I like the humour of Octavio Paz’s banquet speech opening lines... “I shall be brief - but, since time is elastic, I am afraid you are going to hear me for one hundred and eighty very long seconds.” He sets a tone much different than that of other Nobel Prize winners we have encountered to date. Perhaps it is the fact that we are now nearing an era where things were a little less serious and humour is accepted in our society... even during important ceremony speeches! We would most likely never see Mistral open his banquet speech with a one liner.
Reading Paz was not the hardest assignment to date for this class. The split of the works was easy to comprehend. Language and flow was also easy to read and relate. The three essays that were read each had their own unique characteristics. Even before reading “Mascaras Mexicanas” I thought of masks. While reading, it’s learned that Paz believes Mexican people hind behind a mask in defence. Obviously not literally, but this got me thinking a bit. Does Paz believe that Mexicans need to hide behind masks? And why so? What does the defence mechanism signify? Uneducated? Lower social class? Or is that Mexican people do not like to be in the lime-light, they don’t like to bring attention upon themselves and in that instance, like to “hide” or sort of be in the background?
With the way Paz opened up his banquet acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize, I’d believe he’d done anything then hide behind a mask. He is extremely forward, includes a bit of humour and at one point, bombards his listeners with a million questions. If he classifies Mexicans as people hiding behind masks, he definitely doesn’t include himself in this cluster.
An obvious theme of soledad throughout the reading... as the work is even titled “El Laberinto de la Soledad” which I am still trying to find meaning for. The title translates in English to “The Labyrinth of Solitude”. Any ideas? Is he classifying Mexico as a whole as part of this solitude? I would relate Paz’s work to that of Asturias in a way that its topics and themes encompass that of history. Paz discusses Mexican history and his perspective and view on things during his time.
I see a labyrinth as a journey. And according to Paz the Mexican has felt solitude since the God's abandoned the Aztecs. The journey of the Mexican, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteIt is true that Paz presentes himself through his speech as a very open and personable kind-of fellow, how do we know that this is not a mask? I think that most people carry their own kinds of masks that manifest themselves in different ways. It is impossible to know whether the persona that Paz presents to us is the same as the one that drinks with his friends - and does it really matter if it is a mask or not if that is how he chooses to appear?
ReplyDeleteDo you think he acts this way to serve as a way to crush the stereotype that he in a sense creates in his literature??
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