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Octavio Paz: An Intellectual and his Critics

Article in Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos · February 2005

DOI: 10.1525/msem.2005.21.1.251

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 REVIEW ESSAY

Octavio Paz: An Intellectual and his Critics

Yvon Grenier*
St. Francis Xavier University

Las Guerras Culturales de Octavio Paz. By Armando González Torres. Puebla:

Secretaría de Cultura; Mexico: Editorial Colibrí, 2002.
Octavio Paz, A Meditation. By Ilan Stavans. Tucson: The University of Arizona
Press, 2001.
Octavio Paz y la poética de la historia mexicana. By David A. Brading.
Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002.
Octavio Paz, Itinerary, An Intellectual Journey. Translated by Jason Wilson.
San Diego: Harcourt Inc., 1999. Foreword by Charles Tomlinson and
Afterword by Jason Wilson.

An intellectual is someone who manages to leverage authority gained

from peers in one field of knowledge or culture to become a publicly
recognized authority on fundamental (as opposed to merely practical)
public issues. Typically, the intellectual writer and essayist becomes rec-
ognized as a legitimate source of insight and of recommendations on po-
litical, moral, and even economic issues (for which intellectuals typically
offer anti-economic perspectives). While the intellectual may be a spe-
cialist, he or she also may become a secular prophet, one who can speak
simultaneously to, and on behalf of, the lay person, with a generalist per-
spective on the public issues of the day. This transference of authority—
from the specialized to the general, from an area of competence to areas
of seeming incompetence—minimally requires, in order to be sustained
over time, the mobilization of such resources as a superior command of
language, an aptitude for effective communication to the vast minori-
ties (i.e., the thin layer of the citizenry that participates—even passively—

*I wish to thank Maarten Van Delden for his invaluable comments, as well as the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support.

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 21, Issue 1, Winter 2005, pages 251–267. ISSN 0742-9797
electronic ISSN 1533-8320. ©2005 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please
direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of
California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
251
252 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

in politico-cultural activities), and an ability to express views as if they

effortlessly spring, not from personal biases or well-understood inter-
ests, but rather from the well of culture itself. An aptitude for making
maximum use of contacts and fully employing all available resources is
also a plus, for, if anything, successful intellectuals are successful people:
they are great promoters of their own careers and astute readers of time
and place.
Sadly, the study of intellectuals has all but disappeared from the
agenda in political sociology, being now the concern of historians and
biographers. Imaginative thinkers such as Shils, Gouldner, Aron, and
Mannheim, who wrote when intellectuals were truly important influ-
ences, point out that in Europe (the birthplace of Emile Zola and his
heirs), intellectuals typically played an important role in “statist” coun-
tries, such as France, Poland, or Russia. Intelligentsias seem to have
emerged in these countries as substitutes for declining aristocracies, from
whom they salvaged the self-perception that they represented a civi-
lizing stratum of society worthy of social deference and, by extension,
emancipation from—and hence disinterest for—material needs. Intel-
lectuals also found hospitable environments in Catholic countries already
accustomed to the presence of a clerisy. In modernizing countries, in-
tellectuals produced and reproduced national myths and put their
knowledge and prestige at the disposal of their fast-growing states. Rather
than democratizing agents, intellectuals were substitutes for impartial
and impersonal channels of democratic participation.
Wherever they may have flourished, intellectuals are now mostly ex-
tinct as a politically-relevant group. While a product of modernity, mod-
ernization and especially democratization have brought about the decline
of intellectuals in favor of the ascent of the professional, the expert, the
spokesperson. One can lament the waning of the era of the brilliant gen-
eralist, the one mind that could expose leaders and “opinion-makers”
for being overly specialized, superficial trend-setters, and ideologues.
One cannot lament, however, certain intellectuals’ stubborn attraction
to utopias and dictators. The twentieth century, in particular, was diffi-
cult for intellectuals. Octavio Paz often referred to Benjamin Péret’s ver-
dict that “our century,”meaning the twentieth century, was the century
of the “dishonour of poets.” Paz and others were not to blame for this
extinction but, in fact, worked hard to redeem the species.
Mexico is arguably the country in the Americas where intellectuals
played the most significant political role during the twentieth century.1
The glory days of this trend, however, were neither (as might be ex-

1. See my “Octavio Paz and the Changing Role of Intellectuals in Mexico,”Discourse,

Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, 23, no.2 (Spring): 124–143.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 253

