Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
chances experience poetry risks verse
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
Perhaps things are not things but words: metaphors, words for other things.
history
Man, it seems to me, is not in history: he is history.
love might object worship
In antiquity, a woman might be an object of worship or desire, but never of love.
applies delay duchamp dynamic means notion suggest
Futurists wanted to suggest movement by means of a dynamic painting; Duchamp applies the notion of delay - or, rather, or analysis - to movement.
poetry
Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?
poems
All poems say the same thing, and each poem is unique. Each part reproduces the others, and each part is different.
great means painter transcends
To be a great painter means to be a great poet: someone who transcends the limits of his language.
definition form society takes
As it defines itself, every society defines other societies. That definition almost always takes the form of a condemnation: the 'other' is the barbarian.
dread fixed reaching reverse time
We go along, without a fixed itinerary, yet at the same time with an end (what end?) in mind, and with the aim of reaching the end. A search for the end, a dread of the end: the obverse and the reverse of the same act.
apply art change french goes history model modern name notions revolution tradition violent whether
The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.
footsteps great noises producer time unique
I think we all have our own personality, unique and distinctive, and at the same time, I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts.
according art creative gesture imitates living nature poet
For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature.
hundred impose modes readers survives work
A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years, it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are, in fact, resurrections: without them, there would be no work.