PAZ AND THE CRISIS OF LOVE
Author:
Date: Friday, October 12, 1990
Page: 18
Section: EDITORIAL PAGE
In awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mexico's Octavio Paz, the
Swedish Academy of Letters has chosen well, selecting a poet, philosopher and
essayist of formidable intellect and talent whose work ranks among the very
best produced during this century.
To describe Paz merely as an eminent writer, however, would be to unfairly
limit him. He is a latter-day Renaissance man, a less flamboyant version of
the French writer-soldier-statesman Andre Malraux. Paz is a diplomat,
journalist and belletrist, a man who has moved with equal ease in foreign
embassies, literary salons and the volatile world of Mexican political
journalism.
In an interview with the Globe in Cambridge two years ago, Paz quoted the
French poet Baudelaire to describe his view of literary and political
criticism: "If a writer's criticism is to be good, it must be passionate. Any
criticism must be partial. Impartial criticism is for academics."
He has never felt uncomfortable because of the competing demands of his
life as a journalist, diplomat and poet-essayist-biographer. "Before I was a
diplomat I was a journalist. It is a great exercise to have to write something
every day. Diplomacy for me was a kind of journalism; I had to write reports,"
he said.
Much of Paz's poetry makes the point that people cannot integrate
themselves until they learn how to relate to others, how to love.
He has spoken eloquently about the relationship of politics to love: ''Love
and politics are the two extremes of human relations, the public and the
intimate, the plaza and the alcove, the group and the couple.
"Because of this, the multiplication of forced labor camps and the threat
of atomic extermination are inseparable from the crisis of love in the 20th
century. They are symptoms of the same illness. If our world is to recover its
health, the cure should be dual: Political regeneration includes the
resurrection of love."
CLAFFE;10/11 CORCOR;10/12,21:03 EPAZ
|