pected) during the Revolution, nor more recently during the period of
democratization, but between those transitional times, during the con-
struction of the “revolutionary institutional” state. The typical intellec-
tual of this period in Mexican history was both an employee and a critic
of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) state, both a beneficiary
of a unique largesse (no other Latin American state supported artists and
intellectuals as grandly) and an expert at cultivating a reputation for in-
dependence. According to Octavio Paz, the presence of intellectuals in
Mexico owed little to a tradition of intellectual criticism, which he felt
was nonexistent in the country. As a fragment of the Spanish matrix, he
believed that Mexico experienced neither the intellectual revolution of
the Enlightenment, nor a Romantic rebellion against its universal and
impersonal prescriptions. Consequently, according to Paz, intellectuals
who had prestige and influence in Mexico often did not use their influ-
ence to create and advance informed, independent criticism. Whether
Paz himself always used his own influence properly is an open and still
hotly contested question, as the books under review indicate.
Octavio Paz, the Nobel recipient for literature in 1990, was the piv-
otal intellectual of the second half of twentieth-century Mexico. Born
in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution to an educated, politicized fam-
ily, Paz served for a quarter of a century in the Mexican Foreign Service
(1944–1968), and then became a genuine cultural institution in his coun-
try.2 Throughout his life, Paz offered constructive criticism of his gov-
ernment and jealously managed to preserve his autonomy while being
offered (but often declining) national awards, ambassadorships, cultural
attaché positions in prestigious locations, and invitations to Los Pinos.
Mexico was arguably the only non-democratic country in the Americas
where such a position was tenable: unlike other authoritarian regimes
in the region, the PRI regime managed to tolerate a significant amount
of civil and political liberty in the country, especially for its intellectu-
als. The regime’s permanent commitment to more apertura circum-
scribed a critical political space that stretched, not synchronically be-
tween friends and foes of the regime, but diachronically between the
forces of inertia and the progressive vanguard. That is to say, loyalty to
and criticism of the regime cohabited within a vast political family.
Paz was arguably one of the very last intellectuals of our time. Who
today has the rich intellectual and personal background to write a book
like Itinerary? In this admirable collection of autobiographical essays
(notwithstanding the late Paz’s insistence that these essays are not mem-
oirs), Paz, the intellectual and former diplomat, appears as, what Ray-

2. Andrés Ordóñez, Devoradores de ciudades, Cuatro intelectuales en la diplo-

macia mexicana (Mexico: Ediciones Cal y Arena, 2002).
254 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

mond Aron once called himself, a spectateur engagé, musing on history

and politics with an independent and “generalist” perspective or, to be
more accurate, although the phrase may sound odd, with a poet’s per-
spective.3 The level of personal, political, and intellectual engagement
Paz demonstrates with the actors and issues of the past half-century
strikes us as both the product of a stellar career and the mark of an in-
tellectual trajectory that probably will not be replicated in our demo-
cratic (if not always liberal) age.
Each of the three books reviewed here represents a recognizable
parameter of a broad discussion on Paz’s political work and legacy. Ar-
mando González Torres’ Las Guerras Culturales de Octavio Paz is the
latest addition to this crowded shelf.4 González Torres’main focus is not
primarily on Paz’s work but rather on his role as a “polo del debate ide-
ológico” (González Tores, 11). Ilan Stavans’ Octavio Paz, A Meditation
occupies a niche I would label “Octavio Paz and Me.” Here the tone is
intimate, almost self-therapeutic, and the objective is, to use Fernando
Savater’s expression, “El asesinato y devoramiento del padre Paz.”5 Fi-
nally, David Brading’s Octavio Paz y la poética de la historia mexicana
concerns Paz’s contribution to Mexican historical commentary. I am
hopeful that this type of contribution to scholarship on Paz’s literary
legacy will continue to prosper, along with his appreciation that Paz’s
poetry and essays are more important than his political disputes with
Monsiváis, or his appearances on Televisa.

Cultural Wars
With a grain of malice and bad faith (common ingredients in book re-
view preparation), González Torres’ essay could be considered as mak-
ing only a modest contribution to Paz scholarship. Like many before him,
González Torres proposes to examine what Paz calls his “changing re-
lation with my country, its history and its present,” using an historical,
comment-as-you-go perspective. The itinerary is a familiar one to Paz
scholars, starting with Paz the son of a revolutionary and grandson of a

3. See Manuel Ullacia, El arbol milenario, un recorrido por la obra de Octavio Paz.
(Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, Círculo de lectores, 2000); Enrico Mario Santí, “An Intel-
lectual Biography of Octavio Paz: Conversation with Enrico Mario Santí,” The Centenial
Review (Fall 1992): 541–55.
4. Xavier Rodríguez Ledesma has been especially prolific: see his El pensamiento
político de Octavio Paz: Las trampas de la ideología (Mexico: UNAM, Plaza y Valdés Edi-
tores, 1996); and, Escritores y poder, La dualidad republicana en México, 1968–1994
(Mexico: Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, 2001).
5. Quoted in Rodríguez Ledesma, El pensamiento político de Octavio Paz, 15–16,
note 9.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 255

liberal intellectual, followed by Paz the budding poet and revolutionary,

Paz the eloquent critic of the PRI and early scourge of totalitarianism,
and Paz who resigned from his Foreign Service position in the wake of
Tlatelolco, becoming henceforth “el emblema hispanoamericano del
intelectual independiente” (González Torres, 86). González Torres con-
tinues with Paz the cultural entrepreneur who founded literary maga-
zines and shaped the cultural scene in Mexico, followed by Paz the tur-
bulent man of the left, who spent much time and energy excoriating the
left, especially the brothers Karamazov of the “1968 generation.” 6 Gon-
zález Torres’finale features Paz the illustrious patriarch, garlanded by the
Nobel committee and serenaded by the last two PRI presidents.
As is often the case with this type of approach, Las guerras cul-
turales betrays González Torres’limited interest in Paz’s ideas. González
Torres himself exposes his own book’s main limitation in his epilogue,
when he asks the question, “¿Qué queda de las guerras culturales que
libró Paz? De entrada, podría pensarse que el furor ideológico y el en-
cono personal privaron sobre la discusión sólida de ideas”(González To-
rres, 137). However, one could maintain—with fairness and a soupcon
of generosity—that unlike most books on the Paz shelf, Las guerras cul-
turales does deliver competent and nuanced reflection on the few oc-
casions González Torres dips his toes in Paz’s oceanic thought. In his
chapter on the “young Paz,”for instance, González Torres rightly points
out that Paz’s “formas de argumentación” in his essays owe much to his
poetic approach to history: “La poesía no sólo está presente en la fun-
dación de una figura intelectual, sino en el estilo crítico de Paz, ya que
sus formas de argumentación y escritura tienen que ver más con el pro-
cedimiento analógico de la poesía, que con los métodos habituales de
la crítica literaria o las ciencias sociales” (González Torres, 26). This is
an aspect of Paz’s work that historian David Brading, for instance, finds
difficult to appreciate. González Torres is quite right when he asserts
that “La crítica literaria de Paz no se adhiere a una escuela o a una corrien-
te, e incluso en sus estudios más serios practica una lectura ecléctica y
asistemática en que un autor y un texto son el motivo para referirse de
manera más amplia al conjunto de la esfera cultural y social, para abor-
dar diversas disciplinas y para indagar la relación entre arte y moral”

