The Passing of Octavio Paz, 1914-1998

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

Octavio Paz (1914–1998), perhaps Mexico’s most distinguished writer,
is one of the few Latin American writers to win the Nobel Prize for
Literature. Best known for his poetry and his essays (especially The
Labyrinth of Solitude), Paz has gained a worldwide reputation as well as
a host of admirers and followers in his own country. One of his most
renowned disciples is Adolfo Castaсуn, literary critic, poet, fiction
writer, translator, and publisher. The author of 20 books, Castaсуn
follows in the footsteps of Paz and other important pensadores
(thinkers), such as Alfonso Reyes, José Vasconcelos, Samuel Ramos, who
are concerned with Mexico’s national character and identity, and with
the evolution of Mexican culture and history.

Castaсуn’s long friendship with Paz, and his contributions to the
master’s cultural-political magazine Vuelta, provides the inspiration
for this poem, an elegiac tribute to Paz. The Passing of Octavio Paz
also tells us a great deal about the emotions and ideas that motivate
Castaсуn’s own literary efforts. On a wider scale, the poem is also
about the passing on of tradition and values from the past to the
present, as the translator points out in her useful four-page
introduction. That past, as Octavio Paz had demonstrated in his own
work, includes not only the Spanish colonial period but also the
preconquest cultures of the indigenous races, as well as the current
drive to modernize regardless of the harmful effects on the environment.

This bilingual version of the poem will be of literary interest to
non-Spanish speakers; specialists will want to compare the English
transliteration with the original (over all, it holds up well). Yet
another valuable translation of Latin American poetry from the
Toronto-based Beatriz Zeller, with more to come.