Editing Octavio Paz (section)

==Political thought==
[[File:II Congreso internacional de escritores para la defensa de la cultura, 1937.jpg|thumb|left|250px|II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture.]]
Originally, Paz supported the Republicans during the [[Spanish Civil War]], but after learning of the murder of one of his friends by the Stalinist secret police, he became gradually disillusioned. While in Paris in the early 1950s, influenced by [[David Rousset]], [[André Breton]] and [[Albert Camus]], he started publishing his critical views on totalitarianism in general, and particularly against [[Joseph Stalin]], leader of the Soviet Union.

In his magazines ''Plural'' and ''Vuelta'', Paz exposed the [[Human rights|violations of human rights]] in Communist regimes, including [[Fidel Castro|Castro's]] [[Cuba]]. This elicited much animosity from sectors of the Latin American Left: in the prologue to Volume IX of his complete works, Paz stated that from the time when he abandoned Communist dogma, the mistrust of many in the Mexican [[intelligentsia]] started to transform into an intense and open enmity. Paz continued to consider himself a man of the left—the democratic, "liberal" left, not the dogmatic and illiberal one. He also criticized the Mexican government and leading party that dominated the nation for most of the twentieth century.

Politically, Paz was a [[social democracy|social democrat]], who became increasingly supportive of liberal ideas without ever renouncing his initial leftist and romantic views. In fact, Paz was "very slippery for anyone thinking in rigid ideological categories," Yvon Grenier wrote in his book on Paz's political thought. "Paz was simultaneously a romantic who spurned materialism and reason, a liberal who championed freedom and democracy, a conservative who respected tradition, and a socialist who lamented the withering of fraternity and equality. An advocate of fundamental transformation in the way we see ourselves and modern society, Paz was also a promoter of incremental change, not revolution."<ref>Yvon Grenier, ''From Art to Politics: Octavio Paz and the Pursuit of Freedom'' (Rowman and Littlefield, 1991); Spanish trans. ''Del arte a la política, Octavio Paz y la busquedad de la libertad'' (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994).</ref>

{{blockquote|There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.|Octavio Paz<ref>{{cite book
| last = Paz
| first = Octavio
| title = "Signs in Rotation" (1967), '''The Bow and the Lyre''', trans. Ruth L.C. Simms (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), p. 249
}}</ref>
}}

In 1990, during the aftermath of the [[Fall of the Berlin Wall|fall of the Berlin wall]], Paz and his ''Vuelta'' colleagues invited several of the world's writers and intellectuals to Mexico City to discuss the collapse of Communism; writers included [[Czesław Miłosz]], [[Hugh Thomas (writer)|Hugh Thomas]], [[Daniel Bell]], [[Ágnes Heller]], [[Cornelius Castoriadis]], [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]], [[Jean-François Revel]], [[Michael Ignatieff]], [[Mario Vargas Llosa]], [[Jorge Edwards]] and [[Carlos Franqui]]. The encounter was called ''The Experience of Freedom'' (Spanish: ''La experiencia de la libertad''), and broadcast on Mexican television from 27 August to 2 September.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.letraslibres.com/revista/convivio/memorias-del-encuentro-la-experiencia-de-la-libertad |title=Memorias del encuentro: "La experiencia de la libertad" |author=Christopher Domínguez Michael |date=November 2009 |work=Letras Libres (in Spanish)| access-date=July 10, 2013}}</ref>

Paz said that the literature on Spanish and Portuguese colonialism is biased and "is full of somber details and harsh judgments". He said that there were also immense gains:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Paz |first=Octavio |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G76_m_22zo8C |title=In Light of India |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-15-600578-4 |location=London |pages=76 |language=en |translator-last=Weinberger |translator-first=Eliot}}</ref>{{Blockquote|text="Not all was horror: over the ruins of the pre-Columbian world the Spanish and Portuguese raised a grandiose historical construction, much of which is still in place. They united many peoples who spoke different languages, worshiped different gods, fought among themselves, or were ignorant of one another. These peoples became united by laws and judicial institutions, but, above all, by language, culture, and religion. Although the losses were enormous, the gains were immense.
To measure fairly the effect of the Spanish in Mexico, one must emphasize that without them—that is, without the Catholic religion and the culture the Spanish implanted in our country—we would not be what we are. We would probably be a collection of peoples divided by different beliefs, languages, and cultures."|author=|title=}}Paz criticized the [[Zapatista uprising]] in 1994.<ref>Huffschmid (2004) pp. 127–151</ref> He spoke broadly in favor of a "military solution" to the uprising of January 1994, and hoped that the "army would soon restore order in the region". With respect to President Zedillo's offensive in February 1995, he signed an open letter that described the offensive as a "legitimate government action" to re-establish the "sovereignty of the nation" and to bring "[[Chiapas]] peace and Mexicans tranquility".<ref>Huffschmid (2004) p145</ref>

=== First literary experiences ===
Paz was dazzled by ''[[The Waste Land]]'' by [[T. S. Eliot]], in Enrique Munguia's translation as ''El Páramo'' which was published in the magazine ''Contemporaries'' in 1930. As a result of this, although he maintained his primary interest in poetry, Paz also had an unavoidable outlook on prose: "Literally, this dual practice was for me a game of reflections between poetry and prose".

Worried about confirming the existence of a link between [[morals]] and [[poetry]], in 1931, at the age of sixteen, he wrote what would be his first published article, "Ethics of the Artist", in which he posed the question of the duty of an artist among what would be deemed "art of thesis," or pure art, which disqualifies the second as a result of the teaching of tradition. Employing language that resembles a religious style and, paradoxically, a [[Marxism|Marxist]] one, Paz finds the true value of art in its purpose and meaning, for which the followers of pure art—of whom he is ''not'' one—are found in an isolated position and favor the [[Kantianism|Kantian]] idea of the "man that loses all relation with the world".<ref>{{Cite book|last= Paz|first= Octavio|title= Primeras letras (1931–1943)|year= 1988|publisher= Vuelta|page= 114}}</ref>

The magazine ''Barandal'' appeared in August 1931, put together by [[Rafael López Malo]], Salvador Toscano, [[Arnulfo Martínez Lavalle]] and Paz; all of them were not yet in their youth, except for Salvador Toscano, who was a renowned writer thanks to his parents. Rafael López participated in the magazine "Modern" and, along with [[Miguel D. Martínez Rendón]], in the [[movimiento de los agoristas]], although it was more commented on and known by high-school students, over all for his poem, "The Golden Beast". Octavio Paz Solórzano became known in his circle as the occasional author of literary narratives that appeared in the Sunday newspaper add-in [[El Universal (México)|El Universal]], as well as [[Ireneo Paz]] which was the name that gave a street in [[Mixcoac]] identity.