Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
Octavio PazRead
We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Paz reflects on the cultural and historical separation between contemporary Mexicans and their pre-Columbian heritage.
In this quote, Octavio Paz describes the disconnect that modern Mexicans, including those of indigenous ancestry, feel towards their pre-Columbian roots. He suggests that this past is not only a relic of the distant past but also represents a significant cultural gap that affects identity and perception in the present. This sentiment highlights the complexities of cultural heritage and the challenges of reconciling contemporary life with ancient traditions.
Themes
MexicoCultureHeritageIdentityPre-Columbian
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about cultural identity in a university lecture on Latin American history.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes →By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
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The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
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Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
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If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
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Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
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