6. About this overwhelmingly left-leaning “generation,”the author suggests that “más

que en partido o en una teoría, se convirtió en una suerte de moral para las clases inte-
lectuales. Quizá puedan señalarse, más allá de las diferencias, algunos rasgos básicos en
los cuales coincidía el conjunto de la izquierda: el rechazo al Estado posrevolucionario y
la convicción de un ineludible cambio de régimen; la suposición de que el futuro de la
revolución se encontraba en el Tercer Mundo; la oposición absoluta al sistema económica
y a la política exterior de Estados Unidos y, finalmente, la firme creencia en el compro-
miso politico del intellectual” (González Torres, 64).
256 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

(González Torres, 27–28). Furthermore, I agree with González Torres

that the intensity and scope of the young Paz’s infatuation with Marxism
is probably exaggerated, whereas his romantic hostility toward certain
aspects of modernity (especially, materialism and progress) is an often-
underestimated ingredient of his moral attachment to the socialist ideal.7
González Torres generally manifests an appreciation (if not always
exploited to its fullest) for the complexity and richness of the political
cases he is analyzing. At times, one detects a certain bourdivine8 qual-
ity in his analysis. Whether he talks about the methodological challenges
facing this type of political sociology (González Torres,12–13), or about
Paz the cultural entrepreneur,9 González Torres seems to understand that
the pugilistic flashes trumpeted in his catchy title are not nearly as in-
teresting as what lies beneath: the interface between a great creative
mind and a time and place. He captures (if superficially) the true nature
of the cultural elite as a specific milieu peopled with actors moved by
distinctive passions, interests, and strategies, who lived in a time when
cultural influence still traded for (some) political power. González To-
rres correctly points out that “Paz buscó fortalecer la posición del es-
critor no sólo frente al poder, sino frente a la nueva especie de intelec-
tuales que comenzaba a dominar el espacio público en México: los
científicos sociales”(González Torres, 75). Many of these new científicos
were rather long on ideology but short on “science” (“scientific materi-
alism” notwithstanding). The politicization of academia and the demo-
cratic deficit in the country bestowed credibility to “la posición del es-
critor;” with the consolidation of democratic channels of participation
and the new emphasis on specialization and “think-tanks,” maintaining,
let alone “fortifying,” this “position” today would be difficult.10

7. In my foreword to Paz’s Sueño en libertad, escritos políticos (Seix Barral, 2001),

I wrote “En sus textos de ‘juventud’[. . .] no se nota una influencia marxista, como se suele
decir o desear, sino un vago ambiente de izquierda, el cual se mestiza posteriormente con
una disposición explicitamente liberal”. And I add in footnote: “No puedo reprimir la im-
presión de que en México existe un deseo general y dominante de recordar al joven Paz
como ‘marxista’, quizá para poder pensar: él también fue marxista, incluso Paz fue mar-
xista” (xviii).
8. Bourdivine, in French, as in an approach inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu.
9. “A partir de la fundación de Vuelta, Paz—aparentemente un intelectual de viejo
cuño—se convirtió en un pionero en la exploración de formas de financiamiento e inter-
acción con el mercado, hoy habituales, como la búsqueda de segmentos específicos del
público lector, la colaboración con la iniciativa privada y, sobre todo, la proyección en los
medios masivos” (González Torres, 79). Later, he talks—if briefly—about “. . . su trabajo
de promoción e internacionalización” (González Torres, 123).
10. See Jesus Velasco, “Reading Mexico, understanding the United States: American
Transnational Intellectuals in the 1920s and 1990s,”The Journal of American History 86,
no.2 (Sept. 1999): 641–68.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 257

