El Laberinto de La Soledad y Otras Obras

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El Laberinto de La Soledad y Otras Obras

by Octavio Paz

4.07 · rating details · 1,337 ratings · 96 reviews

Octavio Paz has written one of the most enduring and powerful works ever created on Mexico and its people, character, and culture. Compared to Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses for its trenchant analysis, this collection contains Octavio Paz's most famous work, "The Labyrinth of Solitude", a beautifully written and deeply felt discourse on Mexico's quest...more

Mass Market Paperbound, 368 pages

Published November 1st 1997 by Penguin Books (first published 1950)

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Sep 28, 2008

brian rated it

· review of another edition

yeah, donkey don, i see no way a twenty year old could get much out of this book... it's so rich and deep that some life lived and a healthy dose of critical thinking is certainly required. paz sets out to do nothing less than try and understand the totality of mexican existence and identity. which, understandably, poses quite a problem. as he puts it:

"The whole history of Mexico, from the Conquest to the Revolution, can be regarded as a search for our own selves, which have bee...moreyeah, donkey don, i see no way a twenty year old could get much out of this book... it's so rich and deep that some life lived and a healthy dose of critical thinking is certainly required. paz sets out to do nothing less than try and understand the totality of mexican existence and identity. which, understandably, poses quite a problem. as he puts it:

"The whole history of Mexico, from the Conquest to the Revolution, can be regarded as a search for our own selves, which have been deformed or disguised by alien institutions, and for a form that will express them."

the opening chapters (in which paz directly investigates the 'mask', the pachuco, the meaning and function of 'fiesta', myth, ritual, etc) are dark and poetic, but also somewhat academic and general... it's only at chapter four 'The Conquest and Colonialism' that, for me, the book takes off into serious five star territory. paz runs through the history of mexico less concerned with chronology and personality than why? why! why? why!

he starts at the beginning: whereas their neighbors to the north obliterated the red man, tossed out the europeans, and were thus placed in the magical blank-slateness of cherrypicking from the european tradition minus the burden of history, the mexicans had a different situation altogether: the spaniards chose rape and colonialism over genocide, thus creating the mexican: a (second class) race of pre-cortesian aztec indian mixed with spanish blood. pepper in catholicism colonialism and counter-reformation and it's problematic... to say the least.

paz follows the line from Independence through the Revolution and beyond with penetrating and profound insight... but the core of all he lays out, the fundament running through his Labyrinth, i think, is that mexico -- as with all individuals and nations and cultures and civilizations -- is not merely the end result of its history, but an ineffable collection and connection of all that they were and are and will be and all they've ever touched or dreamed or discarded. the challenge and necessity is to find that unique form by which to express this...
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Feb 29, 2008

Aduren rated it

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Recommends it for: Everyone

La Chingada es la madre de todos los Mexicanos
The Chingada [translations varies with sentence] is the mother of all Mexicans

I remember I move through Mexico through the years my family lived there after moving from Madrid like a ghost against a compulsory changing Mexico. I traveled the streets where legends are an integral part of both tradition and history just to turn around the corner into a night club. Mexico was a magical land, yet a place of change, or a never moving cha...moreLa Chingada es la madre de todos los Mexicanos
The Chingada [translations varies with sentence] is the mother of all Mexicans

I remember I move through Mexico through the years my family lived there after moving from Madrid like a ghost against a compulsory changing Mexico. I traveled the streets where legends are an integral part of both tradition and history just to turn around the corner into a night club. Mexico was a magical land, yet a place of change, or a never moving change. It seemed to me that at every stage, at every part of Mexico, in every coffee house there is another revolution. Perhaps Carlos Fuentes is right in saying there was the beginning of the Mexican revolution but Mexico has not really seen the end.

Father Peñalosa in particular (a priest) gave me this book not only to find consolation in the feeling of detachment that I had from Mexican culture, a feeling of being left behind or being ignored, because it did not took long for me to have lost the air of a foreigner and having to adapt to a culture so family oriented was hard for me.

