Product Description
tr Weinberger, w/Bishop, Blackburn, Levertov et al ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

An enchanting read!!

This excellent edition of the collection of poetry by Paz presents the English translations facing the Spanish originals.
Paz who served as a Mexican diplomat in India and Japan and who also lived in France and was influenced by the surrealistic wave, does not cease to surprise the reader with the elegant places, new ideas and images that he takes up.
An enchanting read!
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and the The Invitation

A Beautiful Collection
If you enjoy the poetry of Octavio Paz (born 1914- died 1998), this collection is a wonderful addition to your library. Paz wrote literature and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990 and he also wrote poetry. Poems are presented in both Spanish and English.

Paz is a lyrical writer and his imagery takes you inside the poem and inside yourself. Take "Between Going and Staying" and the first stanza:

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

and the last stanza:

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

You can feel the stillness, feel the immersion, feel the pause.

If you are new to Paz and his poetry he is a wonderful poet like the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca--both are incomparable in weaving their words into poetic moments.

An enchanting read!
This excellent edition of the collection of poetry by Paz presents the English translations facing the Spanish originals.
Paz who served as a Mexican diplomat in India and Japan and who also lived in France and was influenced by the surrealistic wave, does not cease to surprise the reader with the elegant places, new ideas and images that he takes up.
An enchanting read!

Collected Poems of Octavio Paz
This is an excellent edition of the collected poems of Octavio Paz, with English translations facing the Spanish originals. I purchased this as a gift for my Spanish teacher and she was delighted! My favorites are his poems written when he served as a Mexican diplomat in India and Japan. His sensitive mind absorbed the nuances of place and religion, which are recreated for us in the poems. His efforts at haiku en espagnol are enlightening, pun intended.

excellent poetry
I bought this book after reading an excerpt of one of Paz's poems at a camp. I didn't know what poem it was from, so I bought the book and scoured it until I found the poem. It was Brotherhood. The poetry is beautiful and moving. It is the type of poetry you can read and enjoy no matter if you understand what it is saying, the writing is that beautiful ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (17)

A Classic whose practical relevance varies
The following review pertains only to the original 1950 essay: The Labyrinth of Solitude.

The reviewers Bo K and Lynn Hoffman are fully correct in qualifying the present practical sociological usefulness of Paz's original essay as it pertains in general to the modern, well educated, global minded urban middle class and cultural elite of Mexico itself.And it most certainly is at best only part of the story in understanding the Mexican with poor or traditional roots who has migrated to the USA and has been acculturated by prolonged, willing exposure to mainstream American life and culture.

But it still has relevance in understanding the many Mexicans in Mexico today who live more traditional lives, and who are shaped by the dynamics Paz originally described in 1950 that still live on today.And since so many of these Mexicans have migrated north and live among us with little fundamental change in mentality from what they were in Mexico, this book has value if we want to understand the mind of the Mexican who probably cooks our meals, picks up our trash, mows our lawns, cares for our children, and so forth.And if our educational system fails to make a profound impression on their children, it will likely still describe part of the mentality of some US citizens too.And what will likely shape the remaining part?:probably the streets.

Loved it very poetic
I loved the Labyrinth Of Solitude. I could see why he has accomplished and achieved fame for writing this beautiful book. He captures the Latino struggle in a narrative poetic form.

Very profound and educational!!
Paz explores the Mexican soul with concrete historical and cultural details.

He is able to demonstrate that despite the historical problems that Mexico endured, there is a powerful and enduring old wisdom that resides in its culture.

Paz's insights are very profound and educational.

A beautiful book that belied by the truth
This is a beautifully wrought attempt to unearth and examine some of the deep differences between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures. When I first read it-and before I went to Mexico or knew many Mexicans-it seemed like this was the undiscovered key to understanding Mexico.
In some ways, it still is a valuable tool for interpreting Mexican public culture. What Paz calls 'the Mexican's willingness to contemplate horror' isstill very much on display. Paz' description of Mexican language in The Sons of La Malinche' and his meditation on retributive justice in 'The Day of the Dead' are classics of anthropology, poetry and maybe even social science fiction.
More seriously, the moment in time-the post-revolutionary, pre-electronic decades from which Paz is speaking-is gone. Mexico has a substantial middle class that is connected to the world and whose view of things has undergone a profound transformation. The bourgeoisie that Paz so actively despised has won the day.
In fact, this sort of cultural summing up, attractive as it may be, has always stumbled on the disorderly facts of the multiplicity of individual lives.
So: read this and prize it for the insights it may give into this grand thing called Mexican Civilization, but don't be disappointed when the Mexico you meet rarely corresponds.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG

Classic text but badly outdated
Prior reviewer Scott Henson is correct, this book does not adequately reflect modern Mexico of the 1990's to present.Some elements of Mexican character as described by Paz remain true, but generally this book does not describe modern middle class Mexicans very well at all, who, while still small as a class, are nevertheless very Western in their general lives.

Reading this now without an actual awareness of life in today's Mexico, you would think that the country is still populated by stoic indigenous peoples at the mercy of fates they don't understand.

While that is true for some sectors of the population, the country has become as modern as many European countries. In fact, Modern Mexico reminds me of post WWII Italy in so many ways. One foot in the future and one foot in the past, and struggling to keep their balance.

Try reading this book and then watching Y tu mama tambien or solo con tu pareja to see the differences, as well as the continuities, with Paz' essay...

