Octavio Paz claims in this essential work that the two painters who had the greatest influence on the twentieth century were Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. If that conjunction surprises at first, Paz makes a convincing case with his analysis and by contrasting the two artists. "I have linked their two names," he writes, "because it seems to me that each of them has in his own way succeeded in defining our age: the former by what he affirms; the latter by what he negates, by his explorations." Considering Duchamp's career and writings from his scandalous "Nude Descending a Staircase" in 1913 to his subsequent investigations, from his "Large Glass" and kinetic art to the Readymades and "physiques amusantes" ("comic calculations"), Paz offers a highly personal assessment, exploring the apparent contradictions and seeming enigmas with the insight and lucidity that characterized all his writing.
When this book was first published, "Publishers Weekly" called it an "extraordinary and indispensable book" and said: "Paz may have come closer to Duchamp's essence as a philosopher of spiritual freedom than any critic to date."

Nobel Prize-winner Octavio Paz offers a dazzling mind journey to the sources of poetry. Poet, diplomat, writer, philosopher, hailed as an "intellectual literary one-man band" by the New York Times Book Review, Nobel Prize-winner Octavio Paz was a key figure in the Latin American Literary Renaissance and in world literature. In this entrancing work, part prose-poem and part rumination on the origins of language and the antic, erotic, sacred nature of poetry, Paz takes inspiration from Hanuman, the red-faced monkey chief and ninth grammarian of Hindu mythology. On a journey to the temple city of Galta in India-which Paz finds partially ruined in a leaf-filled countryside surrounded by forbidding hills-Hanuman's mythical encounters serve as the springboard for the poet's speculations on all manners of things, from movement and fixity to meaning and identity, the reality behind language, and the nature of nature. Images of the holy city, complete with the marauding monkeys for which it is known, constantly obtrude on his musings. Perhaps the most poetic of Paz's prose works, The Monkey Grammarian is visual: every page is rich in images, of palaces and temples, pilgrims and sadhus, and the monkey god himself. Paz's probing, crystalline prose makes this an unforgettable voyage of the mind.

Presented in Eliot Weinberger's excellent new translation with the Spanish texts en face, this is the 1957 poem "that definitively established Paz as a major international figure" (Sagetrieb). Written as a single cyclical sentence (at the end of the poem the first six lines are written again), Sunstone is a tour de force of momentum. It takes as its structural basis the circular Aztec calendar, which measured the synodic period of the planet Venus (584 days the number of lines of Sunstone). But, as The New Republic noted, "this esoteric correlative design...does not circumscribe its subject. It is] a lyrically discursive exploration of time and memory, of erotic love, or art and writing."

" My first trip to the seashore,

one wave tore away from the sea. "

"She caught my hand, and we raced

away together across the sand. "

Based on a story by Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz, this delightful tale of a boy and his pet wave is charmingly retold with beautiful new illustrations. See if you can find the hidden cat, dog, mouse, whale, and sea horse in almost every picture!

Ages 3 - 8

""

As well as the nine essays on his country's psyche and history that make up 'The Labyrinth of Solitude', this highly acclaimed volume also includes 'The Other Mexico', Paz's heartfelt response to the government massacre of over three hundred students in Mexico City in 1968, and 'Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude', in which he discusses his famous work with Claude Fell. The two final essays contain further reflections on the Mexican government.

B+En 1957B; , escribe Octavio Paz, B+hice algunas traducciones de breves textos de clasicos chinos. El formidable obstaculo de la lengua no me detuvo y, sin respeto por la filologia, traduje del ingles y del frances. Me parecio que esos textos debian traducirse al espanol no solo por su belleza -construcciones a un tiempo geometricas y aereas, fantasias templadas siempre por una sonrisa ironica- sino tambien porque cada uno de ellos destila, por decirlo asi, sabiduria. Me movio un impulso muy natural: compartir el placer que habia experimentado al leerlos... Creo que Chuang-TzuB; , como los otros poetas que recoge esta breve antologia, B+no solo es un filosofo notable sino un gran poeta. Es el maestro de la paradoja y del humor, puentes colgantes entre el concepto y la iluminacion sin palabrasB; .