Reading Paz was studying Mexican culture. I understood the complexity of a Mexican teenager along with the fake masks we all wear. It allowed me to understand why it is so hard for them to adapt to USA or any other country whose family values are not really indigenous. Peñalosa confessed me that even he had doubts. Mexico Indian values are so deep rooted that when the Conquest of Mexico happened Franciscans had a really hard time converting Mexicas to Catholics. It was until the apparition of the Virgin Mary (it is important to note the differences in appearance of Virgin Mary in Mexico to the ones of Europe) to an Indian that ultimately change the converting to Catholicism exponentially. Here lies the dilemma Paz explains with “hijos de la malinche,” “Sons of the Malinche.”

The Malinche was the translator to Hernán Cortez. She was the one that opened the doors to diplomacy and the conquest of Mexico, this betrayal (one can argue that she wanted the extermination of the Aztecs not of entire Mexico here but that will be for another time) opened a deep injury in the heart of all Mexicans. The mother betrayed the sons and this would be a slow to forget event. Paz then decides all Mexicans are sons of la chingada—the mother, just like la Malinche. Not a mother of flesh and bone but a mythical figure. The chingada is one of the Mexican representations of Maternity, like la ‘llorona’ the long suffering Mexican mother. From here Paz moves to explain Ruben Dario’s study of the word Chingada, this was very funny for me to read, in fact I found it amusing a whole country can move with the saying of just one single word.

Do you want a deep study and self analysis (for Paz) of Mexico? The subjects in the book have never lost depth and are still very relevant in modern México. Do you want to understand more Mexican American Relations? Do you want to know Mexico? If yes then pick the book and read it, read it like you travel, like you have a Mexican woman that you cannot completely understand—then again which women can be completely understood?. A woman that carries a wound deep into herself and a doubt, a guapango and a danzón, a silver bullet and a sword, the love for the god snake and god deer conflicting with the love to a bleeding God.

The reading may be a bit heavy but the end justifies the means. Enjoy.
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Jan 06, 2011

Jonathan Lucero rated it

El laberinto de la Soledad es un libro que Todo Mexicano deberia de leer, ya que en el podemos encontrar un estudio hecho a nuestra sociedad de una manera critica y libre de malos prejuicios o favoritismos.

Octavio Paz nos hace un recuento del porque de muchisimas cosas que nos aquejan como mexicanos, de una manera soberbia nos habre los ojos y nos explica por que somos unos Hijos de la Chingada, por que emigramos a US, por que exiten los Cholos, Pachucos y Chundos, por que solamente mi...more

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Jul 03, 2010

Kerfe rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: essays

I like Paz's open-endedness: he can discuss the problems of Mexico (and the world) without dictating an ultimate solution. He knows that our world-view is a choice, a construct, and that we are lost--this is true even 60 years after the first publication of his essay. Progress "has given us more things but not more being". He believes the task, to be able to live comfortably amidst diversity and contradiction, to allow for freedom, yet provide equality and justice, requires a differ...more

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Nov 12, 2011

Chris rated it

· review of another edition

Just lean back and let the pliable intelligence flow forth, a Latin sage discoursing on the neural constitution of the southernmost chamber of the North American heart and—in the latter essays—its relationship with the more thickly muscled and extensive northern ventricle vigorously pumping a river of aerated blood down into it.

Pobre México, tan lejos de Dios, tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.

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Aug 17, 2010

Will rated it

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My infatuation with the Mexican mask culture must somehow mirror that of the Jungian persona; after all, man is amidst, in the words of José Corostiza, a "wilderness of mirrors."

Paz has created an air of holistic realm, giving psychological, sociological, anthropological, and historical insights and adding the zest of poetry, artistic creation, and the art of love to conclude an interpretation and understanding of Mexican culture so vivid, yet so dark.

The Labyr...moreMy infatuation with the Mexican mask culture must somehow mirror that of the Jungian persona; after all, man is amidst, in the words of José Corostiza, a "wilderness of mirrors."

Paz has created an air of holistic realm, giving psychological, sociological, anthropological, and historical insights and adding the zest of poetry, artistic creation, and the art of love to conclude an interpretation and understanding of Mexican culture so vivid, yet so dark.

The Labyrinth of Solitude presents an argument ranging in dynamics: from the Pachuco gangs to Mexican isolation, from Spanish conquest and colonization to the Revolution and Zapata, from the elaborate fiestas to the everyday masks of the Mexican, from adolescent creativity to feminist philosophy.