Worth a read, but no longer so relevant as it was once. And don't be fooled into thinking that this is the Mexico you will find upon visiting.
... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature and past recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and the Neustadt Prize, Octavio Paz has written one of the most enduring and powerful works ever created on Mexico and its people, character, and culture. "Essential to an understanding of Mexico and, by extension, Latin America and the third world".--THE VILLAGE VOICE . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

El libro mas importante de las obras de Paz
Paz, el ganador del Premio Nobel de 1990, escribo tantos libros destacados-Sor Juana, El arco y la lira, pero este representa el cumbre de su poder artistico. El escribe sobre el hombre mexicano en todas sus formas y tribulaciones. El libro es, al mismo tiempo, un ensayo(o mejor, un libro de ensayos), un analisis, una historia, y, sobre todo, una pregunta-en que consiste este hombre cuyo origen forma parte de la conquista de America, un proceso ya en proceso.

Empieza la obra discutiendo "el pachuco"-una figura del medio siglo XX que representaba la ambiguedad y la frenesi del hispano en los estados unidos durante ese periodo. Despues de esta discusion, continua explicando la cultura hispana desde la epoca precolumbina hasta la revolucion mexicana. Termina la historia con este evento, y la unica cosa que le hace falta a la obra es un analisis de la historia contemporanea.

Este seria el primer libro que le recomienda sobre Mexico al nuevo estudiante.

I read this in college.
I found the Spanish easy to understand, though his philosophy went over my head!

Un libro extraordinario
Octavio Paz, el escritor que haya definido nuestra vida como "olvidado asombro de estar vivos", nos habla de sus ensayos escritos más que hace cincuenta años. Su "La Dialéctica de la Soledad", uno de sus ensayos más destacados, presente sus puntos de vista sobre la soledad no solamente mexicana, sino también la de hombre presente mismo. Paz trata varios temas ensayísticos con la cristalina claridad y persigue un proyecto casi filosófico:muestra la alma mexicana con sus raíces aztecas, su plaza en la vida antigua y contemporánea y, finalmente, su visión de "soñar con los ojos cerrados". Justamente por este ensayo mismo atrevo a recomendar todo el libro tratando de la soledad, cuya presencia en nuestra vida diaria es tan obvia. Además, un interesado en la obra de Octavio Paz debería leer su discurso que había pronunciado en el año 1990 con el motivo de agradecer el galardonar de Premio Nobel. Leyendo Paz, uno descubre que Paz ya contestó muchas de nuestras cuestiónes inquietantes ...

Hommage to a great Man of Letters
Octavio Paz wrote the definitive sociological book that deciphered the Mexican character. He correctly diagnosed that, in fact, the Mexican was stuck in a labyrinth and condemned to find a way out, and in many respects is still trying to find that way out.He understood that he would receive harsh criticism and he did. However, he stayed true to his calling as a man of letters and delivered a book that must indeed be read by anyone wanting to understand the make-up of the Mexican or the serious scholar searching for understanding in the field of Mexican history. I strongly and without reservation recommend this book, it will change your outlook on this important country and most importantly on the inhabitants and descendants of it forever.

Una Obra de Arte
Aunque no estes de acuerdo con todas las ideas de Octavio Paz, las reflexiones y los analisis de esta mente birllante ayudan a entender nuestra magnifica raza. La escritura lleva al lector al pasado y al presente, para poder entender la condicion de Mexico y su gente. Todos los Mexicanos deberian de sentarse a devorar este libro que clarificara las costumbres de nuestra gente y nos ayuda a entender que tiene que cambiar en nuestra politica para tener un pais mas prospero. ... Read more

Product Description
Paz's great poem, tr Eliot Weinberger, bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sunstone: Life of A Crystalline Muse
What if God were the world, the stars, lust, sex, trees, rivers, water, salt, and crystal? What if the world were the poet's fecund Mexican lover? To Octavio Paz, Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, God, the totality, is all of this, and more. To Paz, the reality of daily life is - on the descriptive surface - quite surreal, very vibratory, illusory and refelective. Things sparkle and song is everywhere. To even comment on this vibrational reality is a stop-start, humbling obsession for the poet. This poem is a much needed break for those too bored with European views of reality. This book opens doors to Mexican poetry and to Paz' great career as a poet and essayist. Be prepared to be changed.

Michael James Hawk
http://www.sculpture.org/portfolio/sculptorPage.php?sculptor_id=1001229

Este es un poema necesario.
Paz ha creado una joya de incalculable valor. Con toda la plasticidad que un genio puede brindarle a un texto, San Octavio recorre en Piedra de Sol todos los grandes temas de la poesía y con ello, del hombre. Es tan naturalel desempeño de sus letras que es necesario hacer un esfuerzo para asimilarque nos han llevado de un confín a otro, de la magia a la realidad, de lamujer a la soledad, del río al dolor. Gracias a la serenidad del texto laforma (son 584 endecasílabos) no se percibe en la lectura: así emergen losgigantes. ... Read more

Product Description
Sor Juana displays an extraordinary sweep of imagination and intelligence, and it is many things: a biography, a critical study, a re-creation of an era, a meditation of Mexican history, a dialogue of poet with poet, a reflection on the role of the intellectual in the modern world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Language of Passion
Several years ago, the great Peruvian novelist, critic, and sometime Presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa entitled a colelction of his essays from the 1990s "El Lenguaje de la Pasion," the title he had given to an essay that he wrote on the occasion of the death of Octavio Paz. Paz, who wrote the book in question here--Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz--was perhaps Mexico's preeminent man of letters during the twentieth century, a writer who well deserved the Nobel Prize he won in 1990.