The final legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Labyrinth of Solitude
Itinerary records the evolution of the political ideas of Octavio Paz, the great Mexican writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. It is an intellectual autobiography, in a sense, but also a sentimental and even passionate one. In his thoughts Paz realized the past was inseparable from the present. And so he tells the story of his journey through time, from youth to adulthood. It is not a straight line, nor is it a circle; it is instead a spiral that turns ceaselessly over, bringing into view a time seventy years in the past and the actions of today. It is the final work by a great thinker and a magnificent writer.

"Brimming with insight, thoughtfulness, and sincerity . . . a poetic road map to the past, present, and future of love" is how Kirkus Reviews praised The Double Flame, Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz's exploration of the intimate connection between sex, eroticism, and love. Illuminating and provocative, these essays examine everything from taboo to repression, providing an accessible, engaging discourse on what Paz calls our "share of paradise".

The speech delivered by Paz in acceptance of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, in which he discusses gratitude, separateness, and modernity. Published in a handsome bilingual edition. Translated by Anthony Stanton.

Engrossing essays that reflect the author's vast and subtle knowledge of the world. Topics range from the religious rites of the Aztecs to modern american painting, from Eastern art and religion to love and eroticism. Translated by Helen Lane.

Written with a poet's sensibility and a diplomat's sense of history, these essays view a contemporary world poised between the upheaval of the 1960s and the uncertainties of the 1980s. "Essays at once eloquent and slashing, urgent and erudite" (Publishers Weekly). Translated by Helen Lane.

"Gabriel Zaid . . . is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him--you'll see."--Paul Berman

The first appearance in English of the poetry of Gabriel Zaid, this book comprises forty-two poems (in both English and the original Spanish), translated by a variety of English-speaking poets. Renowned in Mexico as one of his country's leading writers, Zaid has published two books in English, "So Many Books" and "The Secret of Fame" (both from Paul Dry Books).

Late Again
Translated by Eliot Weinberger

"It's so hard to coordinate:
one hand over your head
like a halo
the other
perpendicular
to your navel."

"Nevertheless it's a universal law:
people begin soaping
at their bellies
while other worlds
turn around in their heads."

"Think with your stomach,
said the happy Buddha.
But we
ruminate with our heads."

Gabriel Zaid's poetry, essays, social and cultural criticism, and business writings have been widely published throughout the Spanish-speaking world. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico, with the artist Basia Batorska, her paintings, three cats, and ten thousand books. Paul Dry Books has published his "So Many Books" and "The Secret of Fame."

Octavio Paz has long been acknowledged as Mexico's foremost writer and critic. In this international classic, Paz has written one of the most enduring and powerful works ever created on Mexico and its people, character, and culture. Compared to Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses for its trenchant analysis, this collection contains his most famous work, "The Labyrinth of Solitude," a beautifully written and deeply felt discourse on Mexico's quest for identity that gives us an unequalled look at the country hidden behind "the mask." Also included are "The Other Mexico," "Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude," "Mexico and the United States," and "The Philanthropic Ogre," all of which develop the themes of the title essay and extend his penetrating commentary to the United States and Latin America.

In The Bow and the Lyre Octavio Paz, one of the most important poets writing in Spanish, presents his sustained reflections on the poetic phenomenon and on the place of poetry in history and in our personal lives. It is written in the same prose style that distinguishes The Labyrinth of Solitude. The Bow and the Lyre will serve as an important complement to Paz's poetry.

Paz's discussions of the different aspects of the poetic phenomenon are not limited to Spanish and Spanish American literature. He is almost as apt to choose an example from Homer, Vergil, Blake, Whitman, Rimbaud as he is from Lope de Vega, Jimenez, Dario, Neruda. In writing these essays, he draws on his vast storehouse of knowledge, revealing a world outlook of ample proportions. In reading these essays, we share the observations of a searching, original, highly cultivated mind.

