Octavio Paz studied at the Faculties of Law and Philosophy and Letters at UNAM, where he took classes with the writer Carlos Pellicer. In addition, in 1943 he received the Guggenheim scholarship to study at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1945 he entered the Mexico Diplomatic Service and was designated to work at the Mexican embassy in Paris and later, in India. This is how he related to artists of the surreal movement like André Breton.
Also, Paz was a professor of various American and European universities, consolidating itself as one of the most important authors of the twentieth century. He died in Mexico City in 1998, at 84.
What contributed Octavio Paz?
From a young age, Octavio Paz He began writing about literature, anthropology, history, politics, art and science. Thanks to this, he managed to contribute to literature a collection of more than sixty titles, Among them, books, essays, poems and translations.
Through his works, Octavio Paz He managed to share a wide vision of poetry, society, Mexican literary tradition, modernity and artistic avant -garde, which made him gain recognition at international level.
How does Octavio Paz define poetry?
Octavio Paz is recognized for its exceptional quality as poet and essayist. He described poetry as:
«The perpetual tension of the poet towards an absolute of language in the hope of captivating reality, with words that are not expected and miraculously ordered, thanks to the cadence that the artist himself hesitates in considering as the fruit of his patient work.»
For peace, the meaning was at the origin of the poem, referring to the winged and light thing to which Plato alluded and thanks to which, the images of listening through words.
What is the literary current of Octavio Paz?
Octavio Paz He is a difficult author to classify in a single literary current, although it could be said that in most of his works the Modernism and surrealism of the time.