This book on Juana Ines de la Cruz is his best book of prose, in which he unites his sensitivity as a writer of poetry with his deep love for Mexico and his interest in its past. Add to this his genuine insightfulness as a critic--and one who can speak to an average educated adult, not one who speaks only to the specialist--and one has an important, vibrant book, not just about poetry, nor yet about Sor JuanaSor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe, but about literature, art, and life in general.

This text is in Spanish, but Paz' Spanish is so clear that it is readily comprehensible even to the non-specialist. Just keep a dictionary at hand: you'll need to consult it only once or twice a page so transparent is Paz' prose. In the end, though I have read quite a bit of literary criticism, I would have to say that this is one of the four or five best books of criticism I have read, not least because it ranges widely beyond its subject and connects what is often the arcana of literary study to life in general. It is a wise, deeply learned book which wears its learning lightly and, as Vargas Llosa suggests, speaks with passion about life in general.

Sor Juana: a sparking biography
It's not easy to write a biography keeping ideological distance from the Biographed. But Octavio Paz, one of the most sparking writer andthinkerof the 20th century, surpassed thatclassic absence of impartialitywiththis classicSor Juana Inés de la Cruz, whose life and work raisestheweight curtain that helpsthe reader to understand the entanglementsof the closed aristocracy of the Nueva España of the end of the 17th century. The life of Sor Inés is a hypnotical succession of enigmas, intrigues and ambiguities. Besides, she was a forerunner of the feminist conquests who started in the 19th century.Paz worked for four decades until the conclusion of this astonishingbook. If he had nothing wrote, scarcely this work would be enough for him to be considered a truly literary and superb genius.
J.C.Ismael

The book that started my affair with a Mexican nun...
Over ten years ago, this book completely changed the course of events in my life for months. Let me explain!: I was wiling away the hours with nothing to do during a 2-week hospital stay in Madrid, going over the notes for my master's thesis about Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, when someone suggested I read this masterpiece about a Baroque Mexican nun to pass the time. At first I thought the suggestion was absurd, hardly a book that would help the time go by quickly, but I gave the book a chance (this Spanish-language version, of course) and soon met Sor Juana Inés, with whom my only previous encounters had been on a Mexican banknote.

Sor Juana Inés was so far ahead of her time that it would have been a miracle for her NOT to have been persecuted and ejected from the society of her times. Octavio Paz (could anything less be expected from such an author) makes her life even more fascinating than it probably was in reality, as he examines her comings and goings from birth to death, or at least as much as can possibly be known, since his study is probably the most thorough that exists. Sor Juana's biography is amazing and caused me to drop my original thesis and change topics entirely. I spent my whole hospital stay engrossed in her tale of love, erudition and ill-fated struggles for equality. Tomes could be written just on her correspondence with all the scholars and thinkers of the day. It is amazing to read how she manages to combine a life in the convent with a life of study, another of cultural activity, a social life rubbing elbows with Mexico's leadership class, and awareness and intellectual relations with countless (male) thinkers of the 17th century.

I can't shower enough praise on this book, which opened up my appetite for knowing more about her. Since then I have read more and more, as well as all of Sor Juana's works, and never get enough, with a special love for her "Response to Sister Filotea de la Cruz," a treatise on the equality of women's mind centuries before such ideas came into vogue. If you want to see what is was like to know that women deserved full equality, to have intelligence beyond comparison and to be forced to use that intelligence with the utmost care so as not to violate strict social norms, and get away with it for years, Sor Juana will be your heroine, as she should be for so many more women in this world who are unfamiliar with her.

This would be a great text for any hispanic literature, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, Mexican history or a wealth of other courses, or just as a text of interest to women and people in general, so that they can get a practical case study in what women like Sor Juana must have suffered for centuries (and maybe even today in many places) when they tried to go beyond the boundaries that church, state and family had set down to keep them in their place.

transported in time
I'm not a particular fan of history or biography but couldn't put this book down. For all the information it offers the reader it's an incredibly un-dull read. It paints such a vivid picture of her life that I felt like I was there. Details were always fascinating, never tedious.

This is the book to read if you want the real thing
Octavio Paz, Nobel laureate, poet and one of the best writers of essays in the Spanish language, can give people seriously interested in learning about Sor Juana invaluable information in this beautifully researched book. Everything that is really known about her biography (not anachronistictwentieth-century storytelling and fantasy) is here; and, very importantly,authoritative background information on Colonial Mexican history andculture, social organization, religious practices and norms, and readingmaterials and habits.Sor Juana is a complex woman, a great reader andthinker that has to be understood in context.This book provides this, andalso a sensitive and informed reading of her work. It is also a very goodread. Modern-day fictional accounts are deceptive and will short-changeyou.Don't fall for them.This book is the real thing. ... Read more

Product Description
Engrossing essays that reflect the author?s vast and subtle knowledge of the world. Topics range from the religious rites of the Aztecs to modern american painting, from Eastern art and religion to love and eroticism. Translated by Helen Lane. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Insightful and ingenious!
I came across this book after reading some reviews of Pablo Neruda's works.After reading only 2 chapters, I really got into the work.Paz's essays are incredible insightful, and he is able to analyze not only his own culture but also myriad other cultures and draw semblances between them.Topics wander through art, language, occasionally politics, and even love and eroticism.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in art, international affairs, philosophy, or especially anthropology.Read it, and you won't be disappointed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Observances & Philosophical Insights From A Fine Poet.
A series of poems from one of Mexico's best prose writers presented here showing his skill in the medium of verse.His best poems are the one's with intense lyrical touch; a highlight of grandeur & marvel at the poet'srelationship with the creation of the word & the world around him. Thebest works lie in the shorter efforts.My rating for this is 3 & a halfstars. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

EXCELLENT COMPILATION BY OCTAVIO PAZ; DISMAL TRANSLATION BY THE YOUNG SAMUEL BECKETT
and an OK introduction by CM Bowra (I'd much rather read the French edition's intro by Paul Claudel!).

