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Verbindungen, Trennungen. Ein Essay.
One of the great minds of the 20th century explores the duality of human nature in all its variations in cultures around the world.pFascinated by the polarity of being, Paz has boldly attempted to write a ""history of man."" Unlike countless other histories that simply chronicle civilizations and cultures, Paz's work explores the human heart, the meaning of human nature, and the duality that exists within all beings, and, it would seem, all things. Ranging across cultures and centuries, he here explores opposites and contradictions that brilliantly illuminate our view of the ancient, and modern, world.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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About the author
Octavio Paz
547 books1,417 followersOctavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature ("for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.")
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 5, 2013
The rating I gave here is just because I had to give something. Anyway, what is the premise of this, to give any rating at all? What is the structure of my thought when I'm doing this? how much of it did seep into me through the culture I lived in? how much of it should I even question? Why? or...
I started the book having no clue what it had, ended pretty much in a similar state, albeit with some revelations. The writing style was intense, it was like a rigorous Mathematics book, only there were words instead of symbols, words that deal with symbols. I'm pretty much certain I haven't understood the book enough, but it is a good thing to at least realize that such books exist. It was really good to see the way my entire thought process-that I was so comfortable with all my life-was questioned.
I started the book having no clue what it had, ended pretty much in a similar state, albeit with some revelations. The writing style was intense, it was like a rigorous Mathematics book, only there were words instead of symbols, words that deal with symbols. I'm pretty much certain I haven't understood the book enough, but it is a good thing to at least realize that such books exist. It was really good to see the way my entire thought process-that I was so comfortable with all my life-was questioned.
February 26, 2018
“Art is the opposite of dissipation, in the physical and spiritual sense of the word: it is concentration, desire that seeks incarnation.” Octavio Paz, Nobel Laureate, is a master of dazzling and dizzying prose. His observations seem to come from a man, imbued with the culture of this world, commenting on the world from the mythical point of view. The effect is supremely insightful and artistic.
Paz grounds himself often in the animal aspects of life. “If we wish to find traces of the fusion of the face and the sex organs in the history of Spanish poetry, it is best to leave Gongora and Quevedo and seek another poet: Juan Ruiz, the ‘Archpriest of Hita.’ It will be said that I am forgetting, among others, Lope de Vega, Fernando de Rojas, and the great Francisco Delicado. I am not forgetting them. It is just that after the sumptuous and terrible ceremonies of gold, excrement, and death, I must go out and breathe the brisk and euphoric air of the fourteenth century.” Those are strange juxtapositions to make in an essay when addressing towering literary figures. Similarly, “Capitalism and Protestantism, the Counter Reformation and Spanish poetry, Moslem mausoleums and Indian temples: why is it that no one has ever written a general history of the relations between the body and the soul, life and death, the sex organs and the face? Doubtless for the same reason that no one has written a history of man. We have, instead, histories of men, that is to say, of civilizations and cultures. This is not surprising: to date no one knows what ‘human nature’ really is. And we do not know because our ‘nature’ is inseparable from culture, and culture is cultures.” I’m not sure what to make of such statements, I confess.
When he grounds himself a bit more, he can be profound. “The associations of signs, whether it be strong or weak, is what distinguishes us humans from the other animals. Rather, it is what makes us complex, problematical, and unpredictable beings.” Symbolism is what helps to define us. What are the impacts of language as symbol? “The scientific solipsism is a variant of the linguistic solipsism. Wittgenstein said of this latter that it was legitimate and coherent: ‘The world is my world: this is shown by the fact that the limits of language stand for the limits of my world…I am my world.’” In contrast to those that paint Paz as a bastion of socialist support, “Socialism, which had ceased being synonymous with historical reason, has also ceased being synonymous with justice. It has lost its philosophical dignity and its moral halo. The so-called ‘historical laws’ have disappeared completely. The rationality inherent in the historical process has proven to be merely one more myth. Or, better: a variation of the myth of linear time.”
These essays are not easy to read. Paz’s mind wanders widely across cultures and time, and delves deeply into the esoteric. That said, what is represented is the thought of a master of prose and poetry. This volume is worth the read.
See my other reviews here!
