| RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR
Octavio Paz, one of Mexico and literature's
greatest sons -- Nobel laureate, poet, writer, essayist, and
diplomat -- was a wordsmith par excellence.
The Rembrandt
of surrealism, Octavio Paz's poetry, or writing, is today
not only known for its vibrant maturity, but also for its
trance-like allegory in dealing with metaphysical questions.
And, if
surrealism exerted more than a profound influence on him, and
his towering genii, so did Marxism, existentialism, Buddhism,
and Hinduism. The bearing was obvious. Paz's most prominent
motif was man's ability to overcome his existential solitude
through "sublime" love, and artistic creativity.
For a man who did not relish writing,
early on, Paz only savoured and enjoyed its result: be it
plaudits or brickbats. He never used the good, old typewriter,
nor the word processor, or computer. He always wrote by hand
-- the Creator's most simple, yet powerful tool -- the oracle
and symbol of human creativity with a big 'C.' Not only that.
Paz worked only a little each day, read poetry and the companionable
dictionary just as much -- something which he often called
as "his adviser, his elder" -- an awesome threesome
that made him see both the light and shadow of our living
planet -- as one whole.
Paz's sense of surrealism was intense,
almost phosphorescent, even political, passionate, complex,
moralistic, fervent and, perforce, delicately lonely. The
world's pride, and the delight, Paz was an institution all
by himself, and more than one just man and talent. He was
a great author: of more than twenty books, founder of a host
of journals, including his country's most erudite magazine,
Vuelta, a professor at Harvard etc., and winner of
the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature. As a fellow Latin American
writer once said, "Paz [is] one of the greatest poets
that the Spanish language world has produced."
Born on March 31, 1914, in Mexico City,
Paz's background spoke of elements of conscious evolution
-- especially, in his gifted mind. His father, a lawyer, was
of Mexican-Indian descent; his mother was a Spanish immigrant.
His family was quite well off, all right, until the Mexican
Civil War played havoc, and ruined them financially. With
that, the Pazs lost all their wealth, and dreams. So much
so, Paz's early years were spent in poverty, outside his home-town.
The changed status, not to speak of its accompanying pain,
was enormous. It left its mark, and bearing, and more than
just an imprint, on Paz and his fertile psyche.
It was a Freudian setting, yes. But, it
sort of made Paz decipher objects through an artist's mind
and eye. As Paz, once said, recalling his childhood: "One
day, while on a picnic with my friends, we found a small pyramid…
this was the Mexico of my childhood -- a Mexico rich in pre-Columbian
art, the art of the colonialists, and the flowering of modern
Mexican art." So, there you are! Paz's canvas was Freudian,
his colour perception Jungian, and his framed representation,
possibly, Skinnerian. The outcome? Simple -- genius unbound,
a genius with more than an element of Plato's godly
intensity.
Paz attended Catholic schools. But, their
teaching never attracted him. He wasn't a great student either.
His forays in academics, at the National University of Mexico,
were unproductive, too. He left without getting a degree.
Yet, destiny was manifest. At age 19, Paz published his first
book of poetry, Luna Silvestre [Forest Moon], followed
by a few more volumes, which gave him the pedestal, and status,
as a writer of promise: one who had a great future in the
world of words.
In 1944, Paz first came to the US on a
fellowship. Something went wrong, again -- money. But, it propped
him on. He never ran short of ideas. A year later, Paz joined
his country's diplomatic corps. The job took him to France,
Switzerland, US, Japan, and India -- a country, which was to
influence him deeply.
For the next two decades, Paz wrote prodigiously.
He did what he liked most -- discovering Oriental traditions.
In 1952, one of his essays, The Labyrinth Of Solitude,
hit Mexico like a storm, and changed its philosophical landscape.
It was published in English, five years later, and penetrated
what Paz called the "underbelly" of Mexico. It was
also a watershed -- a work that highlighted the "indecipherable
anguish of a race born in violence and obsessed with the past."
"The Mexican," wrote Paz, in The Labyrinth...,
"seems to me to be a person who shuts himself; his
face is a mask and [he] is always remote." Perfect words,
touched upon by a deep sense of logic and also poignancy.
The entire chemistry of Paz's feelings
was typically Mexican: its very heart, and soul. Let's cull
a passage from Sun Stone [1957], his most celebrated
poem, to bring home the point: "[A] bright hallucination
of many wings/when they all open at the height of the sky/the
sun has forced an entrance through my forehead/has opened
my eyelids at last that were kept closed." Call it universal
appeal or whatever, and you have Paz, the quintessential craftsman,
with a dexterous flair for words, and sequence.
It goes without saying that Paz, notwithstanding
his prosilient synthesis of world experience and clear vision,
was relatively unknown outside Central America, until many
of his monumental works were translated into English in the
1960s and the 1970s. The rest -- as the cliché would
go -- is both poetry, and history.
Paz came to India in 1962. He soon married
Marle-Jose Tramini. All was hunky-dory, or so one thought.
But, suddenly, Paz's diplomatic career came to an abrupt end.
He resigned -- in protest, saddened by the sombre massacre
of student rebels by government troops at Mexico University.
Paz was soon back to teaching -- now at Cambridge, UK, and
Texas, US.
A closet Marxist, in his youthful years,
Paz became a wiser and sober persona only through experience.
He denounced "the simplistic and simplifying ideologies
of the Left" -- a clear volte-face from his The Labyrinth...
days. It was something that made him a sitting duck to critics.
This wasn't all. Paz's tenets on free-market economy drew
more than just flak from Mexico's political spectrum. What's
more, the Right Wing too cajoled Paz for his hypocritical
views. That he had sympathy for the Right Wing complicated
his image somewhat too -- the difference being of degree, if
not substance. All the same, such complexities did nothing
to deter Paz in his pursuit of truth -- of truth which he thought
was not only just, with changing global equations, but equitable
too.
Paz joined as curator of the "Privileges
of Vision" -- a representative autobiography of his life
and work -- at Mexico City's Museum of Contemporary Art, in
1990. The exhibit is a revelation of a definitive connection
between culture, time, and language -- of ideologies closely
related to Paz's own perceptions. At his new workplace, Paz
fulfilled his destiny both as a poet and translator. His poem,
This Side, is a case in point: "With shadows I
draw worlds/I scatter worlds with shadows/I hear the light
beat on the other side."
If a poet is said to translate the language
of the universe, Paz's saga was a struggle with such a transaction.
More than that, his poetry, exquisite and visual, was but
a fruitful union of culture and love: of the old with the
new, or modern. Maybe, you'd think that verse is just not
a very popular form, at present. Not really. "Poetry,"
said Paz, "is an essential part of human life, the memory
of a country, of language. Without poetry, people cannot talk
well."
Paz was, doubtless, a great admirer of
technology, and the Infobahn. He always felt that it was folly
to say that the world was at the end of the arts, if one contends
that modern culture and communication could lead to bland
artistic standards. He argued: "We are at the end of
some kind of art, that's all."
It sums up Paz, a visionary who thought
that the 21st century was just not a monologue of reason,
but a dialogue between human beings and cultures -- thanks
to the cultural ball that has been set rolling through quite
uniformly in the world of art, and its environs, today.
Touché [To]Paz! There won't be
another like him again.
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