The work left him enough time to write prodigiously, and during the course of his career he published dozens of volumes of poetry and prose.

In 1946 he was offered a post as Mexico’s cultural attaché to France, and served in his country’s diplomatic corps for the next two decades. He returned to Mexico with a mission to popularize the Spanish Republican cause, and spent time in both Berkeley, California, and New York City over the next few years as a graduate student, journalist, and translator.

In Spain Paz was drawn into the raging Civil War and joined a brigade fighting the armies of fascist dictator Francisco Franco. When he sent some of his work to famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the senior writer gave it a favorable review and encouraged Paz to attend a congress of leftist-thinking writers in Spain. While attending law school, however, Paz found himself drawn to leftist politics. His first volume of poetry, Luna silvestre, appeared in 1933. Back in Mexico City, the family’s economic situation declined, but as a teen, Paz found increasing success for his poems and short stories in local publications. Many Zapatistas were forced into exile when their leader was slain a few years later, and the Paz family relocated to Los Angeles, California, for a time. His father served as assistant to Emiliano Zapata, the leader of a popular revolution in 1911. Paz was born in 1914 near Mexico City, into a prominent family with ties to Mexico’s political, cultural, and military elite. According to his obituary in Americas, “Paz’s literary career helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality.” His passing was mourned as the end of an era for Mexico. “What began as a slow, almost microscopic examination of self and of a single cultural tradition widens unexpectedly,” Duran continued, “becoming universal without sacrificing its unique characteristic.” Paz won the Nobel Prize in 1990, and died eight years later at the age of 84.

Although Mexico figures prominently in Paz’s work-one of his best-known books, The Labyrinth of Solitude, for example, is a comprehensive portrait of Mexican society- Los Angeles Timescontributor Jascha Kessler called Paz “truly international.” World Literature Today’s Manuel Duran felt that Paz’s “exploration of Mexican existential values permit him to open a door to an understanding of other countries and other cultures” and thus appeal to readers of diverse backgrounds. Mexican author Octavio Paz enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a master poet and essayist.

The labyrinth of solitude octavio paz