Perhaps the most out-of-the-ordinary contribution of González To-

rres’ book is in the third chapter. Here the author brings to the surface
a forgotten episode of Paz’s history: Paz’s position on the crisis triggered
by the killing of student demonstrators in June 1971. At the time, Presi-
dent Echeverría promised an investigation (which was never imple-
mented), “no matter where the blame may fall.” As historian Enrique
Krauze recalls, “the story was accepted by much of public opinion and
by the intellectuals who had become part of the regime. Others openly
maintained their doubts and pushed for an investigation. It would come
in time but unofficially, from public-minded journalists.”11
Paz wrote two articles on these events which, according to González
Torres, were never included in any of Paz’s anthologies.12 In a nutshell,
Paz believed in “la voluntad de Echeverría para aclarar los sucesos.” Paz
proved to be hostile towards the demonstrators: “un grupo de insensatos
convocó a una manifestación de equivocados.” For Paz, “la apertura a la
crítica de Echeverría hería intereses de las burocracias políticas y sindi-
cales y del poder económico,” and “el radicalismo de la izquierda podía
entorpecer los avances [of the president].”In his second article, Paz steps
back to explain why the revolutionary option is “quimérica,” why
democracy is the only real alternative, and how Mexican unions should
democratize so that Mexico could become a modern democracy. Fol-
lowing both President Echeverría’s commitment to launch a full inves-
tigation into the events that led to student deaths and the resignation of
the Regent of the Federal District (Alfonso Martínez Domínguez) and the
Chief of Police (Rogelio Flores Curiel), Paz wrote these ill-fated words:
“El Presidente ha devuelto su transparencia a las palabras. Echeverría
merece nuestra confianza. Y con ello, cada vez que sea necesario, algo
más precioso: nuestra crítica”.13 For González Torres, Paz provided an
“indudable apoyo” to Echeverría during a very contentious moment of
his presidency.
In reference to these events, Paz remembers that that he manifested
publicly his “apoyo—subrayo: crítico y conditional—a las medidas que
ha adoptado el gobierno actual y que tienden a encontrar una solución

11. Enrique Krauze, Mexico, Biography of Power, A History of Modern Mexico,

1810–1996. Trans. by Hank Heifetz (New York: HarpersCollins, 1997), 746.
12. Octavio Paz, “Las palabras y las mascaras,” Excélsior, June 16, 1971, 7; and “En-
tre el silencio y el grito,” Excélsior, June 29, 1971, 7, 8A.
13. González Torres is quick to insist that “Paz no fue el único ni el más entusiasta
de los intelectuales que respaldaron a Echeverría en ese y otros trances”, but from then
on, “las nuevas generaciones manifestaban desconfianza frente a la figura del intelectual
que representaba Paz” (88–90). It isn’t clear how much credence the author gives to this
assessment, given his overall thesis: “fue Paz quien, en los 70, terminó de elaborar y en-
carnar el arquetipo del intelectual independiente” (72).
258 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

política y democrática a la crisis.”In his “Conversación con Julio Scherer,”

published in Proceso in December of 1977, Scherer invited Paz to com-
ment on what he called his “breve entusiasmo inicial” for Echeverría.
Paz’s response emphasizes the fact that his support was conditional: “Es-
cribí ese artículo, a pedido tuyo, a raíz de la salida de Martínez Domínguez
y de Flores Curiel y de la promesa del presidente Echeverría de que se
haría una investigación sobre los sucesos del 10 de junio de 1971. Dije
que Echeverría ‘había devuelto su transparencia a las palabras’ pero dije
asimismo que, justamente por eso, ‘merecía nuestra crítica’. El presidente
no cumplió su promesa y las palabras volvieron a empañarse.”14 Other
intellectuals, added Paz, continued to support the president, but not
him. This rupture between Paz and the President was complete with the
famous coup at the newspaper Excélsior in 1976. When Paz was ap-
proached at the end of Echeverría’s term with an offer to receive the
Premio Nacional de Letras, he declined, stating: “[D]espués del atentado
contra Excélsior y Plural, la pregunta me paracía una broma lúgubre.”15
Did Paz “support” President Echeverría, or was Paz someone who,
to use Krauze’s description of the alternative, “openly maintained [his]
doubts and pushed for an investigation?” Arguably, he did both. A re-
reading of these two articles suggests that Paz gave the benefit of the
doubt to the president, a man he respected and supported for his “open-
ing.”16 It is no less true, however, that this support was conditional, a
fact illustrated by Paz’s subsequent public positions on the regime.
Several times in his career, Paz was accused of failing to live up to
his own ideal of the independent intellectual. Be that as it may, in most
cases the accusations seemed based on a mistaken understanding of what
intellectual independence meant for Paz. His approach to independence
certainly supposed a hearty disposition to criticize power, but not a pre-
determined obligation to oppose any government or policy at any time.
Independence was, for him, an offspring of liberty itself: liberty to say

14. Reproduced in Octavio Paz, Obras completas, El peregrino en su patria, His-

toria y política de México, vol. 8 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994), 366–82.
For a very interesting exchange between key Mexican intellectuals of the time (especially
Gabriel Zaid and Carlos Fuentes) on the political and moral responsibility of the writer,
see “Los escritores y la política” Plural 12 (Mexico, October 1972).
15. Entrevista de Octavio Paz con Julio Scherer, “Suma y sigue,”se publicó por primera
vez en Proceso, núms. 57 y 58, México, 5 y 12 de diciembre de 1977, reproducido en Obras
completas, VOL. 8, El peregrino en su patria (México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1994),
p. 378.
16. One can recall that in November of that year, the president awarded Daniel Cosío
Villegas the Premio Nacional de Letras, and that “the old Liberal [. . .] accepted the award
because he felt that ‘we are beginnning to breathe a climate of political freedom in Mex-
ico.’ “ Krauze, Biography of Power, 746.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 259

