An Essay on the Modernism of Octavio Paz
An Essay on the Modernism of Octavio Paz

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses an important essay by O. Paz `The Labyrinth of Solitude' from several points of view - moral, philosophical-historical or cultural-anthropological. The author uses the notion of national identity for a wider explanation of mythological and universal interpretation of human existence which enables Paz "to become someone else within one's own self" on a psychoanalytical basis. In this sense he observes especially his bonds with German Romantic poetry and philosophy (Hegel, Goethe, etc.). As he points out, from a literary point of view it is important that Paz goes beyond formalist and structuralist principles towards catching individual signs of the spiritual culture of nations (cf. his book `Shadows of Works', 1996). To a considerable extent it enables us to fruitfully connect determinism with dialectics, scholarly view with the poetic view one whereby, he also fulfils a deeper methodological framework of the term historical poetics.

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