet also symbolize language in Paz's theory of poetry. Paz speaks in El arco y la lira of the poetic process or poetic creation as beginning with a violent act of language. The poet begins by uprooting the word, taking from it the accustomed connections so that each term then becomes unique, completely new. It would appear that Paz is conveying in “Viento entero” the concept that time is fragmented as well as language. The beginning is achieved again in “El mismo día que comienza” (The same day is beginning), so that the linear passage of time through Hindu theory is denied.

I would like to close this examination of those poems from Ladera este that best exemplify Orientalism in Octavio Paz with the poem “Blanco” (1967). “Blanco” is probably the most complex of poems in the collection and is assuredly the most frequently analyzed, so I will limit myself to an analysis of its structure. “Blanco” offers the possibility of various readings, as Paz himself suggests in the notes that precede the poem in the Joaquín Mortiz edition. What is most curious is the juxtaposition of columns that blend into one, and then become two again on four distinct occasions. The column on the left is an erotic poem divided into four moments that correspond to the four traditional elements, according to Paz. The column on the right is composed of four variations on sensation, perception, imagination, and understanding. The advancing moment of change from two columns to one, et cetera, is seen by Guillermo Sucre as the preparation of an amorous order.⁷⁵ Curiously enough, in the second section of double columns there is no capitalization of letters or punctuation, and the eye tends to flow from the boldfaced type of the column on the left to the italics of the column on the right, as they are separated only by the blank space in the middle. The third section of double columns begins a technique of visually joining the two columns by eliminating the wall between them, so that wherever the verse of the left-hand column finishes, the verse of the right-hand column begins, regardless of symmetry or thematic divisions. It is as if two voices were heard in dialogue, or at the very least, another person's voice in the poet's word. The inserted voices objectify reality and are to a certain degree parodical in their opposition. The physical presentation of the poem reinforces the Oriental concept of fusion of fragments or opposites, both philosophically and graphically, in endless succession (not impeded by punctuation), as in the theory of reincarnation. As was stated earlier, the original edition of “Blanco” was boxed and read by unfolding the paper on which it was printed. As the poem unfolded, the variations of typeface became evident, with contrasting red and black columns, resulting in a sort of “typographic mandala.”⁷⁶ Rachel Phillips, in her study of Octavio Paz's poetry, examines the sections that characterize the double columns, underscoring the flowing-river motif.⁷⁷ This motif is applicable to our greater satisfaction in the third and fourth sections, where one verse visually appears to flow into the other. The rhythm is eventually altered to return the columns to the presentation given in the beginning, of separate columns and capitalized letters as warranted by context.

Paz has selected an epigraph from the Hevajra Tantra that portends the tone of “Blanco”: “By passion the world is bound, by passion too it is released.” I believe that the prominence of passion in this reference regards both spiritual and corporeal passion. In this sense the language of the Hevajra Tantra is allegorical, in that it designates both sexual and spiritual attributes to the words employed. It appears that Paz on many occasions applies Oriental philosophy as the double of his poetic universe. In this instance the quote from the Hevajra Tantra, which incorporates the basic precepts of Tantrism, represents the impetus for Paz's poetic creation—the imbalance of forces in the universe that leads to an annulment of opposites without ever destroying the opposing elements. Opposites fuse and then separate in the perpetual rhythm of the universe, and as there is always a struggle between the opposition and affinity of the two elements, there will always be an imbalance of strengths in this ideal relation. The limited autonomy that arises from the imbalance is called liberty or creation. Therefore, indirectly, creativity is a product of the duality of nature and the impulse to fuse opposite forces. Paz exploits the structure of the Tantric language, which is a system of pluralities: “El lenguaje tántrico es un lenguaje poético y de ahí que sus significados sean siempre plurales. Además, tiene la propiedad de emitir significados que son, diría, reversibles. La reversibilidad implica que cada palabra o cosa puede convertirse en su contrario y después, o simultáneamente, volver a ser ella misma. El supuesto básico del tantrismo es la abolición de los contrarios—sin suprimirlos; ese postulado lo lleva a otro: la movilidad de los significados, el continuo vaivén de los signos y sus sentidos”⁷⁸ (“The language of the Tantras is a poetic language and its meanings are always multiple. It also has a quality that I would call reversibility: each word can be converted into its contrary and later, or simultaneously, turn into itself again. The basic premise of Tantrism is the abolition of contraries—without suppressing them. This postulate brings on another: the mobility of the meanings, the continuous shifting of the signs and their meanings”).⁷⁹ Passion then is the core through which energy flows, and which is alternately bound and released in the perpetual imbalance of opposing actions.