Paz grounds himself often in the animal aspects of life. “If we wish to find traces of the fusion of the face and the sex organs in the history of Spanish poetry, it is best to leave Gongora and Quevedo and seek another poet: Juan Ruiz, the ‘Archpriest of Hita.’ It will be said that I am forgetting, among others, Lope de Vega, Fernando de Rojas, and the great Francisco Delicado. I am not forgetting them. It is just that after the sumptuous and terrible ceremonies of gold, excrement, and death, I must go out and breathe the brisk and euphoric air of the fourteenth century.” Those are strange juxtapositions to make in an essay when addressing towering literary figures. Similarly, “Capitalism and Protestantism, the Counter Reformation and Spanish poetry, Moslem mausoleums and Indian temples: why is it that no one has ever written a general history of the relations between the body and the soul, life and death, the sex organs and the face? Doubtless for the same reason that no one has written a history of man. We have, instead, histories of men, that is to say, of civilizations and cultures. This is not surprising: to date no one knows what ‘human nature’ really is. And we do not know because our ‘nature’ is inseparable from culture, and culture is cultures.” I’m not sure what to make of such statements, I confess.
When he grounds himself a bit more, he can be profound. “The associations of signs, whether it be strong or weak, is what distinguishes us humans from the other animals. Rather, it is what makes us complex, problematical, and unpredictable beings.” Symbolism is what helps to define us. What are the impacts of language as symbol? “The scientific solipsism is a variant of the linguistic solipsism. Wittgenstein said of this latter that it was legitimate and coherent: ‘The world is my world: this is shown by the fact that the limits of language stand for the limits of my world…I am my world.’” In contrast to those that paint Paz as a bastion of socialist support, “Socialism, which had ceased being synonymous with historical reason, has also ceased being synonymous with justice. It has lost its philosophical dignity and its moral halo. The so-called ‘historical laws’ have disappeared completely. The rationality inherent in the historical process has proven to be merely one more myth. Or, better: a variation of the myth of linear time.”
These essays are not easy to read. Paz’s mind wanders widely across cultures and time, and delves deeply into the esoteric. That said, what is represented is the thought of a master of prose and poetry. This volume is worth the read.
See my other reviews here!
November 17, 2022
Paz explores classic issues of esotericism and the relationship between religion and morality. Tying together a study of Hinduism and Buddhism, Chinese and Christian religion, he follows a generally semiotic and psychoanalytic line that feels similar to other mid-20th century writing. It’s enjoyable to read through some of his thoughts on philosophy, though I think he is hesitant to make strong claims and lay out any serious system of thought. The book is more like a comparative analysis of different cultures, and it could be accused of being surface-level. Enjoyable, still.
April 16, 2016
I found it incredibly predictable at times and with the patterns of Paz's thought, but also dazzling in its novelty and insight. Paz writes from a Neo-Freudian/Marxist/Poet/Anthropologist. Not too uncommon a mix in some senses, but his it is hyper-fluid in his explorations. I could hardly put it down. Its insights were such that I got overly excited by the thought provocation power of this book. It gets weird, esp. if you aren't familiar with cultural anthropology or Freudian or Marxist criticism (viz. if you have no exposure or stomach to higher or literary criticism and its logics) you may have a hard time tracking or enjoying. He'll compare the Western obsession with work and money as coming from the Protestants, alchemy, and excrement with the Tantric traditions in India and their eating of excrement. Is it strange and fantastic? Yes. But also choc-full of information and rich analysis about Buddhism, Confucius, and Hindu thought.
July 12, 2015
An interesting book although the presentation is far from neat and is mostly cluttered. The body, non body, soul, spirit, eroticism, the path followed by many religions are attempted from a depth but conveyed in bits and pieces.It is a fragmented narration giving the impression that there was a word count pressure on the author.The comparisons with the tantras of Hindu, Buddhist and Tao are described in its basic difference but lacks depth. Over all, it is a good book.
March 21, 2012
One of my all-time favourites. It was mistakenly put in the "new fiction" rack at the Kitchener Public Library, circa 2001. The exploration of the differences of Eastern and Western appreciation of duality shapes my understanding of the world, to this day. Highly recommended!
June 14, 2021
3 1/2 stars
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February 7, 2026“The spirit of all men, in all times, is the theater of the dialogue between the sign ‘body’ and the sign ‘nonbody.’ This dialogue is man.”
So it follows that this book is nothing less than an attempt to write a history of man. To do so, Paz adopts an interrogatory structure of conjunctions and disjunctions. Languages may duel and dissolve, civilizations may come and go, but anything organized is organized on a set of ideas, and every idea has its opposite. Some are more important than others; to Paz, the most important of all is body/nonbody—ie spirit, soul, the noncorporeal essential. Under this umbrella: man himself, the afterlife, pleasure, sin, fulfillment, rot, death, and much else.
In these pairings of opposites lies a tension, and in that tension, a delicate balance. Too much opposition between them and the union is destroyed; too much affinity and one swallows the other, destroying the union. The ideal: a slight disequilibrium of forces and a relative autonomy of each term with respect to the other.