The work is dated by such recent history as the Zapatista movement, capitalistic infiltration, and social media, which brings the whole ever more closely in their "search for communion." (Though Paz is referring to love here, is it not common trend to search for love on social networking sites?) To understand the struggle of a culture, in this instance Mexican, and recognize the history of its people can only improve an understanding of the present day. Many of the cultural aspects Paz speaks of will always exist as a part of Mexican life, despite the communal binds of the information age and social media. After all, these are merely tools of our age in which we utilize to offer more of ourselves at the table.

After reading Paz's essay, I've realized more than just the dichotomy of everyday living he reasons that humanity has created. We are caught with everything in between our polar contrasts: birth and death, communion and isolation, structure and freedom. Never does he dwell too much with one extreme, unless he ties in other topics for a holistic view. Often times, arguments are caught in the limbo of validity without proper applications ; Paz never loses sight of his topic, even after interweaving so many micro-points as to give further insight.

I rate this four-stars only because he does serve as a product of his time and place in history and additional knowledge needs to be acquired to see that a few of his arguments are invalid nowadays.(less)

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Nov 11, 2011

Edgar Ornelas rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: latinamerican, non-fiction

This is A MUST for any mexican studying out there. Every school has it on their resumé. The book picture perfectly mexican culture, the pros & cons, the lacks and virtues, the ideas that have remained fixed in the mind of every mexican-born, mexican-raised individual: the genetic mapping of a culture.
I loved the book, I felt somewhat identified & the prose is beautiful and precise. I still don't find Octavio Paz to be the best mexican writer (even if he's the only one with Nobel Prize), nor...more

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May 05, 2009

Ingrid rated it

· review of another edition

This book provides an honest and insighful analysis of the Mexican and Latin American idiosyncracies. The prose is simple, direct, and eloquent. There are some aspects of his analysis that are very particular to Mexicans, yet most of them extend to all of Latin America.

My favorite part of the book (and one of my favorite texts so far) is the appendix, "the dialectics of solutide." In my opinion, this is one of the most profound examinations of human nature in regards to ind...more

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Aug 01, 2011

Ronald Wise rated it

· review of another edition

For a book that was written a half-century ago, this one was amazingly revealing in a number of ways. The history and people of Mexico have always been somewhat outside my comprehension of the world and this book explained much of my confusion. The author's understanding of community and revolution astounded me, and his command of precisely useful compound terms to describe both, left me with a profound respect for the linguistic command of either Paz or his translator Kemp — or both. I wish I h...more

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Aug 12, 2009

Fabian added it · review of another edition

I usually hate to star-rate nonfictional papers.

If you have read a snippet (and let's face it-- you HAVE: or else you know little about the Mexican race) you get the point. The Mexican is a pariah who wears masks to hide inner feelings (sometimes the repressed bursts out...such as in celebrations), and the country borrows dogmas that do not usually sit well with the Mexicans... ergo disorder, even to this day.

Paz has done a socialogical paper right. He gives authenticity ...more

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Feb 06, 2011

Christoph rated it

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Paz wrote an interesting inspection of the Mexican story with the Labyrinth of Solitude. He has crafted a meditation on the contemporary Mexican in two parts. The first part of the book discusses the cultural aspects that contribute to the Mexican as neurotic and the second part discusses the historical and political aspects that contribute to this state. But it is important to note, this is sociological psychology; a mental health evaluation of the Mexican mind. However, Paz does not attemp...morePaz wrote an interesting inspection of the Mexican story with the Labyrinth of Solitude. He has crafted a meditation on the contemporary Mexican in two parts. The first part of the book discusses the cultural aspects that contribute to the Mexican as neurotic and the second part discusses the historical and political aspects that contribute to this state. But it is important to note, this is sociological psychology; a mental health evaluation of the Mexican mind. However, Paz does not attempt an objective analysis for this endeavor. He acts within those very traditions in some cases unwittingly exemplifying them. For instance, Paz in nearly every breath exudes a sort of nihilistic emptiness to his observations. Also, he does not talk about dates and places like a typical western historical text. Instead, he paints the pictures in a continual progression as if a story is being told like a tale.