The fusion of opposites in addition to the Hindu concept of the negation and the discontinuity of time are themes developed throughout “Blanco.” The poem begins with the beginning, but not so much to signal the arrival at a point in time, as to speak of its potential:

el comienzo
                                        el cimiento
la simiente
                                                  latente
la palabra en la punta de la lengua
inaudita                                                                      inaudible
                                                  impar
grávida                                                                                          nula
                                             sin edad
(a stirring
                                        a steering
a seedling
                                                  sleeping
a word at the tip of the tongue
unhead                                                                      unhearable
                                                  matchless
fertile                                                                                          barren
                                             ageless).(80)

The beginning, origin, and seed are similar because they have not yet realized their potential, they are undiscovered for the moment. The beginning is the essence of a future visibility, an openendedness in contact with the unfinished, but it has not been placed in opposition to another point in time and should not be considered as an introduction to a linear perception of time. The pregnant potential of this unspoken word on the tip of the tongue echoes the latent quality of the seed and the beginning. Here Paz refers directly to time (as if to erase doubts), and reminds us that the word is ageless. The word has no temporal reference because it is new, reborn with each occasion of its use.

In the first section of double columns, the flame is a purifying one⁸¹ that enhances the erotic union of the lovers, while it explores the senses in the second section:

en el muro la sombra del fuego
en el fuego tu sombra y la mía
el fuego te desata y te anuda
Pan Grial Ascua
                                                            Muchacha
tú ríes—desnuda
En los jardines de la llama
(on the wall the shadow of the fire
in the fire your shadow and mine
the fire unlaces and fastens you
Ember Bread Grail
                                                                      Girl
you laugh—naked
in the gardens of the flame).(82)
llama rodeada de leones
leona en el circo de las llamas
ánima entre las sensaciones
frutos de luces de bengala
los sentidos se abren
en la noche magnética
flame encircled by lions
lioness in the circus of the flames
soul among sensations
fruits of the fireworks
the senses open
in the magnetic night

The reflection of language is infused with the erotic (“ánima entre las sensaciones” [“soul among sensations”]), and, to paraphrase Guillermo Sucre, the erotic would appear to explain the poetic process in evidence (“en el fuego tu sombra y la mía” [“your shadow and mine in the fire”]). Indeed, the subsequent imbalance liberates the poet momentarily to perform an ontological search for metaphysical identity—“En el pecho de México caído. / Polvo soy de aquellos lodos. / Río de sangre, / Río de historias” (“dropped on the chest of Mexico. / I am the dust of that silt. / River of blood, / river of histories”)⁸³—which after the next section of two columns followed by one, is reduced to violence. The transition is then completed (between the silences) from pain to violent reaction that is cognizant of its futility: “Te golpeo cielo / Tierra te golpeo” (“sky I beat you, / land I beat you”).⁸⁴ The center single column, whose theme is the passage of the word from silence to silence, demonstrates that the oppositional structure, which is so evident in the play of the erotic, is equally significant in the poetic creation:

                                        No y Sí
Juntos
                    Dos sílabas enamoradas
Si el mundo es real
                                                  La palabra es irreal
Si es real la palabra
                                                       El mundo
Es la grieta el resplandor el remolino
No
          Las desapariciones y las apariciones
                                                                                                    Sí
El árbol de los nombres
                                                            Real irreal
                                        (No and Yes
together
                    two syllables in love
If the world is real
                                                  the word is unreal
If the word is real
                                                       the world
is the cleft the splendor the whirl
No
          disappearances and appearances
                                                                                                    Yes
the tree of names
                                                            Real unreal).(85)

The acknowledged self (“I am the dust of that silt”) sees itself through its own eyes, not simply through the eyes of another, from a distanced plane.