One of the greatest mysteries of modern literature (aside from the novel Ulysses) is how the young Samuel Beckett, fresh from the Protestant University in Dublin, who in the Sixties would receive the Nobel Prize for literature, could begin his career with such terrible translations funded by UNESCO and many times republished in the USA by Evergreen's Grove Press, our nation's owner of the Beckett franchise.

I am reading the 1985 Grove Press edition. The best that could happen would be a bilingual edition, in which one might gracefully and mercifully put aside the unreadable, terrible translations and read the originals as written, including the archaicisms of the Carmelite Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

The young Beckett also performed some unreadable translations from the French of the Bateaux Ivre, for example. This is odd as after the Second World War he became our greatest playwright in English by translating his plays (such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, Ohio Impromptu, Come and Go, etc.) from his own original French into English. In order for this to occur of course, he needed to pass through service as secretary to the greatest writer of the Twentieth Cnetury, Mr. James Joyce, who tragically did not survive to observe his own recognition. Beckett's novels in the main grew more diffficult (his great trilogy, ending in the Unnameable, sometimes called the Unreadable); yet to him we owe such enormously entertaining earlier novels as Murphy and Mercier et Camier

In any case, the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz, through the encouragement of UNESCO of the United Nation (while still interested in the advancement of culture and education and health and the development of peoples, of international peace and of human rights, long before this promising international body was reduced to being a mercenary arm of other interests), compiled a representative sampling of poerty from throughout the history of his heroic nation between about 1600 until three centuries later, ending in 1910. Indeed for a flavor of the translation let us look at the opening sonnet by Don Francisco de Terrazas:

I dreamed that I was thrown from a crag
by one who held my will in servitude,
and all but fallen to the griping jaws
of a wild beast in wait for me below

In terror, gropingly, I cast around
for wherewith to uphold me with my hands,
and the ones closed about a trenchant sword,
and the other twined about a little herb.

Little and little the herb came swift away,
and the sword ever sorer vexed my hand
as I more fiercely clutched its cruel edges. . . . (sic)

Oh wretched me, and how from self estranged,
that I rejoice to see me mangled thus
for dread of ending, dying, my distress!

I do not rejoice to see this sonnet mangled thus, but would rejoice to see the original as written some four centuries ago. I would indeed rejoice to do my own translation, thank you, without a twining hand nor trenchant sword.

Certainly the most valuable element of this edition is the lengthy, comprehensive and profound introduction by Octavio Paz himself (translator unidentified) which retraces the entire history and development of his nation's poetic literature, and presents the criteria for his selections in this compilation, which he admits is lacking as there is no Nahuatl nor other pre-Columbian poetry, but for which he refers to the reader to other sources.

An excellent if troubled edition, handy anthology for students of this field. But find the originals; here as in other places, particularly in poetry we find true the ancient dictum: translation is treason (which sounds so much better in the original Latin, or French, or Spanish!). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Could be better...
The reason I picked this book up was to read Octavio Paz in the Spanish (which I appear to be having a difficult time locating a spanish language, as opposed to bilingual, collection of his poetry.but anyway...).I give the poetry itself, as Octavio Paz wrote it, 5 stars.I give the translation about 2 stars.Understandably, translating poetry is always difficult, and I am trying to take that into account as I review this work.However, there are quite a few outright errors in this book.For instance, (let the reader beware that I haven't figured out how to make accent marks in Amazon, so some words must of necessity be misspelled) in the poem titled "Fabula" I count 4 separate errors, 2 of which I must consider inexcusable.line 12: Aquel arbol cantaba reia y prefetizaba.The translation reads: And as it grew it sang laughed prophecied.A more accurate one:That tree sang laughed and prophecied."Grew" doesn't appear anywhere in the spanish.line 13: Sus vaticinios cubrian de alas el espacio.The translation: It cast the spells that cover space with wings.(What?Where is the translator pulling this stuff from?)Should read: Its predictions covered space with wings.line 20: Son las palabras del lenguaje que hablamos.The translation: They were the words of the language we speak.Apparently the translator doesn't know how to conjugate his verbs, because "Son" means "They are" not "They were."And last but not least, line 21 is missing from the translation entirely.Inexcusable.Thank God I can read Spanish.Anyway, buy the book for his poems, ignore the translations.Cheers.

A great poet's early work
"Early Poems 1935-1955," by Octavio Paz, is an excellent collection of work from this important Latin American writer. This is a bilingual edition, with Paz' Spanish originals on each even-numbered page, and English translations on each odd-numbered page. The translations represent the collaborative work of several individuals: Muriel Rukeyser (who also wrote a foreword), Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp, Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams.

The poems in this book represent a mix of short, haiku-like verses; prose poems; and longer poems. Although Paz is a distinctive and original talent, some of his work seems to echo the spirit of such earlier poets as William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane.