no, and sometimes, to say yes. Intellectual independence for Paz was
not a program but a disposition of the soul. Paz praised President Lázaro
Cárdenas and offered various levels of support to subsequent presidents
and their policies when, in his view (and he may have been, like the rest
of us, mistaken from time to time) they furthered the cause of liberali-
zation and democratization. As González Torres aptly puts it: “Con todo,
Paz no era un adversario del régimen de la Revolución: reconocía las bon-
dades del sistema político que había promovido la estabilidad y el cre-
cimiento económico; admitía el retraso democrático y el autoritarismo
del régimen, aunque consideraba que no podía compararse con el mili-
tarismo latinoamericano o las dictaduras de facha socialista, y creía en
la posibilidad de impulsar la imprescindible modernización por medio
de reformas graduales”(González Torres, 54). Paz saw the PRI regime as
capable of evolving toward democracy and repeatedly warned his con-
temporaries against the perils of impatience and “everything or noth-
ing” political dispositions. Paz’s later support for key policies of Presi-
dents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo would, however, truly look naive
today if the 2000 elections had not taken place.

Envying Paz
Ilan Stavans’ Octavio Paz, a Meditation is the expanded version of a
polemical piece first published as an article in 1993 and, subsequently,
as a chapter in 1996.17 Early in the book several clues encourage us to
approach this Meditation not as another drab scholarly exercise on Paz,
but rather as a “fitting addition to Stavans’ own oeuvre.” Stavans seems
to presume that two great minds—Paz’s and his own—have somehow
met a fated and apollonian rendezvous in his eighty-three double-spaced
pages.
I opened this book with trepidation, remembering Stavans’1993 ar-
ticle, “Of Arms and the Essayist,”and the ensuing exchange between Sta-
vans and Eliot Weinburger, a friend and translator of Paz.18 At the time,
Weinburger excoriated Stavans’piece as “sleazy and unbelievably sloppy.”
Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino Cultures at Amherst
College, defended himself in a response titled “The Task of the Transla-
tor,”stating, with some justification, that his essay “never portrays [Paz]
as a monster, . . . but mixes criticism with admiration.”

17. Ilan Stavans, “Of Arms and the Essayist, the Rise and Fall of Octavio Paz,” Tran-
sition 60 (1993): 102–117; Ilan Stavans, Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and Imagina-
tion (University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
18. Eliot Weinberger, “Paz as ‘Dictator’, a response to Ilan Stavans,” Transition 63
(1994):120–25; Ilan Stavans, “The Task of the Translator,” Transition 63 (1994): 126–31.
260 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

The same mix of the critical and the respectful characterizes this
latest (last?) version of Stavans’ essay. Pruned of some of its most unfor-
tunate allegations, it is also a bit longer on the “admiration” side.19 Sta-
vans calls himself a “devotee and incessant reader” of Paz. Paz is now a
“blueprint, an atlas to that most turbulent century” (Stavans, 3). Paz’s
prose is an “apex,”and as Stavans confesses, “Each time I read him, I am
convinced that every human act has a purpose” (Stavans, 6). “The mo-
ment he died,” to mention another example of Stavans’ hyperbole, “the
world felt suddenly empty to me: empty of a voice whose echoes I reckon
with day and night” (Stavans, 82).
After reading a few such praises, one begins to find the effort rather
perfunctory, hollow, and unfocused. Stavans writes, for example, “What
I admire the most in his quest is its honesty and its desire to mature”
(Stavans, 83); we can only wonder what it is we are to capture from this
that is most admirable about Octavio Paz? Is it really his “honesty?” Is it
his “desire to mature?” The key to understanding these intimate appre-
ciations lies in Stavans’ use of the word “I” (as in “Paz and I”). Stavans’
use of the first person creates a false aura of intellectual proximity be-
tween the author and his subject. Stavans claims that he “spoke to [Paz]
by phone shortly before Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.”
This claim urgently begs the question, which Stavans quickly answers:
“nothing even remotely like a friendship existed between us.”
Stavans makes competent but unoriginal and fleeting reflections on
some of Paz’s work. He “never much cared for his poetry,”finding it “too
loose, too mystical for my taste,” so his comments, when they do con-
cern Paz’s work (as opposed to his personality or private life), focus ex-
clusively on some of Paz’s essays. The reader is soon left to wonder why
Stavans admires Paz so much, in light of the fact that his criticism, un-
like his praise, is quite specific and is often malicious. At one point, Sta-
vans characterizes Paz as a “dictator,” “abrasive and despotic,” whose
voice was “authoritarian.” Stavans cannot resist echoing the ludicrous
gossip about Paz’s Nobel prize, which claimed that the award was “a gift
from President Salinas and also from the immensely powerful Emilio
Azcárraga, the owner of Televisa, and loyal to the PRI”(Stavans, 77). Sta-
vans believed that the magazine Vuelta, founded by and closely identified
with Octavio Paz, was wrong to be open to “other languages and cul-
tures,”considering this openness to be an indicator of being “receptive”
rather than “projective”(Stavans, 48–9). Paz was not revolutionary enough
for Stavans: “Overall, what unified its pages was a passive, dilettantish