Octavio Paz, 1990 Nobel Prize winner, declares that his many nonfiction books on the subject of India are only footnotes to his India poems. Those collected here cover more than 40 years of Paz's many and various commitments to Indiaas Mexican ambassador, student of Indian philosophy, and, above all, poet. "Paz's poetry is a seismograph of our century's turbulence, a crossroads where East meets West".PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Octavio Paz launches a far-ranging excursion into the "incestuous and tempestuous" relations between modern poetry and the modern epoch. From the perspective of a Spanish-American and a poet, he explores the opposite meanings that the word "modern" has held for poets and philosophers, artists, and scientists. Tracing the beginnings of the modern poetry movement to the pre-Romantics, Paz outlines its course as a contradictory dialogue between the poetry of the Romance and Germanic languages. He discusses at length the unique character of Anglo-American "modernism" within the avant-garde movement, and especially vis-a-vis French and Spanish-American poetry. Finally he offers a critique of our era's attitude toward the concept of time, affirming that we are at the "twilight of the idea of the future." He proposes that we are living at the end of the avant-garde, the end of that vision of the world and of art born with the first Romantics.

The first major book of short prose poetry in Spanish, Eagle or Sun? (Aguila o Sol?) exerted an enormous influence on modern Latin American writing. Written in 1949-50 by Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz, Eagle or Sun? has as its mythopoeic "place" Mexico a country caught up in its pre-Columbian past, the world of modern imperialism, and an apocalyptic future foretold by the Aztec calendar. Indeed, three personae of the book--the goddess Itzapaplotl, the prophet clerk, the poet are manifestations of the threefold aspects of the land. Paz himself explains: "Eagle or Sun? is an exploration of Mexico, yes, but at the same time, and above all, it is an exploration of the relations between language and the poet, reality and language, the poet and history."

Configurations was his first major collection to be published in this country, and includes in their entirety Sun Stone (1957) and Blanco (1967). Paz himself translated many of the poems from the Spanish. Some distinguished contributors to this bilingual edition include, among others, Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp. Denise Levertov, and Muriel Rukeyser. Paz's poems, although rooted in the mythology of South America and his native Mexico, nevertheless have an international background, transfiguring the images of the contemporary world. Powerful, angry, erotic, they voice the desires and rage of a generation.

In Conjunctions and Disjunctions, Octavio Paz offers what he calls his "rough draft" for a history of man, which is a history of human nature rather than of men or of cultures and civilizations. For Paz, this history is grounded in the polarity of being and the flux and balance of life. It can be read in the dualities by which we live, the pairs of contrasting concepts or signs by which all cultures organize themselves--body and soul or mind, life and death, eros and thanatos, the sex organs and the face. His book is an exploration of those dualities over time and across traditions, brought together with provocative erudition and a poet's scintillating insight. Ranging through Eastern and Western religions, ancient and contemporary civilizations, and subjects as diverse as history, politics, science, and literature, Paz cites saints, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychoanalysts as he teases out the correspondences and contrasts that comprise this history. The final section of his book seeks to assess not only what this world of contrasting signs represents, but where it is headed--what energies in man will help ensure our future.

Mariano Fortuny, scion of an artistic dynasty, inventor, photographer, and costumier of genius, was a touchstone of the Belle Epoque: he built stages for Wagner, designed dresses for Sarah Bernhardt, and was a crucial inspiration for Proust's philosophy of memory. The list of his illustrious acquaintances range from D'Annunzio to Chaplin, from Caruso to Isadora Duncan, and in this, the first novel by Spain's Pere Gimferrer to be translated into English, they gather like actors on a stage, in Venetian palaces, in Parisian apartments, and in the village squares of the small towns of Catalonia, forming a historical tableau of the vigor and dissipation of Europe's artistic demimonde from the end of the Third Republic to the outbreak of the Second World War.

These sixteen essays on art and literature cover a wide range of topics including American painting, the religious rites of the Aztecs, Marxism, linguistics and Picasso. He penetrates the meaning of modernism, gnosticism and the effect of Edith Piaf on pygmies. Also analyzed is American "cuisine", tantric Buddhism, the notion of nationhood, some haikus and manners good and bad. The author, as a poet, also considers his colleagues: Valery, Vasconcelos, Pound, Wallace, Stevens, Borges, Goethe, Sartre and Gide, amongst others. The work is presented here in translation from the author's original version. By the same author: "The Labyrinth of Solitude".