The cultural idiosyncrasies Paz mainly explores include language, interpersonal behaviors, and traditions that Mexicans employ. In each case, the primary result of this analysis is a pretension of self in the social world. To Paz, the contemporary Mexican hides the internal self through a series of cultural norms and expectations that tradition dictates in the same manner that a mask hides your actual expressions and intentions through the guise of your choosing. The reason for this seems to be these traditions which are founded on false histories carried down from a culture that is not their own.

This leads us to the second part of the book, the historical and cultural tumult that has lead to contemporary Mexican society. On the one hand, the indigenous tradition of myth and organic spontaneity was usurped by a nearly antithetical colonial reformation by the Spaniards. The conquerors the Mayans and other tribes own religion against them to convert them to a new order that so alienated them. But this conversion was essentially a self-repression which caused a sort of bi-polar state built on the colonial model. Under this society, despite the coming age of international revolution, the Mexican Revolution was inevitable and he likes to cite the first of the major 20th Century revolutions. This revolution was also doomed to fail though since the philosophical traditions of liberalism and positivism were grafted onto the interstitial colonial period which merely served then as a buffer from the old world to the contemporary society. But since the replacement philosophy was not congruent with the old world tradition which is in the bones of the contemporary Mexican, it merely makes more stronger the pretension pervading the modern day.

Quite frankly, I find this a very depressing description of the Mexican mind. And there is plenty of self-fulfilling prophecy built into this model. So although there can be little doubt of the picture he paints, I do not feel it is a positive picture to produce. Perhaps it is necessary to identify these series issues in the Mexican mind if healing is to begin. But it seems in modern day Mexico, perhaps it is more a story of "two Mexicos" with the south being the more indigenous and authentic while Mexico City and the north is more tied into the post-revolutionary world modeled after the American tradition preceding it.

The fact is Paz is a Pragmatist and his analysis even with its almost intense nihilism can be an optimistic one (as the final chapter shows, but not without its depressing view of love). Indeed Pragmatism probably most closely aligns with the pre-colonial Mexican more than any other, yet he never truly makes that connection. His analysis is mostly a critique of all the failed intellectuals or revolutionaries and all the counter-productive terms and social behaviors without ever coming out and saying the very basis of this analysis is the saving grace. And perhaps this is why Mexico is more divided then ever before. Without a progressive, socialist example (the Zapatistas?) of what Mexico could be by rejecting the outside influences which destroyed it in transforming it, the masses languish under an order they do not identify with and are not supported by. Meanwhile, the situation is reaching a boil now more than ever, as the gangs of Mexico which ultimately can be viewed as the populist, pre-colonial expression of social organization literally at war with the powers of state which are the modern expression of the positivist, liberal order the revolution put in control. A pragmatist can find the best of both of these two adversaries to be the basis of a healed Mexican social order. But as long as we return to dialectics as our description of the model, progress is no where in site. (less)

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Jan 30, 2011

Michal rated it

· review of another edition

Octavio Paz mastered the role of the one of the most trenchant essayist of the 20th century. Leaving his coat of poet in the corner his gives reader incredible journey to the sole of Mexican nation, more precisely to the soul of Mexican and thus man and his solitude.
With his tremendous skills he analysis Mexican culture and Mexican nations. Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) is perceived from European view as totally hardly to be taken and understood, however Octavio Paz wrote excell...more

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Dec 15, 2011

chris rated it

· review of another edition

Paz dissects Mexican politics and culture. There were some interesting sections of this book, but he says the same things over and over again, describing Mexico as a palimpsest where Spanish Catholicism overlays itself on Aztec religious theocracy.
There were also some parts of the book I did not care about, such as long discussions of the history of Mexico's many revolutions and a critique of each regime.
Also, Paz states often as generalized facts things that, while he may be trying...more

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Apr 01, 2010

Zulma marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: latina-magazine-suggestions

Paz's collection of nine essays helped to redefine Mexican identity. The Labrynth of Solitude examines and explores Mexican history beginning with Pre-Columbian culture and comes to the conclusion that, "Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition." A must read for anyone who has ever looked to the past in search of what the future may hold.

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Aug 11, 2011

Amida Lechuga rated it

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This is a book that will not tell you a story, but it will help you understand what is behind every mexican. I love it and I am thankful that it exists.

Este es un libro que no te cuenta una historia, pero te ayuda a comprender lo que se encuentra detrás de cada mexicano. Me encantó, y estoy agradecida por su existencia.