Paz often writes about writing and language, often with a metaphysical, reality-warping perspective. His poems include a multicultural mix of interesting references: Polyphemus, Buddha, Tlaloc, the Tower of Babel, etc. He uses much striking imagery, and frequently his writing has a prophetic tone.

There are many fine poems in this collection, but I was particularly impressed by "The prisoner," his stunning homage to the Marquis de Sade: "The letters of your name are still a scar that will not heal, / the tattoo of disgrace on certain faces." If you are interested in Latin American literature or 20th century poetry, I recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
In this series of essays Paz explores the intimate connection between sex, eroticism, and love in literature throughout the ages. Rich in scope, The Double Flame examines everything from taboo to repression, Carnival to Lent, Sade to Freud, original sin to artificial intelligence. “Brimming with insight, thoughtfulness, and sincerity” (Kirkus Reviews). Translated by Helen Lane.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Poetic and thrilling essay
This is a beautiful and poetic essay about love and eros throughout the world and through the centuries.
Paz presents his rich material as a philosopher, a poet, a historian, an interpreter and a critic. One of his important statements is that Eros and love are not threatened by the Church, but by promiscuity.
There are great truths in this book and an invitation for the reader to learn about the world, the other and himself/herself.

Thrilling and sophisticated study
Paz presents in this work wonderful insights about love and eros in modern life.From the antiquity to the modern period, he studies the themes from the literary and philosophical aspects.
He takes up Plato's discussion about the love of beauty, India's Kama Sutra, the role of the Troubadours in Provence, the courtly Love, the medieval Love, Dante, Freud's modern psychology, etc.
Paz emphasizes that love and eros are spiritual and give meaning to our lives and civilizations.
The writing is very enjoyable, thought-provoking and wise.

Amazing study of .. being human.
Fundamental, authoritative, thoughtful and insightful, with a truly scholarly study of the history and literature of Love and Eroticism (attraction, desire). rendered delightfully accessible by a master writer, poet, and student of Love. Octavio Paz's work continues to prove his genius and well-deserved respect and multi-facted successes.

ENIGMATIC
A powerful tale of life, love , perplexing yet unifying emotions in beings from different times and different cultures. Masterful. A must read.

A Book to Be Absorbed - The Education of Eros
I read this book slowly, underlining passages, re-reading certain passages to fully absorb the text. Paz is a passionate poet/thinker and his passionate prose is translated well into English by Helen Lane. He knows what he loves and his ability to both entertain and edify is outstanding.

Like most surveys of Western Culture/History, he begins in Greece and traverses the centuries by exploring the trends, ideas and influences that resonate with love and eros from throughout the world. Plato's discussion on the love of beauty is here as is India's Kama Sutra and so forth. He discusses the role of the Troubadours in Provence, Courtly Love, Medieval Love, Dante, all the way up to the modern psychology of Freud and beyond.

He is both a historian and interpreter, a critic and a specialist. In discussing our modern understanding of love, he too comments on 'eros' being prostituted by the mass market world we live in. Pornography is put under the mental microscope as is the abuse of sexual images used in advertising. The greatest present threat to eros and love is not the Church, Paz claims but promiscuity itself, turning 'love into a pastime, and money'. I am in complete agreement. The sacred, which was once so much a part of eros has been slackened and taken away. There is great truth in this book and beauty and a call to everyone to strive towards learning, not only about the world but about one's self.

Paz reminds the reader of how greatly cultured our world is, how we are indebted to the minds of past artists and thinkers, how love and eros have benefited from mythology and the cultivation of narration and poetry. It is up to us to make sure we don't take for granted this great bounty of works and ideas. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1970 Jorge Edwards was sent by socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende as his country's first envoy to break the diplomatic blockade that had sealed Cuba for over a decade. His arrival coincided with the turning point of the revolution, when Castro began to repress the very intellectuals he once courted. In Kafkaesque detail, Edwards records the four explosive months he spent in Havana trying to open a Chilean embassy and his disenchantment with the revolution. His stay culminated in the arrest of his friend Heberto Padilla-the first imprisonment of a well-known writer by the regime-for giving Edwards a "negative view of the revolution." In a menacing midnight political debate with Edwards immediately after Padilla's arrest, Castro argued that in this phase of the revolution, bourgeois writers would no longer have "anything to do in Cuba." Castro accused Edwards of "conduct hostile to the revolution" and declared him "persona non grata." The winner of the Cervantes prize-the Spanish language equivalent to the Nobel Prize for literature-Jorge Edwards' memoir splendidly recounts this time and the wrath of Castro. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The facts are fascinating alright, the author is quite another thing
Although a denunciation of Castro's dictatorship in Cuba, during the author's 4 months as a Chilean diplomat in havana in 1970, he reveals the haughtiness and lack of compassion towards people not as 'intellectual' as him.

The book must me considered a well-intentioned exercise of narcissism. Verbosity, conceit, and arrogant outpouring of self-adulatory writing. I couldn't stand it and put the book away almost half-way through. If only the reader didn't have to fish the interesting bits of information from this sea of conceit...

The obscene thing about it is the nonchalant tone, the care-free attitude of intellectual superiority with which he carries on in the island while thousands of poor Cubans he ignores were starving, sentenced to hard-labor, executed by firing-squads or tortured in nazi-like concentration camps. All this while he was being regaled lavishly by the the nomenklatura.

Thanks for your help, anyway, mister Edwards. I couldn't finish your book but I guess it moved a few strings up there, in the abode where the elistist class of self-called intellectuals and diplomats hang around.

