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Castanon's tribute seeks to remind us of the enduring strength of Paz's vision. It does so with inimitable poetic beauty. This is, without a doubt, Adolfo Castanon's breakthrough book of poetry. Castanon is one of Mexico's foremost literary critics, as well as an established poet and fiction writer. The subject of these poems, Octavio Paz, was without a doubt, the leading poet of Spanish America and also one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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This study is the first complete verse analysis of the Mexican Nobel laureate's poem, a work designed in highly figurative language to present the philosophy of India's equally metaphoric tantric Yoga. ... Read more

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El presente estudio trata de explorar dos vas complementarias hacia el centro mismo de la visin potica de Octavio Paz. Al ocuparse de la cuestin del Ser, la primera va sita a Paz en el mbito de la tradicin ontolgica de Occidente. Partiendo del concepto romntico de imaginacin potica, la segunda va inserta a la bsqueda epistemolgica de Paz en la misma historia de la poesa moderna occidental.Las dos vas se entrelazan y finalmente se confluyen, proponiendo una sntesis unitaria y conclusiva sobre el arte potico de Paz.

English Translation:

This study investigates the ontological and epistemological foundations of Octavio Paz's poetic vision. It attempts to characterize Paz's creative art mainly within the context of Western philosophical and cultural evolution, from the Pre-Socratic philosophers to the Romantics and the Surrealists. ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Romain Gary, Octavio Paz, Paul Claudel, Jean Giraudoux, Saint-John Perse, Curzio Malaparte, Paul Morand, Olivier Weber, Jean-François Deniau, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Pierre-Jean Rémy, Pablo Neruda, Erik Orsenna, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Paul Petit, Daniel Rondeau, Jean-François Parot, Carlos Fuentes, François-Régis Bastide, Fereydoun Hoveyda. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux est un écrivain et un diplomate français, né le 29 octobre 1882 à Bellac en Haute-Vienne et mort le 31 janvier 1944 à Paris. Brillant étudiant et soldat décoré pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, il occupe des fonctions diplomatiques et administratives et fait paraître des romans (Suzanne et le Pacifique en 1921 , Siegfried et le Limousin en 1922) avant de se diriger vers le théâtre après sa rencontre avec le comédien Louis Jouvet qui mettra en scène et interprétera ses œuvres principales. Auteur de romans, nouvelles et essais, il est aujourd'hui surtout connu pour son théâtre qui compte des pièces célèbres comme Amphitryon 38 (1929), La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (1935), Électre (1937) ou Ondine (1939) ou La Folle de Chaillot jouée en 1945 après sa mort. Jean Giraudoux a participé comme d'autres dramaturges des années 30-40 (Cocteau, Sartre, Camus par exemple) à la réécriture des mythes antiques éclairés par les mentalités modernes. Il a su également associer le tragique et le léger dans une langue élégante et fine, parfois même poétique comme dans Intermezzo ou Ondine. Germanophile et diplomate de carrière, il est Commissaire général à l'information en 1939-1940 et sa situation pendant l'Occupation est complexe et son rôle contrasté. Jean Giraudoux meurt à Paris le 31 janvier 1944, à l'âge de soi...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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In this small, memorable meditation on Octavio Paz as a thinker and man of action, Ilan Stavans-described by the Washington Post as "one of our foremost cultural critics"-ponders the Nobel Prize laureate's intellectual courage against the ideological tapestry of his epoch and shows us what lessons can be learned from him. Stavans explores such topics as the crossroads where literature and politics meet, the place of criticism in society, and Mexico's difficult quest to come to terms with its own history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I disagree with the previous reader
Dr. Stavans has been compared to Mr. Octavio Paz. And for good reason: this is a short book, but it's powerful. It doesn't do what trashy academic books do all the time: the say absolutely nothing. Dr. Stavans offers a strong, critical portrait of the Nobel Prize winner, and some people in the establishment won't like that. He has the courage to say what others won't!

2 & a half stars
One of the saving graces of Stavans' profile-reflection of Paz is it's complete absence of a stultifying academic tone. This, unfortunately, is not enough to merit Stavans' book. In the first few pages he writes of Paz's poetic output, "I confess to having never much cared for his poetry...His poetry is too lose, too mystical for my taste." Stavans characterizes Paz's poetic oeuvre as "too close to Surrealism". These comments by Stavans displays a remarkably superficial reading of Paz's poems, to such a significant degree as to almost entirely discredit any of his observations on Paz's critical writings, which are in his words, "a better metronome for our times". Anyone who has given Paz's poems more in-depth attention than Stavans, will quickly come to the realization that in Paz's poems there is an audible critical voice, & in his prose there is often poetic passages.

In fact, in some works the two converge until they are indistinguishable, as in the case of "The Monkey Grammarian", which some critics consider his most unusual prose work, but his English translator, Eliot Weinberger considered an essentially poetic work. The only books of essays given significant attention to in Stavans' work are "The Labyrinth of Solitude" & "Sor Juana, or, the Traps of Faith", both of which he considered to be Paz's masterpieces. All other collections of essays are only briefly mentioned throughout.

Stavans' book also suffers from glaring inconsistencies, as in his passages on Paz's magazine, "Vuelta". Although he acknowledges the international contributors & scores of translations Paz's magazine provided its readership, Stavans writes, "To read its pages was to suppose that most people in Mexico, and for that matter in the whole southern hemisphere, were comfortably tolerant of diverse views, not much concerned with local politics, highly literate, and metaphysically driven, which was and is far from true in a nation where 75 percent of the population lives in poverty and 49 percent is still illiterate." A few pages later, Stavans tries to make a case that in his later years Paz had become a sort of reactionary, too close to the PRI government to be effective anymore, "His seventieth birthday, in 1984, and then again his eightieth were jointly celebrated with great fanfare by the ruling party and Televisa, with TV programs, conferences, and museum exhibits. Paz was seen by a large segment of Mexico's population as disconnected from the nation's new artistic, antiestablishment trends, as a close friend of the status quo, and as an ally of the United States, his magazine as a reactionary organ of Mexico's intellectual right." If we take Stavans' former statement about the presumptions of "Vuelta" which he claims cannot possibly be true, such as a highly literate population, how are we supposed to accept the latter about a large segment of Mexico being concerned with where Paz stood on the latest artistic developments & their views of his magazine?

Although this is for the most part an irritating read, with many inconsistencies strewn throughout, a few of Stavans' analysis of Paz's work is dead on. However, before reading this I would seek out Jason Wilson's infinitely superior study of Paz & his work, which is thankfully devoid of the envy & derogatory remarks that stain Stavans' book. ... Read more

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Este volumen reune las paginas mas representativas del pensamiento de Octavio Paz (1914-1998) en torno a la historia del pueblo mexicano. Tomadas de distintos libros publicados por su autor, estas reflexiones son testimonio de su rico y apasionado dialogo con el pasado de su tierra, en un afan por penetrar la compleja trama cultural e historica del presente mexicano. ... Read more