Octavio Paz

Born March 31, 1914, Octavio Paz was introduced to literature early in his life through the
influence of his grandfather's library, filled with classic Mexican and European
literature.[1] During the 1920s, he discovered Gerardo Diego, Juan Ramón Jiménez,
and Antonio Machado, Spanish writers who had a great influence on his early writings.[2]
As a teenager in 1931, Paz published his first poems, including "Cabellera". Two years later, at
the age of 19, he published Luna Silvestre ("Wild Moon"), a collection of poems. In 1932, with
some friends, he funded his first literary review, Barandal. In 1937 at the age of 23, Paz
abandoned his law studies and left Mexico City for Yucatán to work at a school in Mérida, set
up for the sons of peasants and workers.[3] There, he began working on the first of his long,
ambitious poems, "Entre la piedra y la flor" ("Between the Stone and the Flower") (1941,
revised in 1976). Influenced by the work of T. S. Eliot, it explores the situation of the Mexican
peasant under the domineering landlords of the day.[4]
In 1937, Paz was invited to the Second International Writers Congress in Defense of Culture in
Spain during the country's civil war; he showed his solidarity with the Republican side and
against fascism. Upon his return to Mexico, Paz co-funded a literary
journal, Taller ("Workshop") in 1938, and wrote for the magazine until 1941. In 1937 he
married Elena Garro, who is considered one of Mexico's finest writers. They had met in 1935.
They had one daughter, Helena, and were divorced in 1959.
In 1943, Paz received a Guggenheim fellowship and used it to study at the University of
California at Berkeley in the United States. Two years later he entered the Mexican diplomatic
service, and was assigned for a time to New York City. In 1945, he was sent to Paris, where he
wrote El Laberinto de la Soledad ("The Labyrinth of Solitude"). The New York Times later
described it as "an analysis of modern Mexico and the Mexican personality in which he
described his fellow countrymen as instinctive nihilists who hide behind masks of solitude and
ceremoniousness."[5] In 1952, he travelled to India for the first time. That same year, he went to
Tokyo, as chargé d'affaires. He next was assigned to Geneva, Switzerland. He returned to
Mexico City in 1954, where he wrote his great poem "Piedra de sol" ("Sunstone") in 1957, and
published Libertad bajo palabra (Liberty under Oath), a compilation of his poetry up to that
time. He was sent again to Paris in 1959. In 1962, he was named Mexico's ambassador to
India.