Armed with this framework, Paz sets out to put it through its paces. His primary experimental targets are West and East—more specifically, Christianity and Buddhism—more specifically still, Protestantism and Tantricism. He ranges enormously, dives in precipitously. Art, semen, defilement, redemption. Presence vs. emptiness, linear vs. cyclical time, saving the world vs. dissolving it, oblivion vs. paradise, judgment vs. amorality.
Paz clearly thinks the end of civilization is upon us as he looks around and writes. This is the backdrop of the project, named explicitly only on occasion up until the final passages. Such a backdrop subsequently casts this project as something between a history, an explanation, a solution, and a plea.
What to do with this terribly significant matter of body versus nonbody? The West says to separate, to persecute, to lash the former in order to save the latter for eternity; the East annihilates the difference altogether and calls it a day. The West: anal-retentive, capitalist, puritanical, a product and prisoner of its great innovation, Protestantism. The East: dessicating, cloying, literally self-absorbed, asleep in oblivion. Both are failed projects, in Paz’s estimation: the East killed by excess conjunction, the West by excess disjunction. The tension did not hold: swallowed, on the one hand, rendering the essential balance moot; obliterated on the other, by a fanatical preference for only one part of what must be a pair.
All of this plays out against time. Paz says that linear time is history, while cyclical time is myth. He sees the former, which seems to be gaining popular prominence, as tyrannical. The optimistic understanding of history as a ceaseless march of progress is, in fact, an attempt at colonizing the future, one that condemns man to perpetually move forward towards a destination he knows he will never reach, lurching madly from one place he does not understand towards another he will never know. From where Paz writes, history has fallen apart, rational discourse has become impossible—things are irrupting, not according to plan; the actors have gotten mixed up; things are occurring all out of order.
Paz finally places some morsel of hope on—what else?—the youth. Maybe they will find something new. After all, they are the first generation in history raised to not believe in it.
The center has not held. It will not do so again. But maybe, just maybe, something coherent can still be born.
So it follows that this book is nothing less than an attempt to write a history of man. To do so, Paz adopts an interrogatory structure of conjunctions and disjunctions. Languages may duel and dissolve, civilizations may come and go, but anything organized is organized on a set of ideas, and every idea has its opposite. Some are more important than others; to Paz, the most important of all is body/nonbody—ie spirit, soul, the noncorporeal essential. Under this umbrella: man himself, the afterlife, pleasure, sin, fulfillment, rot, death, and much else.
In these pairings of opposites lies a tension, and in that tension, a delicate balance. Too much opposition between them and the union is destroyed; too much affinity and one swallows the other, destroying the union. The ideal: a slight disequilibrium of forces and a relative autonomy of each term with respect to the other.
Armed with this framework, Paz sets out to put it through its paces. His primary experimental targets are West and East—more specifically, Christianity and Buddhism—more specifically still, Protestantism and Tantricism. He ranges enormously, dives in precipitously. Art, semen, defilement, redemption. Presence vs. emptiness, linear vs. cyclical time, saving the world vs. dissolving it, oblivion vs. paradise, judgment vs. amorality.
Paz clearly thinks the end of civilization is upon us as he looks around and writes. This is the backdrop of the project, named explicitly only on occasion up until the final passages. Such a backdrop subsequently casts this project as something between a history, an explanation, a solution, and a plea.
What to do with this terribly significant matter of body versus nonbody? The West says to separate, to persecute, to lash the former in order to save the latter for eternity; the East annihilates the difference altogether and calls it a day. The West: anal-retentive, capitalist, puritanical, a product and prisoner of its great innovation, Protestantism. The East: dessicating, cloying, literally self-absorbed, asleep in oblivion. Both are failed projects, in Paz’s estimation: the East killed by excess conjunction, the West by excess disjunction. The tension did not hold: swallowed, on the one hand, rendering the essential balance moot; obliterated on the other, by a fanatical preference for only one part of what must be a pair.
All of this plays out against time. Paz says that linear time is history, while cyclical time is myth. He sees the former, which seems to be gaining popular prominence, as tyrannical. The optimistic understanding of history as a ceaseless march of progress is, in fact, an attempt at colonizing the future, one that condemns man to perpetually move forward towards a destination he knows he will never reach, lurching madly from one place he does not understand towards another he will never know. From where Paz writes, history has fallen apart, rational discourse has become impossible—things are irrupting, not according to plan; the actors have gotten mixed up; things are occurring all out of order.
Paz finally places some morsel of hope on—what else?—the youth. Maybe they will find something new. After all, they are the first generation in history raised to not believe in it.
The center has not held. It will not do so again. But maybe, just maybe, something coherent can still be born.
June 18, 2025
interesante pero no me pareció excepcional ni innovador
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews