Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early life and writings

Paz was born in Mixcoac (now a part of Mexico City) during tumultuous times, as his country was undergoing a revolution. He was raised by his mother, Josefina Lozano, a religious woman, as well as his aunt and paternal grandfather, a former soldier turned supporter of Porfirio Díaz, liberal intellectual, and novelist. His father, also named Octavio Paz, worked as a journalist and lawyer for Emiliano Zapata, and was involved in agrarian reform following the revolution, but these activities caused him to be largely absent from the home.

Related Topics:
Mexico City - Revolution - Porfirio Díaz - Emiliano Zapata

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Paz was exposed to literature early in his life through the influence of his grandfather and library filled with classic works and modernist Mexican literature. He discovered the European poets Gerardo Diego, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Antonio Machado during the 1920s, and these foreign writers had an influence on his early writings. He published his first poem as a teenager in 1931, calling it Caballera and carrying an epigraph from the French poet Saint-John Perse. Two years later, at the age of 19, Paz published Luna Silvestre ("Rustic Moon"), a collection of poems. By 1939, Paz considered himself first and foremost a poet.

Related Topics:
Gerardo Diego - Juan Ramón Jiménez - Antonio Machado - Saint-John Perse

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In 1937, Paz ended his university studies, and left for Yucatán to work to found a school near Mérida. There, he began working on the poem Entre la piedra y la flor ("Between stone and flower") (1941, revised in 1976), which describes the situation and fate of the Mexican campesino (peasant) as a result of capitalist society. {{ref|JW1-10}}

Related Topics:
Yucatán - Mérida

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In 1937, Paz visited Spain during that country's civil war, showing his solidarity with the Republicans. Upon returning to Mexico, Paz co-founded a literary journal, Taller ("Workshop") in 1938, and wrote for the magazine until 1941. In 1943 he received a Guggenheim fellowship and began studying at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States, and two years later, he entered the Mexican diplomatic service, working in France until 1962. While there, in 1950, he wrote and published El laberinto de la soledad ("The Labyrinth of Solitude"), a groundbreaking study of Mexican identity and thought.

Related Topics:
1937 - Spain - Civil war - 1938 - 1941 - 1943 - Guggenheim fellowship - University of California at Berkeley - United States - France - 1962 - 1950 - El laberinto de la soledad

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