Poetry for Paz is no longer a high-distanced genre whereby the individual is a finished and completed being, completed by the gaze of the Other. The “I” is no longer the sum of its characteristics on the surface as seen by others. The “I” possesses the ability to be exposed, guessed at, and deciphered. There is not a single and unified view that would hold inevitably true for the individual. Poetry, through this novelization of the genre, becomes dialogized, open to an ever-evolving reality, an openended present.⁸⁶ The fusion of opposites (“no/yes,” “real/unreal,” “disappearances/appearances”) that takes place in this evolving reality emphasizes one of the tasks of “Blanco,” which is to negate the analytical logic of language.⁸⁷ As stated earlier, Chinese civilization has conceived of the cosmos as an order composed of a dual rhythm—union, separation, union—of two opposites. It is here, in the imbalance of these components of the oppositional structure, that a limited autonomy is achieved, and for the poet Paz this means a type of liberation—poetic creation. It is here also that the void acquires a positive meaning.⁸⁸ Words are liberated from their meaning, torn from their previous roots to be renewed. The world is a metaphor for the body, granting life and establishing reality, and its seeds are words that flourish through this liberation: “El mundo / … Da realidad a la mirada” (“The world / … brings reality to seeing”).⁸⁹

Orientalism in Octavio Paz's work is a mixture of exhaustive study, of philosophy and literature read in translation in Europe, and of personal experience resulting from a prolonged stay in India. While his texts are not intended to replace Oriental philosophical canon, nor do they claim to be philosophical texts, they do introduce Eastern concepts that are compatible with Paz's premises about poetry and literature in general. To summarize these theories, we refer first to the Taoist concept of yin and yang, which through its duality and prospect for unity demonstrates that the body is the archetype for the cosmic order. This supports the Tantric principle that understands the body to be the double of the universe, which in turn is a manifestation of the body of the Buddha. The Tantric texts provide the liberating creative force necessary for the next step, which would be the union of writing with the cosmos: “Estos textos están regidos por la misma necesidad psicológica y artística que llevó a nuestros poetas barrocos a construirse un idioma dentro del idioma español, la misma que inspira al lenguaje de Joyce y al de los surrealistas: la concepción de la escritura como el doble del cosmos”⁹⁰ (“These texts are governed by the same psychological and artistic necessity that caused our Baroque poets to build a language of their own within the Spanish language, the same necessity that inspired the language of Joyce and the Surrealists: the conception of writing as the double of the cosmos”).⁹¹

Writing for Paz is grounded in openness, in a dialogue with the Other. The dialogized image in his poetry is inserted through a dramatic unease created by a questioning of issues as conflictive as the search for the meaning of life, the erotic, and the sacred being. The dialogized image projects itself linguistically as the aesthetic object of the poet's work and is also evident graphically in the spatial separations comprehended by typography, folded pages, exotic papers, and imaging. In Paz's work dialogue dissects the closed, fixed image of the Other, calling rather for a nontranquil relationship formed when opposites fuse, separate, and fuse in an antithetical movement. As in India, a recognition of each particularity is achieved, propelling the integration into a broader system. Then, in another view, the struggle between the opposition and affinity of two elements duplicates for Paz the rhythmical separation and union in the cosmological perception of the universe from ancient China. Poetry for Octavio Paz is open to an ever-evolving reality, an openended present supported by his defining of the universe in an extraordinary example through Orientalism.

Notes

1. Octavio Paz, Puertas al campo, 142.

2. Comparing Borges and Paz in “Tres notas mexicans,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 381 (1982), Julio Ortega describes the formulization of Hispanic American culture in addition to the authors' distinct approaches to Hispanic American Orientalism: “Como Borges, Paz entendió temprano que la peculiaridad de la cultura hispanoamericana es su apertura, su incorporación dramática de fuentes en apariencia disímiles. A diferencia de Borges, Paz creyó que las culturas no son sólo formas especulativas y, al final, modelos de percepción equivalentes, sino que hizo la crítica de los modelos culturales (empezando por el mexicano) en su búsqueda de una percepción original, reveladora” (p. 667) (Like Borges, Paz understood early on that the uniqueness of Hispanic American culture is found in its openness, its dramatic incorporation of apparently different sources. Unlike Borges, Paz believed that cultures are not only speculative forms and, in the end, models of equal perception, but he criticized cultural models [beginning with the Mexican model] in his search for an original and revealing perception).