I, nevertheless, will hang out with real men like Valladares ('Against All Hope') and Jorge Masetti ('In the Pirate's Den').

Fascinating
This is a fascinating book.

First, it's a long, honest (brutally honest) look at the Cuban state by a "bourgeois liberal intellectual" (I'm using "liberal" in the English sense - with connotations of free speech, free trade, and social justice - perhaps "reform liberalism" is a better term in the USA?); a point of view pretty close to my own (and, I would guess, many westerners these days who consider themselves synpathetic to "the left").So the author is sympathetic to the revolutionary ideals, but can also see, quite clearly, what Castro cannot.

Second, it explores the tension that arises when an attempt to achieve those ideals is opposed - the spiral of control and resistance, secret police and "traitors".It's pretty common to forgive Cuba because "they've had to withstand so much" (particularly the American embargo); this book makes a good case that by the early 1970s Castro had already overdrawn this moral account.

Third, it indirectly sheds light on Chile's own democratic revolution, under Allende.To what extent Allende failed through being too open, and whether any other approach would have been worthwhile, is a constant subtext.

Finally, it was interesting to see how diplomacy "works" at a basic day-to-day level.

[I should add I read the Chilean/Spanish 2006 edition - it has a few extra details (mainly footnotes) added, apparently, but nothing very significant.] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Exquisite Poetry in English y Espagnol
This bilingual text enhances the experience of reading Paz's poetry.His poetic form can be as spare and suggestive as tanka/haiku or dense with visual imagery as in the poem, A Fable of Joan Miro.The meditative tone of many selections suggests that beyond the accomplishments of art, literature and music, the essential composition is of oneself: "to learn to see so that things will see us and come and go through our seeing." Highly recommended.

A stunning achievement by a giant of 20th century poetry
Octavio Paz wrote some of the most remarkable poetry and prose of the 20th century. The collection of poems entitled "A Tree Within" represents one of his most memorable achievements. A remarkable diverse blend of short lyrics and longer, Whitmanesque creations, "A Tree Within" is definitely a collection that bears careful reading and re-reading.

The book is richly studded with multicultural references and allusions--to Epictetus, Buddha, Gilgamesh, Jack the Ripper, the Aztecs, Don Quixote, and many, many, more. But Paz is not merely trying to dazzle us with his knowledge. He is also introspective and revealing. He struggles with deep questions about language, love, and other concerns.

Paz seems to be searching both for an ideal poetic language, and for a form of connectedness that transcends language--a paradoxical quest, yet pure Paz. When he writes "Man's word / is the daughter of death" (in the poem "To Talk"), it strikes me as both a tragically naked confession of inadequacy and a moment of serene liberation. At other times, Paz seems, like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, to be groping towards the creation of a sort of "secular scripture" for the (post)modern age.

In the poem "I Speak of the City," Paz writes, "I speak of our public history, and of our secret history, yours and mine." The histories recorded by this visionary genius are certainly some of the most important literary creations of the 20th century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Could be better...
The reason I picked this book up was to read Octavio Paz in the Spanish (which I appear to be having a difficult time locating a spanish language, as opposed to bilingual, collection of his poetry.but anyway...).I give the poetry itself, as Octavio Paz wrote it, 5 stars.I give the translation about 2 stars.Understandably, translating poetry is always difficult, and I am trying to take that into account as I review this work.However, there are quite a few outright errors in this book.For instance, (let the reader beware that I haven't figured out how to make accent marks in Amazon, so some words must of necessity be misspelled) in the poem titled "Fabula" I count 4 separate errors, 2 of which I must consider inexcusable.line 12: Aquel arbol cantaba reia y prefetizaba.The translation reads: And as it grew it sang laughed prophecied.A more accurate one:That tree sang laughed and prophecied."Grew" doesn't appear anywhere in the spanish.line 13: Sus vaticinios cubrian de alas el espacio.The translation: It cast the spells that cover space with wings.(What?Where is the translator pulling this stuff from?)Should read: Its predictions covered space with wings.line 20: Son las palabras del lenguaje que hablamos.The translation: They were the words of the language we speak.Apparently the translator doesn't know how to conjugate his verbs, because "Son" means "They are" not "They were."And last but not least, line 21 is missing from the translation entirely.Inexcusable.Thank God I can read Spanish.Anyway, buy the book for his poems, ignore the translations.Cheers.

A great poet's early work
"Early Poems 1935-1955," by Octavio Paz, is an excellent collection of work from this important Latin American writer. This is a bilingual edition, with Paz' Spanish originals on each even-numbered page, and English translations on each odd-numbered page. The translations represent the collaborative work of several individuals: Muriel Rukeyser (who also wrote a foreword), Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp, Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams.

The poems in this book represent a mix of short, haiku-like verses; prose poems; and longer poems. Although Paz is a distinctive and original talent, some of his work seems to echo the spirit of such earlier poets as William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane.

Paz often writes about writing and language, often with a metaphysical, reality-warping perspective. His poems include a multicultural mix of interesting references: Polyphemus, Buddha, Tlaloc, the Tower of Babel, etc. He uses much striking imagery, and frequently his writing has a prophetic tone.