19. For instance, Stavans rewrote what Weinberger denounced as “the slimiest sen-
tence in the article”: from “he [Paz] had a daughter he eventually disinherited and would
never speak to,” to “Paz remained distant [to her] throughout his life.”
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 261

philosophy: to observe and to contemplate, reflect, and meditate seemed

to be Vuelta’s uniform attitude, never to act to change the way things
are” (Stavans, 49–50). Should Vuelta have dedicated itself to scholarly
philosophy? Should the staff at Vuelta have taken up arms, or created a
party? Granted, Vuelta was not editorially as political in content or in-
tent as its main competitors ( primarily Nexos), but it was never meant
to be primarily a political magazine, something Stavans must know very
well.20 Furthermore, one fails to understand why, according to Stavans,
Paz was misguided to organize “global conferences on transcendental
subjects such as ‘the experience of freedom,’ inviting international spe-
cialists” ( p.50) in addition to some national figures, given Paz’s stature
as a Western intellectual and considering the time when it was organ-
ized, at the collapse of the Soviet empire, an epochal moment of the twen-
tieth century (certainly for an intellectual of Paz’s generation).21
Stavans makes both questionable and wrong statements about Paz’s
views. He states, for example, that Paz viewed the European presence
in Mexican culture in particular as a “necessary evil”(Stavans, 14) when
Paz considered it neither as necessary nor as evil. He argues at one point
that Paz moved politically from left to right and at another that Paz had
“rotating political beliefs”(Stavans, 49). Stavans claims that Paz was “en-
chanted”with George Bataille and the Marquis de Sade, when in fact he
was merely interested in these authors—more so in Sade, an icon for the
surrealists, than in Bataille, quoted by Paz only occasionally—and kept
a critical distance from them (Stavans, 67).
Curiously, Stavans seems particularly obsessed by what he sees as
Paz’s lack of humility and his “mammoth ambitions.” He invents the
proposition that “Paz, with his typical grandiloquence and lack of hu-
mility, would describe his voyage to Spain as a rite of passage not only
for him but also for the Hispanic world as a whole.”He claims derisively
that “The self-congratulatory trait of his personality became more evi-
dent in his old age and so did his stubbornness” (Stavans, 10). He also
claims that “he often mixed autobiographical insights and factual infor-
mation, thus becoming his own sole object of worship” (Stavans, 23).
Seemingly, Paz’s many competent and generous translations of other au-
thors were pure exercises of self-promotion. Whether Paz really stood
apart from other writers or academics for his lack of humility is an open

20. See Maarten Van Delden, “Conjunciones y disyunciones: La rivalidad entre Vuelta
y Nexos,” Foro Hispánico 22 (May 2002): 105–120.
21. For the proceedings of this conference, see Coloquio de Invierno. Los grandes
cambios de nuestro tiempo:la situación international, América latina y México. 3 vols.
(Mexico: UNAM, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1992).
262 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

and, frankly, rather uninteresting question. Stavans’ obsession on this

point, in such a thin essay, is peculiar, coming as it does from a young
academic (born in 1961) who writes such ego-tripped lines as: “Were
the Americas ever authentic? This is a difficult question. I have tried
to tackle it from a personal standpoint in my memoir, On Borrowed
Words . . . ” (Stavans, 13).22 At the end of his Meditation, the author of
The Essential Ilan Stavans finally throws an honest light on this curi-
ous work when he writes: “Envy probably played a part in my attitude
toward him, but so did the need to go beyond him, to experience a uni-
verse without Big Brother” (Stavans, 82). That confession only answers
one of the two tough questions raised by the reading of this essay; only
the University of Arizona Press can answer the other.

The Poetic of Mexican History

David Brading’s Octavio Paz y la poética de la historia mexicana is the
work of an accomplished Cambridge University historian and Fellow of
the British Academy who has penned numerous classics on Mexican his-
tory.23 Brading delivered a shorter version of this manuscript in Mexico
in August 2000 at a conference celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of
the publication of El laberinto de la soledad. As a participant at that
conference, I remember that Brading, while clearly an accomplished
Mexicanist, was neither a specialist nor an unconditional aficionado of
Paz’s “poetic of Mexican history.”
In Itinerary, Paz openly honors the roots of his primary interest:
“Perhaps through family influence, the history of Mexico has been my
passion since childhood” (Paz, 14). Paz describes his grandfather as an
“author of historical novels conforming to nineteenth-century taste,
[who] had collected a good number of books on our past”(Paz, 15). We
know that the young Octavio spent much time in his grandfather’s li-
brary but also that Paz did not merely memorize the past but grew to
appreciate the necessity of historical interpretation. For Paz, “All visions
of history are a point of view. Naturally, not all points of view are valid”

22. I happen to have recently read another text by Stavans: a very harsh comment
on Carlos Fuentes, in the form of a review of The Years with Laura Díaz. Stavans accuses
Fuentes of being “infatuated with his own image,” and “a performer ready to impress at
all costs.” See “The Novelist as Heroine,” The Times Literary Supplement, 5120 (18 May
2001): 22.
23. To name but a few, The Origin of Mexican Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985); The First America, the Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and
the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Mexican
Phoenix, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 263