   Another literary guide to interpreting Hispanic American Orientalism is given in Manuel Durán, “Hacia la otra orilla,” in Donald W. Bleznick, ed., Homenaje a Luis Leal. Durán compares the significance of the Orient for Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda: “A Neruda el Oriente le ensimismó, le encerró más en su subconsciente, en los tesoros de su subconsciente. A Paz el Oriente le abre, fundiendo su experiencia y su personalidad con un presence y un horizonte cada vez más vastos” (p. 182) (The Orient for Neruda made him absorbed in his own thought, it enclosed him more in his subconscious, in the treasures of his subconscious. The Orient for Paz opens him up, fusing his experience and personality with an increasingly vast present and horizon).

3. Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, 43.

4. Paz, Conjunctions and Disjunctions, 36.

5. In “La huella del Oriente en la poesía de Octavio Paz,” Revista Iberoamericana 74 (1971): 113, Manuel Durán explores Paz's confrontation with otherness in order to arrive at the other shore where opposites form a covenant. Diego Martínez Torrón, in Variables poéticas de Octavio Paz, 165, 199, echoes the concept of the other shore as the place where opposites form a covenant, and defines it as the vertigo of memory, behind which resides nothingness.

6. In the introduction to a collection of Paz's essays, Los signos en rotación y otros ensayos, Carlos Fuentes distinguishes the relationship between Paz's essays and poetry: “Los ensayos de Octavio Paz, inseparables de su poesía, no son sólo una extensión crítica de ésta; más bien, ambas formas integran un todo crítico y participan de un signo idéntico: la elaboración de un conocimiento, de un saber, por naturaleza antidogmático, de los problemas humanos” (p. ii) (The essays of Octavio Paz, inseparable from his poetry, are not just a critical extension of the latter; rather, both forms integrate a critical whole and share an identical sign: the elaboration of an understanding, a knowledge, by nature antidogmatic, of human problems).

   In his Fundadores de la nueva poesía, the critic Saúl Yurkievich sees the connection between the genres as an example of that literary tradition (represented by Mallarmé, T. S. Eliot, Pound, and Borges) that believes that modern literature is inseparable from its criticism. It is this intertextuality that inspires Yurkievich to conclude: “Siempre hay complemento y ósmosis recíproca entre los poemas y los ensayos de Paz, que surgen en continua alternancia (en corriente alterna) de un mismo centro en movimiento” (p. 253) (There is always a complementary relationship and reciprocal osmosis between the poems and essays of Paz, arising in a continuous alternation [in an alternating current] from the same moving center).

7. See Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 286, for an enlightening discussion of poetic discourse.

8. Paz, Ladera este, 173-82.

9. Ibid., 145.

10. The question of typography in Paz's poetry is treated by Rachel Phillips, The Poetic Modes of Octavio Paz, 132.

11. Martínez Torrón, Variables poéticas de Octavio Paz, 199, and Javier Sologuren “‘Eje’ y ‘Cuento de dos jardines,’” in Aproximaciones a Octavio Paz, 230, both underscore the importance of the image of the garden in Paz's poetry.

12. Paz, El signo y el garabato, 116.

13. Ibid.

14. Willamowitz-Moellendorff reinforces a theory on language and the acquisition of knowledge as stated earlier by Auerbach: “Only knowledge of a language that possesses another mode of conceiving the world can lead to the appropriate knowledge of one's own language”; quoted in Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 62.

    Yong-Tae Min, “Haikú en la poesía de Octavio Paz,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 343-45 (1979), concludes that Octavio Paz needed to know the Far East in order to know himself, and quotes Paz on the importance of the Oriental influence on his poetry and that of other Hispanic Americans after World War II: “la actitud contemporánea difiere de la de hace cincuenta años: no sólo es menos estética, sino que también es menos etnocéntrica. El Japón ha dejado de ser una curiosidad artística y cultural: es (¿fue?) otra visión del mundo distinta a la nuestra, pero no mejor ni peor; no un espejo, sino una ventana que nos muestra otra imagen del hombre, otra posibilidad de ser” (p. 698) (contemporary thought differs from that of fifty years ago: not only is it less aesthetic, but it is also less ethnocentric. Japan has ceased to be an artistic and cultural curiosity: it is (was?) another vision of the world distinct from ours, but not better or worse; not a mirror, but a window that shows us another image of man, another way of being).

15. Paz has written on the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho and has translated Basho's haiku to Spanish. See Paz's introduction to his and Eikichi Hayashiya's translation of Basho's poetry titled Matsuo Basho: Sendas de Oku.