There are many fine poems in this collection, but I was particularly impressed by "The prisoner," his stunning homage to the Marquis de Sade: "The letters of your name are still a scar that will not heal, / the tattoo of disgrace on certain faces." If you are interested in Latin American literature or 20th century poetry, I recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
A beautiful gift edition of Figures& Figurations: the collaborationbetween the Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz and his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie JoséPaz.Figures & Figurations, one of thelast works completed by the great late Mexicanpoet Octavio Paz before his death in 1998, is astunning collaborative project with his wife,the acclaimed artist Marie José Paz. In response to ten of her collage-constructions, he wrote ten new short poems; she in turn created two newartworks in response to two of his earlierpoems. In addition to the gorgeous full-colorart, this bilingual edition features EliotWeinberger's excellent translations, as well as an essay by Octavio Paz on Marie José Paz'swork, "The Whitecaps of Time," in which herelates how her friendship with Joseph Cornellbecame a stimulus for her assemblages and howshe was further spurred on by other friends,such as the linguist Roman Jakobson andElizabeth Bishop. "These objects sometimessurprise us," he writes, "and sometimes make usdream or laugh (humor is one of the poles of her work). Signs that invite us on a motionlessvoyage of fantasy, bridges to the indefinitelysmall or galactic distances, windows that openon a nowhere. Marie José's art is a dialogbetween here and there." An illuminatingafterword by the eminent French poet YvesBonnefoy completes this edition.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

a clear mirror for our murky times
Octavio Paz is clearly the Hispanic Tocqueville of our times! Except he mixes poetry with prose and his writing has a lucidity which marks him as one of the foremost critics and commentators of our age. His analysis of the ailments of our hedonistic society and times is on target as are hisdissections of the Soviet world before its collapse. Although his foraysinto the Far East could benefit from more exposure to the history andculture of the area, his examples of Jesuit influence in the reign of theManchu Emperor Kangxi are a demonstration of his erudition. Highlyrecommended for those who enjoy a good essay on society but at the sametime appreciate fine prose and sharp edged analysis!A masterpiece by thisNobel laureate!

a clear mirror for our murky times
Octavio Paz is clearly the Hispanic Tocqueville of our times! Except he mixes poetry with prose and his writing has a lucidity which marks him as one of the foremost critics and commentators of our age. His analysis of the ailments of our hedonistic society and times is on target as are hisdissections of the Soviet world before its collapse. Although his foraysinto the Far East could benefit from more exposure to the history andculture of the area, his examples of Jesuit influence in the reign of theManchu Emperor Kangxi are a demonstration of his erudition. Highlyrecommended for those who enjoy a good essay on society but at the sametime appreciate fine prose and sharp edged analysis!A masterpiece by thisNobel laureate! ... Read more

Product Description

Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of her age.

Her life reads like a novel. A spirited and precocious girl, one of six illegitimate children, is sent to live with relatives in the capital city. She becomes known for her beauty, wit, and amazing erudition, and is taken into the court as the Vicereine's protégée. For five years she enjoys the pleasures of life at court--then abruptly, at twenty, enters a convent for life. Yet, no recluse, she transforms the convent locutory into a literary and intellectual salon; she amasses an impressive library and collects scientific instruments, reads insatiably, composes poems, and corresponds with literati in Spain. To the consternation of the prelates of the Church, she persists in circulating her poems, redolent more of the court than the cloister. Her plays are performed, volumes of her poetry are published abroad, and her genius begins to be recognized throughout the Hispanic world. Suddenly she surrenders her books, forswears all literary pursuits, and signs in blood a renunciation of secular learning. The rest is silence. She dies two years later, at forty-six.

Octavio Paz has long been intrigued by the enigmas of Sor Juana's personality and career. Why did she become a nun? How could she renounce her lifelong passion for writing and learning? Such questions can be answered only in the context of the world in which she lived. Paz gives a masterly portrayal of the life and culture of New Spain and the political and ideological forces at work in that autocratic, theocratic, male-dominated society, in which the subjugation of women was absolute.

Just as Paz illuminates Sor Juana's life by placing it in its historical setting, so he situates her work in relation to the traditions that nurtured it. With critical authority he singles out the qualities that distinguish her work and mark her uniqueness as a poet. To Paz her writings, like her life, epitomize the struggle of the individual, and in particular the individual woman, for creative fulfillment and self-expression.

Customer Reviews (5)

The inner workings of a woman, by a man?
Paz sums up Juana Ines de la Cruz in terms of sexual transference of her present and absent male figures, in Freudian terms (rampant misogynist and debunked theorist), and her infantilism.A genius relegated to a baby and a woman forever haunted by men, who Paz claims initiated a "movement towards maleness" because she would not be prevented from satiating her hunger for books.How can one not wonder if Paz is reducing the woman's genius to one of maleness?How can one say that because she wanted to go to the University and was willing to dress like a man to do so that she wanted to be male (unless one supposes that genius can only be measured in terms of the male gender)?Juana Ines de la Cruz's gender prevented her from the place of learning that she deserved to be more than any man.Why is it so difficult for Senor Paz to consider that Juana Ines de la Cruz was a genius and that her gender was an obstacle ultimately for the men of her time (and perhaps of today)?She endured cultural and religious oppression and soared to heights of intellectual greatness.This was not in response to her illegitimacy.It was in response to her genius.

Sor Juana Come To Life
She winds up caught up in the "Traps of Faith" as Paz refers to the traps sprung by her time and lifetime which doomed her to a shortened life-span and an end to her excellant writings from poetry to prose to drama along with an end to her library filled with books and tomes from her time. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is inspirational as a poetess in particular and Paz salutes this woman with his hefty biography filling in the blanks as to the influences that surrounded and imbued Sor Juana with her colourful figures and joyous sufferings that inspired her to dig for gold in the mines of the baroque affectations of her time.For SorJuanistas a must have-- and you know who you are-- for those unaquainted with Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz-- you'll find out how much you are missing.