(Paz, 19). Paz does not spell out his criteria for validity, but they are con-
ceivably based on imagination, on the capability to recreate the moment,
to restore its “presence” in a way that is seldom studied and valued in
history departments.
Brading is attentive to Paz’s interpretive abilities, and states in the
opening lines of his second chapter that “el objetivo central de estas
páginas es discutir la interpretación de la historia mexicana que Octavio
Paz propuso en El laberinto de la soledad (1950, 1959).”24 Brading an-
chors his interpretation on the premise that Paz’s poética is embedded
in the romantic tradition, and he then formulates a critique of Paz’s lim-
ited understanding and exploration of this tradition. In chapter three,
Brading claims that “ . . . lo que Paz pasó por alto fue que el romanti-
cismo fue profundamente historicista en lo que concierne al saber hu-
mano y a la sociedad, y que en Alemania el nacionalismo nació de una
matriz romántica” (Brading, 31). Similarly, “aunque Paz afirmó correc-
tamente que el romanticismo no era simplemente un asunto de valores
estéticos sino que involucraba ‘una forma del Ser,’ una forma de vida
que buscaba fundir la vida, la poesía y la historia, no vio que en Ale-
mania al menos el romanticismo generó un nuevo énfasis sobre la cul-
tura, el carácter y el folclor nacionales y la ideología del nacionalismo”
(Brading, 32). With reference to Latin America’s belated and truncated
version of romanticism, something that is, essentially, modernismo,
Brading then affirms that “Por raro que parezca, Paz no se detuvo a con-
siderar el carácter cultural de un romanticismo que emergía casi cien
años después de que este movimiento floreciera por vez primera en
Inglaterra y Alemania” (Brading, 35). Brading’s numerous allusions to
Germany support his view that Paz paid too little attention to the con-
nection between romanticism and nationalism. In Brading’s view, Paz
should have been more consequent and coherent in his use of para-
digms. His interpretation of the Romantic revolt against the Enlighten-
ment would have benefited from a fuller account of its political
ramifications.
I have always thought—perhaps erroneously—that Paz was essen-
tially inspired by, not ruled by, the romantic tradition. Paz never used
romanticism—or any of his other sources of inspiration, such as exis-
tentialism, structuralism, surrealism, or oriental thought—as a paradigm
or a theoretical “framework” in the way of academics. He picked à la
carte what seemed useful to him: in the case of romanticism, essentially
the radical and poetic critic of modernity. He never pretended to think

24. The first chapter deals with the contribution to the renovation of Mexican cul-
ture by authors such as Sierra, Vasconcelos, Siqueiros, and Caso, without mentionning Paz
or making an explicit connection with the rest of the essay.
264 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

and write only from the romantic tradition. As a matter of fact, he liked
to present himself as the heir of a “double tradition”: the Romantic tra-
dition and the critical tradition of the Enlightenment.25 One corrected
the other in a criticism that is also a celebration of criticism, a paradox
that captures the essence of modernity. What is more, Paz the patriot
was definitely not a nationalist, as Brading himself appreciates. His long-
ing for some form of communion was purely poetic and humanistic, and
had nothing to do with some quest for an organic society, let alone for
the political mobilization of some transcendental volk.
Brading proffers another interesting point in this short essay: the idea
that Paz believed that he was a “prophet,” arguing that Paz created his
poetic interpretation of Mexican history—a questionable endeavour
from a professional historian’s point of view—to promote a certain idea
or myth of the Mexican nation. Paz “concebía su propio papel como pro-
feta o como mago, recipiendario de la fuerza y la percepción necesarias
para conjurar a los espíritus y símbolos que acosaban al intelecto mexi-
cano, así como para sugerir los medios para exorcizarlos”(Brading, 37).
For Brading, “ . . . como profeta romántico, Paz se apropió de los textos
fragmentarios del pasado mexicano y trató de definir los grandes mo-
mentos históricos en que la nación mexicana se convirtió en una enti-
dad colectiva, consciente, capaz de autodeterminación. Sí, existió una
dicotomía radical en el modo en que Paz se concibió a sí mismo como
poeta y como profeta” (Brading, 38). Brading adds that Paz’s historical
lens focused on “cambios dramáticos” but neglected long-term phe-
nomena, namely the enduring influence of the Catholic Church and—
talking about sweeping omissions—much of the eighteenth century.26
Incidentally, Paz was well aware of his omissions and writes in Itiner-
ary, while pondering the limitations of The Labyrinth of Solitude, that
“the greatest omission was that of New Spain: the pages I dedicated to
it are insufficient; I have expanded these in several essays, especially in
the first part of my study of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”(Paz, 19). Paz wrote
on so many topics that we are suspicious when he chooses not to write
on something, or not sufficiently. Stavans criticizes Paz because he “re-
fused to address Jewish topics altogether”(my emphasis) and “never pro-
duced an essay on Latin America’s literary boom of the 1960s”(Stavans,

25. On this topic, see Maarten Van Delden, “Essays” [on Octavio Paz], in Encyclo-
pedia of Latin American Literature, ed. Verity Smith (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997),
639–40.
26. Thus, “Paz no vio los esplendores económicos que Alexander von Humboldt des-
cribió tan detalladamente y en lugar de eso atendió la ausencia de cualquier regeneración
cultural significativa”(54). Also, Paz “se abstuvo de opinar sobre la figura de Benito Juárez”
(57). The great liberal President is mentioned only a few times in the Laberinto but quite
often in his essayistic work.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 265

