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
The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how history and art are perceived in light of revolutionary change and progress.
Octavio Paz suggests that the essence of modernity is rooted in rebellion and upheaval, epitomized by the French Revolution as a symbol of transformative progress. He questions the connection between the violent changes that drive history and their applicability to the realm of art, suggesting a potential disconnect between societal turmoil and artistic expression.
Themes
RevoltRevolutionProgressChangeArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social movements, one might quote Paz to emphasize the historical context of change.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes →By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Octavio PazRead
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.
Octavio PazRead
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.
Octavio PazRead
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.
Octavio PazRead
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.
Octavio PazRead
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