16. Paz, El signo y el garabato, 122. Speaking of Tablada in a recent interview, Paz and Anthony Stanton, “Genealogía de un libro,” Vuelta 145 (1988), Paz explained the influence of Tablada's poetry on his work: “Yo había leído a Tablada sin atención pero en 1945, el año de su muerte en Nueva York, lo volví a leer y, literalmente, lo redescubrí. Me abrió un camino. Después, cuando estuve en Japón, volví a leer mucha poesía china y japonesa, gracias sobre todo a las traducciones al inglés, que son las mejores” (p. 19) (I had read Tablada without paying much attention but in 1945, the year of his death in New York, I read him again, and, literally, I rediscovered him. He opened the way for me. Later, when I was in Japan, I read over again a lot of Chinese and Japanese poetry, thanks above all to the English translations, which are the best). For a discussion of the coincidences between Paz and Tablada see Jason Wilson, Octavio Paz, 169.

17. Octavio Paz, Ladera este, 86. Translations from Eliot Weinberger, ed. The Collected Works of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987, 243. All of the poems of this collection were written in the East with the exception of “Cuento de dos jardines.” What appears more significant is that all of the poems deal with Oriental themes, except for those titled “Intermitencias del Oeste” (Western intermittences), which serve as counterpoint to the focus on the East. Only a select few of the poems of Ladera este will be analyzed, leaving aside other poems and collections for another study.

18. See Manuel Durán, “The Poet as Philosopher,” World Literature Today 4 (1982), for an elucidation of the importance for Paz of language and dialogue in the resolution of questions and contradictions common to us all.

19. Paz, Ladera este, 102. Weinberger, ed., The Collected Works, 261.

20. Paz, Ladera este, 131.

21. Ibid., 130. All subsequent translations of “Cuento de dos jardines” are by Julia Kushigian.

22. According to Hugo J. Verani, “Octavio Paz and the Language of Space,” World Literature Today 4 (1982), the spatialization of time and memory is one of the most significant constants in Paz's poetry: “His poetry is organized like a palimpsest of time and space whose principal statement on the nature of reality is found in the form chosen, in the discontinuity of verses or rhythmic phrases which neither postulate a logical discourse nor achieve a synthesis but which are projected like a mosaic of heterogeneous fragments that have ceased to be thinkable as a totality” (p. 631).

23. Paz shows great admiration for the Indian concept of time and history when he says, in Las peras del olmo, “El fin último a que tiende el pensamiento indio parece más bien consistir en un deseo de escapar de la pesadilla histórica. … La indiferencia de la antigua India por la historia revela una sabiduría que no podemos desdeñar sin riesgo de incurrir en un suicidio espiritual. La verdadera salud no está en la historia, sino en nosotros mismos. En nuestro ser, que no tiene fechas porque la vida es algo más que las fechas históricas y que los fines históricos” (pp. 226-27) (The ultimate goal toward which Indian thought tends appears to consist of a desire to escape the historical nightmare. … The indifference of ancient India to history reveals a wisdom that we cannot scorn without the risk of incurring spiritual suicide. True well-being is not found in history but in ourselves. In our being without history, because life is something more than historical dates and historical goals).

24. Paz, Ladera este, 101.

25. Paz, El mono gramático, 134.

26. Paz, The Monkey Grammarian, 155-56.

27. Paz, El mono gramático, 133.

28. Paz, The Monkey Grammarian, 153.

29. Paz, Ladera este, 130. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 137.

30. Paz, Ladera este, 132. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 139.

31. Paz, Ladera este, 133. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 141.

32. Susnigdha Dey concludes in “La influencia de la India en la obra poética de Pablo Neruda y Octavio Paz,” XII Congreso del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana: “Paz ve la multiplicidad en la unidad y la unidad en la multiplicidad. El mismo punto para él se hace a la vez centrífugo y centrípeto, moviéndose finalmente de un lado a otro de tal manera que muchas veces unas pocas sílabas bastan para engarzar una serie de ideas en direcciones iguales y opuestas” (p. 853) (Paz sees multiplicity in unity and unity in multiplicity. For him the same point becomes centrifugal and centripetal, moving finally from one side to another in such a way that frequently in a few syllables suffice to string a series of ideas in the same and in opposite directions).