74). Should Paz have said more on Juárez, the Catholic Church, and many
other key topics of Mexican and world history? It is impossible to an-
swer “no,” but whether or not Paz had a selective memory of Mexican
history, and why, is an interesting question for which Brading offers some
hints and unsatisfactory answers.
Brading also sees a “considerable difference” between El laberinto
(1950) and Postdata (1970), two of Paz’s “aproximaciónes” of Mexican
history. “Hasta ahí Paz había presentado una interpretación esencial-
mente dual, acentuando el contraste entre tradición y modernidad, catoli-
cismo y liberalismo. En su lugar, ahora postula una continuidad subya-
cente entre Anáhuac, Nueva España y México, una continuidad que puede
observarse mejor en la manera en que se ejercía el poder político”(Brad-
ing, 86). Whether duality and continuity should be understood as mu-
tually exclusive categories, or, as Paz would conceivably prefer, as cases
of coincidencia oppositorum, is again something that could be discussed
indefinitely.
Brading’s essay is well worth reading for what it is: a stimulating and,
at times, insightful essay on Paz by a prominent student of Mexican his-
tory. Though not a Paz specialist, or even someone interested in ex-
ploring Paz scholarship, the author is an agile interpreter of Mexican his-
tory, and his book can be seen as a valuable though modest addition to
the many contrasting works of Paz scholars and intellectuals.

An Intellectual Journey
Itinerary, An Intellectual Journey is a typical Paz book, which is to say,
a core text to which other previously published texts were added. In
this version, one finds the core autobiographical essay, entitled “Itiner-
ary,”supplemented by an essay on his best-known book, The Labyrinth
of Solitude, as well as a letter in which Paz reflects on his life in his home
town of Mixcoac.27 These texts are bordered by an elegant and personal
foreword by poet (and Paz’s close friend) Charles Tomlinson, as well as
an afterword by translator Jason Wilson, an established Paz translator and
scholar. Wilson offers en prime a host of well-crafted and informative
notes on people and events, features which make the English version
quite reader-friendly.
Itinerary is a compendium of Paz’s trademark positions on his fa-
vorite political topics: the Mexican Revolution ( popular revolt more

27. Itinerario appeared first as a book in 1993 ( published by the Fondo de Cultura
Económica), without the text on Mixcoac but with three other chapters, three interviews
given to Juan Cruz (“Respuestas nuevas a preguntas viejas,”1992), Sergio Marras (“América
en plural y en singular,” 1991) and Julio Scherer (“Tela de Juicio,” 1993).
266 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

than “revolution,” instinctive and non-ideological, communitarian and

plural); the regime of the PRI (authoritarian but not totalitarian, a coali-
tion of interests and factions, a regime hacia la democracia); the ne-
cessity for Mexico to sit at the table of modernity in a thoughtful and
critical way; the treason of intellectuals (devotees of utopias); the de-
sirability of a gradual evolution toward democracy (he rejects the “every-
thing or nothing” mentality); and the critique of progress, materialism,
and modernity. For all we read about Paz’s political turn to the right,
this admirable essay, published in the early 1980s, reminds the reader
how fairly consistent politically and intellectually Paz was throughout
most of his adult years. Paz writes, “Let me clarify once again that crit-
icism of the capitalist democracies has always seemed essential to me:
I have never seen them as a model. However, my enemies have not
ceased calling me ‘right wing’ and ‘conservative.’ I am not sure today
what these antiquated adjectives mean, if they ever meant anything;
nevertheless, it is not hard to guess the reason for these slurs: since 1959
I have refused to equate liberal capitalist democracies with totalitarian
communist regimes”(Paz, 77). His critique of liberal democracies is in-
formed by romanticism more than by socialism (or Marxism). Perhaps
for this reason, his criticism was never fully understood or appreciated
by his contemporaries.28
Itinerary also offers the Paz scholar personal impressions on his
life, his family, his travels and time lived abroad. Paz remarks that his
quarter of a century in the Mexican Foreign Service was beneficial from
a writer’s point of view: “Apart from the fact that, grosso modo I was
nearly always in agreement with our foreign policy, I could travel, know
countries and cities, deal with people of diverse trades, languages, races,
capacities, and, in the end, I could write” (Paz, 76). Paz also seizes all
opportunities to salute and express admiration for other authors, ac-
quaintances and friends. One notices especially his nod to Kostas Pa-
paioannou and Cornelius Castoriadis, two Greek intellectuals and eru-
dites living in France who criticized political modernity from a leftist,
democratic, and strongly anti-totalitarian angle. I think one could say that
Paz was “enchanted” with these two Greek expatriates (to use Stavans’
misdirected expression) and, of course, with Breton more than with any-
body else. For all that has been written about the contentious and polem-
ical side of Paz and his legacy, his writings are filled with admiring, gen-
erous portraits of other artists and intellectuals. In particular, I doubt that

28. See Yvon Grenier, From Art to Politics, Octavio Paz and the Pursuit of Free-
dom (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001; forthcoming in Spanish transla-
tion in 2004, Fondo de Cultura Económica); Yvon Grenier, “The Romantic Liberalism of
Octavio Paz,” MS/EM 17, no. 1 ( Winter 2001): 171–91.
 Grenier, Octavio Paz 267

anyone did more to celebrate and promote Mexican art (literature, paint-
ing, architecture) at home and abroad than did Octavio Paz.
Itinerary is a useful repository of Paz’s positions and dispositions.
What is more, Wilson’s excellent translation ably renders the peculiari-
ties of Paz’s style—the elegance, the weightlessness, the expert use of
the analogy, and the dramatic use of the colon. These technical and artis-
tic qualities highlight the main reason why many of us return time and
again to Paz: for the sheer pleasure of reading.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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