Sor Juana--17th century genius
This is a balanced, penetrating examination of Sor Juana and the elements that shaped her life. She understood that her passion was the pursuit of knowledge and that she could never fulfill her life's work unless she became a nun. In addition to describing Sor Juana Paz enlightens his readers about the masculine society into which she was born. She was a brave, talented woman who spoke up for what she believed in.

The book that started my love affair with a Mexican nun...
Over ten years ago, this book completely changed the course of events in my life for months. Let me explain!: I was wiling away the hours with nothing to do during a 2-week hospital stay in Madrid, going over the notes for my master's thesis about Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, when someone suggested I read this masterpiece about a Baroque Mexican nun to pass the time. At first I thought the suggestion was absurd, hardly a book that would help the hours go by quickly, but I gave the book a chance (the Spanish-language version, of course) and soon met Sor Juana Inés, with whom my only previous encounters had been on a Mexican banknote.

Sor Juana Inés was so far ahead of her time that it would have been a miracle for her NOT to have been persecuted and ejected from the society of her times. Octavio Paz (could anything less be expected from such an author) makes her life even more fascinating than it probably was in reality, as he examines her comings and goings from birth to death, or at least as much as can possibly be known, since his study is probably the most thorough that exists. Sor Juana's biography is amazing and caused me to drop my thesis and change topics entirely. I spent my whole hospital stay engrossed in her tale of love, erudition and ill-fated struggles for equality. I can't shower enough praise on this book, which opened up my appetite for knowing more about her...since then I have read more and more, as well as all of Sor Juana's works, and never get enough. If you want to see what is was like to know that women deserved full equality, to have the intelligence beyond comparison and be forced to use that intelligence with the utmost care so as not to violate strict social norms, and get away with it for years, sor juana will be your heroine, as she should be for so many more women in this world who are unfamiliar with her.

This would be a great text for any hispanic literature, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, mexican history or a wealth of other courses, or just as a text of interest to women and people in general.

The amazing life of Sor Juana
This book by the Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz is a great account of the life of one of the best writers of Hispanic literature.Sor Juana createdastonishing poems about life, love, and people.It is a pity that onlylittle is known about the facts of her life.As with Shakespeare, must ofwhat we know about her comes from her literary legacy.Octavio Paz is ableto solve some ofthe mystery that surrounds Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. ... Read more

Product Description
The final legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Labyrinth of Solitude

Itinerary records the evolution of the political ideas of Octavio Paz, the great Mexican writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. It is an intellectual autobiography, in a sense, but also a sentimental and even passionate one. In his thoughts Paz realized the past was inseparable from the present. And so he tells the story of his journey through time, from youth to adulthood. It is not a straight line, nor is it a circle; it is instead a spiral that turns ceaselessly over, bringing into view a time seventy years in the past and the actions of today. It is the final work by a great thinker and a magnificent writer.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"Words Became My Dwelling Place, the Air My Tomb"
Poet Octavio Paz has journeyed across much of the twentieth century landscape in this short book of essays. As a son of La Malinche (see his LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE), he maintained a clearheaded sense of balance while his contemporaries were losing their heads over communism, surrealism, existentialism, and all the other isms that characterized that time.

What has always amazed me that Paz was at one and the same time both a truthsayer and a poet. Even to someone like myself whose Spanish is less than idiomatic, his poetry possesses a beauty and limpidity that are almost never met in combination. Only Emily Dickinson of the poets I know has this quality. One of my favorites is the poem "Epitafio sobre ninguna piedra" from which the title of this review is taken.

Now that communism is all but extinct, one forgets that only a short while ago it held so many intellectuals in thrall. Looking at our situation today, Paz concludes that "if I am sure of one thing it is that we are living an interregnum; we are walking across a zone whose ground is not solid; its foundations, it basis has evaporated. If we wish to climb free from the marsh and not sink into mud we should quickly work out a morality and a politics." I think that, as a people, we have not. I am reminded of Yeats's "The Second Coming":

The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity

A final word: Toward the end is a beautiful little essay entitled "Imaginary Gardens: A Memoir" which, while responding negatively to a proposal for a public park, lets loose a Proustian flood of memory regarding the past of the town where Paz was raised, Mixcoac.

This little book, which can be read in a single sitting, deserves a wide readership. I loved it and feel impelled to seek out more of Paz's work.

an intellectual journey of the mind
This is NOT an autobiographical essay, although you might suppose so after the opening story of his exile to California and then later back to Mexico where he was treated as a stranger.This episode serves more as a kernel from which grows his political and social education and experience.Paz briefly traces his political growth from childhood to maturity, through Mexico, the Yucatan (which he points out is so very different from the rest of Mexico), Paris, Spain, India, etc...The editor does his best to provide background history, but be warned that Paz assumes you have the same strong knowledge of Mexican history that he does.I though the highlight was his piercing conclusion about the evil in ourselves, "Evil is human, exclusively human. But not all is evil in humans. Evil nests in their awareness, in their freedom.In there also lies the remedy, the answer to evil... to fight evil is to fight ourselves. And that is the meaning of history."

The writing is clear throughout -- Paz writes well in prose form as well as poetry.A bit hard to follow sometimes, but aren't all intellectual journeys?

PAZitively brilliant...
The agile synthesizing mind at the height of its powers: Skip the 'Labyrinth' and go straight to this. ... Read more