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Sep 23, 2009

Gerardo rated it

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It is really exciting to read Paz because he captures the real meaning of "solitude." for Mexicans, this word is a whole world, an old and new experience of how to see their culture, yet to understand their pre-colombian origins...it is a book that teaches you to understand the difference between Meztizo and Criollo...I love reading it.

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Dec 17, 2008

Yasmin rated it

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What a delightful and illuminating read. There is something deeply satisfying about having an author clearly and beautifully articulate what you often sense, and then further explore it. This book is a gem. Paz's ability to marry romanticism with politics is delicious and inspiring. It is a contender for my favorite book.

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Oct 08, 2011

Victoria Haf rated it

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Había tratado de leer este libro antes y hace poco lo vi en la biblioteca, pensé que quizá ahora que puedo ver más claramente las diferencias culturales sería mejor leerlo.
Tiene ideas interesantes aunque es bastante deprimente, me gusta el análisis social que hace sobre nuestro uso de palabras, al parecer las malas palabras, las palabras "tabú" siempre son las que dicen más sobre cómo somos, sobre lo que tememos y sobre lo que queremos ser.

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Jan 23, 2009

Andee rated it

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at first the book started out being completely enthralling and poetic. This is a thick book...it eventually lost my interest, but i had to continue to read it for a college class. I believe it deserves another try! i do keep many of the poetic quotes that i wrote down!

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May 18, 2009

Aldobas rated it

· review of another edition

Lo estoy leyendo en español pero los comentarios son más abundantes y ricos aquí con la edición en inglés. Nunca lo leí en mi juventud escolar y lo hago ahora con fascinación. Es de aquellos libros que pueden ser favoritos durante años.

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Nov 19, 2009

Kristin rated it

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Recommends it for: Laura

Shelves: spanish, economics-sociology, history-politics

This was a third reading of this text- I had read it once during my undergrad years, once in graduate school, and now after working with Mexicans for a year and a half. Challenging reading, but definitely worth the work. Thankfully, I understand a bit more with every reading. What a dense, intricate, insightful essay! A writer with such complexity clearly deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I especially recommend the last chapter of El Laberinto ("La dialectica de la sole...more

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Aug 03, 2011

Susu added it · review of another edition

Shelves: import-visual-bookshelf

Schlaue Essays rund um Südamerika - allerdings kriegt der über die Allerseelen-Fiesta angesichts der Influenza in Mexiko City gerade einen etwas morbiden Einschlag

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Jun 06, 2011

Ivonne Aviles added it · review of another edition

I READ TIS BOOK IN ELEVNTH GRADE IN HIGH SCHOOL IT REALLY CHANGED WHO AM HOW I VIEW THINGS AND PEOPLE. LOTS OF HISTORY AND THEORIES I LOVED IT.

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Nov 02, 2011

Zhi Jian rated it

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An extremely thought-provoking book on Mexican cultures. Simply love the way he simulate the reader thinking about Mexico.

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Aug 31, 2011

Ammi Emergency is currently reading it

Freakin good! And I'm ranking my comprehension at about 40%. Read "Mascaras Mexicanas" and am reading the last long essay now.

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Nov 30, 2008

Mr. C'DeBaca rated it

· review of another edition

A physio-historical-psychological grasp of the Mexican people in illuminating and fulfilling poetical prose.

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Jul 14, 2009

Dai827 rated it

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A beautiful introspective to the Mexican society written in the US by Octavio Paz... Still true today!

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Aug 13, 2011

Kevin Tole rated it

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Shelves: latin-american

Have to say that I had to put this to one aside. I was expecting something different. This is intense - and I would also suggest slightly out of date.
Some interesting ideas and opinions though but he appears extremely down on his country and compatriots.

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Jul 29, 2010

Alma rated it

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Releyendo este texto siempre encuentro cosas de mi ser mexicano que antes no había visto...

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Oct 08, 2009

Rosy rated it

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¿Alguna otra prueba de que es el pais mas surrealista del mundo?
¡¡Me gusto mucho!!

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Awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity."

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Quotes from El Laberinto de La Sol...

“It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.” — 12 people liked it

“Ser uno mismo es, siempre, llegar a ser ese otro que somos y que llevamos escondido en nuestro interior, más que nada como promesa o posibilidad de ser.” — 11 people liked it

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