El Laberinto de la Soledad
Octavio Paz's prefatory quote:
"The incurable otherness from which oneness
must always suffer"
Antonio Machado
1950, Estados Unidas de Mexico
Octavio Paz
25 years later he says:
“there is no meaning, there is a search for meaning.”
(Paz, p. 353)
Humans, by nature are alienated. Marx thought that if people controlled the products we could control our destiny, we would recover our natural being and alienation would cease. But I think that Alienation consists fundamentally in being another within oneself. That alienation is the basis of human nature and not of class society. . . . All civilizations are civilizations of alienation and all civilized beings rebel against alienation.
Paz, p 352.
“Yes, I think there is a fundamental opposition between what I call reality and the other reality. . . . the theme of the film is the fate of love in the modern world.” Because of our society, “love and poetry are marginal.”
pp. 353. Octavio Paz, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude.
Themes
Interpretations
Table
of contents
Conclusion | T.S.
Elliot quote
isolation and communion,
community, reason and criticism,
time, imagery and form,
geography, modernity, dialectic
Mexican masks
pages
Separation
"His face is a mask and so is
his smile. In his harsh solitude, which is both barbed and courteous, everything
serves him as a defense: silence and words, politeness and disdain, irony and
resignation."
"He builds a wall of remoteness between reality and himself,
a wall that is no less impenetrable for being invisible."
29
"Hermeticism is one
of the several recourses of our suspicion and distrust. It shows that we instinctively
regard the world around us to be dangerous. This reaction is justifiable if
we consider what our history has been and the kind of society we have created.
The harshness and hositility of our environment, and the hidden indefinable
threat that is always afloat in the air, oblige us to close ourselves in,
like those plants that survive by storing up liquid within their spiny exteriors"
30
"In a certain sense the history of Mexico,
like that of every Mexican, is a struggle between the forms and the formulas
that have been imposed on us and the explosions with which our individuality
avenges itself."
33
Examples of imposed
formulas and forms:
Aztec domination of Mixtec, Toltec, Zapatec,
Maya, etc.
Hernando Cortes' promises, treachery and larceny
Spanish rationalism and the enlightenment
Roman Catholicism
US filibusteros
corporate laissez faire
European Fascism
Soviet Communism
NAFTA
Mexican masks
Table
of contents
Unity, rational and intuitive
"Any contact with mexican people, however brief, reveals
that the ancient beliefs and customs are still in existence beneath western
forms. These still-thriving remains testify to the vitality of pre-Cortesian
cultures."
89
"No one embodied the duality of that world [The
Enlightenment] like Sor Juana, even though the surface of her work, like
that of her life, does not reveal any fissures."
111
Occult link among all truths:
"Her curiosity was not that of a man of science but rather
of a cultivated man who aspires to integrate all the particulars of knowledge
in one coherent vision. She sensed an occult link among all truths. Referring
to the diversity of her studies, she said that their contradictions were more
apparent than real, 'at least in the realm of the formal and the speculative.'
The arts and sciences, however contrary they may be, not only do not hinder
a general comprehension of nature but actually assist it, 'shedding light and
opening avenues from one to the other, through variations and occult ties...in
such a manner that they seem to correspond and be united in a wonderful coalescence
and concert....' "
113
Conquest &
Colonialism
Table
of contents
Themes
value of science and reason
135
Revolution (1910) as revival of the independence movement of
1820s.
143
Independence
to Revolution
Communal values
defines community
175
Present Day
men and women; the impossibility of love
197-198
Time and duration
time ceased to coincide with the flow of reality
time as a perpetuation of this moment
209
criticizes the modern fallacy of objectivism and objectivity
212
Dialectic
of Solitude
Table
of contents
Imagery and form
Masks conceal character as a shield - a hieroglyph-- or symbol;
the covered surface
displaying evidence of masks that both protect and suffocate
character
216
THE
OTHER MEXICO
US Mexican relations
Ours is a heritage built on misunderstanding and prejudice,
racial superiority and cultural superstitions.
- US dismissal of the antiquity of
Amerindian cultures.
- US mistrust of mestizos, or mixed blood ethnic peoples.
- US belief in White Anglo-Saxon superiority.
- US inheritance and fostering of the English hatred of
Catholic Spain.
Therefore, the US denial of the meaning and outcome of the Mexican
War, 1846.
251
Criticism
Critique of western values
262
China
The revolt (rural) of the Yellow Turbans at the end of the Han
Dynasty, Taosim, the Han dominion and resistance.
The recovery of enduring symbols capturing a more authentic
past is the first condition, ironically, in the search for a modern national
identity.
275-76
Development
& other mirages
Table
of contents
The antiquity of Amerindian
peoples: Maya, Toltec and corn
Time and the meaning of history and culture
287
Creating geographical meaning
the meaning of geography and landscape
293
Critique
of the Pyramid
Conclusion
"Perhaps we have mistaken the path, perhaps the way
out is to return to our origins."
396
on going "modernization"
of Mexico begun under Charles III in the late 18th century, still unfinished.
397
plea for ideology free historical criticism.
"I Believe that Mexico, like other Latin-American countries,
must find her own modernity. In a certain sense she must invent it....It is
a task that demands not only favorable historic and social circumstances but
an extraordinary imagination.... First we must cure ourselves of the intoxication
of simplistic and simplifying ideologies."
398
- Springs of life can
only erupt from reconciliation
- There is a dialectic we must envision & understand
in order to engage in.
- Thus
THE
PHILANTHROPIC OGRE
Table
of contents
Diego Rivera (December 8, 1886 - November 24, 1957), (full name Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez) was a Mexican painter and muralist born in Guanajuato City, Guanajuato. Diego Rivera is perhaps best known by the public world for his 1933 mural, "Man at the Crossroads," in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center.
concluding
poetic quote
Between the ideal
And the reality
Between the motion
And the Act
Falls the shadow"
T. S. Elliot, The Wasteland
396
Labyrinth
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