Octavio Paz Essays - Guggenheim Fellows, Octavio Paz, The Paz Show

Octavio Paz Amelia Freno Mrs.Broglie Multi-Culture Unit 3 Febuary 2001 Ocatavio Paz: rags to riches ?This is an irreplacceable loss for contemporary thought and culture - not just for Latin America but for the entire world,? said Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. This was the common lost shared world-wide. Octavio Paz was known for many things in his lifetime such as his works of poetry and essays, because of his fine works of arts he often received many awards and recognizations for his skills and abilities in writing. Paz's writings often reflect his personal childhood experiences and allowed him to incorperation his culture and perspection of this native surroundings. Octavio Paz lets his culture shine though his works in many ways paz often descrides his native backrounds, interwinded certain slang words and examplifies his childhood experiences throughout his writings. Octavio Paz was born on March 31 1914 in Mexico City. Both sides of Paz's family came from different ethnic roots. His Fathers side was a group known as Mestizo from a state known as Jalisco. His Father was a lawyer who was involed in the Mexican Revolution. His grandfather was a well known jurnalist who fought against the French. Octavio's mother's side were purely Spanish imigrants. As a young boy Octavio Paz experienced the result of urbanlization to his village, Paz recalls: ?We lived in a large house with a garden. Our family had been impoverished by the revolution and the civil war. Our house, full of antique furniture, books and other objects, was gradually crumbling to bits. As rooms collapsed we moved the furnitur into another. I remember that for a long time I lived in a spacious room with part of one of the walls missing. Some magnificent screens protected me inadequately from the wind and rain . A creeper invaded my room......?. The civl war and Mexican Revolution seems to have a great effect on his writings. It seems to have given Paz a greater sense of domestics and pride for his culture and native lands. Octavios father was on influence on him because he had taken part as a lawyer in the Mexican Revolution, which gave Paz a sence of reality in the revolution. Paz probably got his unique writting abilities from his grandfather who often attacked the French . This makes it amazing that Paz's writings can be so calm with his influences being so bold. That shows Paz has the qualtities to be independant and go against the fades. The biggest influence on Paz's writing is not a person ,but a thing. It is his garden in his backyard. Octavio makes many references to this jungle like garden in his writings. Octavio even refered to this garden in his 1990 noble speech: ? The Garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave . I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash tress, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a vally, a mountain, a distant country, the neighboors' patio....? Octavio bases many of his poems on his enchantment with the garden. Paz had great respect for his culture, he appoached the differences and tried to live within the set rules of his ethnic roots. The Mexicans/Spaniards are known as hard works and appeciate their earnings. Octavio went though many rough times as a child such as when Zapata ( a peasant leader of Mexico's 1910-1920 revolution) was murdered in 1919, and the Paz family went into brief exile in Los angeles and there they were selling pieces of furniture to make ends meet. Octavio soon made things change for himself. Paz with his interlecture mind and his politic sense was sure to be going far. At the age of 16 he got his first poem published and a year later he got his first essay published. In 1937 he travelled to many countries such as Valenica and Spain to participate in the International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. He made his trip back to Mexico in 1938 we he began to establish a journal called Taller, a journal