33. Paz, Ladera este, 133. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 141.

34. Paz, Ladera este, 135. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 143.

35. Paz, Corriente alterna, 141.

36. Paz, Alternating Current, 131-32.

37. Paz, Ladera este, 137. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 147.

38. Paz, Ladera este, 139. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 149.

39. Marie Joan Panico, “Separación entre ‘lo mismo’ y ‘lo otro’ en Octavio Paz,” Actas del Sexto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, 558, understands Paz's need to destroy dualities as an effort to reach the Other Shore.

40. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 286.

41. Paz, Ladera este, 141. Translation from Tomlinson, Paz: Selected Poems, 151.

42. Paz, Ladera este, 45. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 201.

43. Paz, El arco y la lira, 116.

44. Paz, The Bow and the Lyre, 106.

45. In Octavio Paz: el sentido de la palabra, Ramón Xirau expands on this perception: “No creo que la ironía pueda separarse de una poesía que en su conjunto es poesía de evidencias. … La poesía es también actividad lúdica y la actividad lúdica es visión jugada de la vida. Octavio Paz, con Quevedo, diría que entre las desdichas ninguna hay peor que la falta de alegría. Y si la ironía puede ser tanto una vía de conocimiento como una demostración de nuestro necesario y vitalísimo instinto de juego, no es menos vía de conocimiento” (p. 102) (I do not believe that irony can be separated from a poetry that in its totality is a poetry of evidence. … Poetry is also a playful activity, and playful activity is a vision played out of life. Octavio Paz, along with Quevedo, would say that among the misfortunes of life there is nothing worse than the absence of joy. And if irony can be as much a way of knowledge as a demonstration of our necessary and vital instinct for play, it is not any the less a way of knowledge).

46. For an enlightening treatment of popular masks see Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 36; Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 39-40; and Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God.

47. Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, 23.

48. Paz, Conjunctions and Disjunctions, 14.

49. Paz, Corriente alterna, 109.

50. Paz, Alternating Current, 101.

51. The affinity between Paz and the Orient in an examination of the Other is affirmed by Emir Rodríguez Monegal in his study “Borges y Paz,” Revista Iberoamericana 40 (1974). With reference to the Orient, Rodríguez Monegal states:

    Allí ha encontrado Paz la clave para disipar las contradicciones del pensamiento occidental; un sistema que permite la aceptación de la existencia del otro y la disolución del yo propio; una religión que instaura lo divino, y no un Dios único, como centro de sus creencias; una concepción del tiempo como algo cíclico y no lineal, lo que permite anular las fantasías racionalistas del “progreso” y da un nuevo sentido a la empresa revolucionaria. Hasta la concepción del amor (central para este gran poeta erótico) encuentra en el pensamiento y en la experiencia estética de Oriente un apoyo solar. La comunión, la reconciliación de los contrarios, que Paz buscaba desde sus orígenes recibe una nueva definición a partir de la experiencia oriental

    (p. 585).

    (There Paz has found the key to dissipating the contradictions of Western thought; a system that permits the acceptance of the existence of the Other and the dissolution of the self; a religion that renews that which is divine, and not a solitary God, as the center of its beliefs; a conception of time as cyclical and not linear, which permits the nullification of the rationalistic fantasies of “progress” and gives a new meaning to the revolutionary enterprise. Even the conception of love [a central theme in this great erotic poet] finds in the contemplation and in the aesthetic experience of the East a solar support. Communion, the reconciliation of opposites, which Paz continuously searched for, receives a new definition through the Oriental experience.)

52. See Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 152-53, for a discussion of dialogical relationships that develop between entire utterances or individual words of another person's speech, and those that develop between our own utterances or individual words.

53. Paz, Ladera este, 101. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 259.

54. Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, 48.

55. Paz, Conjunctions and Disjunctions, 40-41.

56. See Alicia Borinsky, “Equilibrismos: poesía/sentido,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 343-45 (1979): 553, for an examination of the perpetual moment in Paz's poetic and philosophic realities.

57. Paz, Corriente alterna, 31.

58. Paz, Alternating Current, 28.

59. Paz, Claude Lévi-Strauss o el nuevo festín de Esopo, 83-84. It might be important to point out in explaining Paz's reference to “brahamanismo” (Brahmanism) that much of Hindu theology is based on the concept of Brahman.

60. Paz, Claude Lévi-Strauss, An Introduction, 91-92.

61. Paz, Ladera este, 101. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 259.

62. An interesting comparison may be made between Tantric rituals and medieval, comic, scatological images as examined in Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 151.

63. Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind, 110.

64. Paz, Ladera este, 102. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 259, 261.

65. Paz, Ladera este, 103. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 261.

66. Paz, Ladera este, 102. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 259.

67. Paz, Ladera este, 103. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 261.

68. See Julio Ortega, “Viento entero: el tiempo de un día,” in Angel Flores, ed., Aproximaciones a Octavio Paz, 205-6, for a discussion of eroticism in Paz's poetry as an antidote to the world's silence.

69. Saúl Yurkievich, Fundadores de la nueva poesía, 259.

70. Referring to the Eros motif and the ancient mysteries, Nygren concludes in Agape and Eros: “For both of them salvation means the deliverance of the soul from the prisonhouse of the body and the senses, and its restoration to its original heavenly home. … In the Mysteries, the soul's salvation is attained through initiations, purifications, and ritual observance, while in Plato it is through philosophy. But even for the philosopher it involves a ‘conversion’ and a ‘purification’” (p. 167).

71. Manuel Durán, “La huella del Oriente en la poesía de Octavio Paz,” 110, underscores the effect of history as it transforms chaos into art.

72. Paz, Ladera este, 105. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 265.

73. Paz, Ladera este, 105. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 265.

74. Ibid., 105-6.

75. In La máscara, la transparencia, Guillermo Sucre reinforces the bond that exists between language and the erotic evident in the columns of Paz's “Blanco”: “Estas interpolaciones van señalando la relación profunda que existe entre el tema del lenguaje y el erótico. Están ligados por un impulso común. El poema prepara un orden amoroso, ha dicho Paz en otro libro. Ese orden se va gestando aquí en un doble plano: la reflexión sobre el lenguaje se impregna de una fuerza erótica, así como la exaltación erótica parece la gestación misma de la palabra y aun del poema” (p. 231) (These interpolations signal the profound relationship that exists between the theme of language and the theme of the erotic. They are bound by a common impulse. The poem prepares an amorous order, Paz has said in another book. That order is configured on a double plane: the reflection on language is impregnated with an erotic power, just as erotic exaltation seems to be the actual configuration of the word and even the poem).

76. Phillips, The Poetic Modes of Octavio Paz, 132.

77. Exploring the flowing-river motif in The Poetic Modes of Octavio Paz, Phillips concludes: “The second double section is separated typographically on the page and there is no capitalization, a visual device which echoes the flowing-river motif. The right- and left-hand passages are complementary, the former more actual, the latter more abstract, but both centering on the act of sexual union as a confluence of rivers leading to a new realm of perception, both by the senses and by the intellect” (p. 137).

78. Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, 70.

79. Paz, Conjunctions and Disjunctions, 65.

80. Paz, Ladera este, 147. Translation from Eliot Weinberger, ed., The Collected Poems, 313.

81. In “El espacio,” in Angel Flores, ed., Aproximaciones a Octavio Paz, Jean Franco elaborates on the purifying nature of the flame with reference to the poem “Blanco”: “En cada zona, el poeta pasa por una experiencia idéntica. Para unirse a la deseada—muchacha, ánima, creación—tiene que enfrentarse a la llama purificadora, destructora. La llama es pasión, energía, sensación o aridez según la zona en la cual se emplea” (p. 85) (In each zone, the poet passes through an identical experience. In order to unite with the one desired—girl, soul, creation—he has to confront the purifying, destructive flame. The flame is passion, energy, sensation, or aridness according to the zone in which it is used).

82. Paz, Ladera este, 150. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 315, 17.

83. Paz, Ladera este, 151. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 317.

84. Paz, Ladera este, 157. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 321.

85. Paz, Ladera este, 166. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 329.

86. For a more thorough discussion of the novelization of other genres see Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination, 7, 34-35.

87. In his study “‘Blanco’: Space of Change,” World Literature Today 4 (1982), Julio Ortega determines that the analytical logic of language is negated “in order to reestablish the analogy, the logic of the poem itself. This is the level of discourse of the negations which excised from the natural order of language the speculative order of the poem” (p. 637).

88. On the role of the void and its significance as a transcendental spatial dimension see Graciela Palau de Nemes, “Octavio Paz,” in Ivar Ivask, ed., The Perpetual Present, 89.

89. Paz, Ladera este, 169. Translation from Weinberger, The Collected Poems, 331.

90. Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, 83.

91. Paz, Conjunctions and Disjunctions, 78.