Octavio Paz Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.

  Octavio Paz

  Men, Language, Disappear

• Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.

  Octavio Paz

  Confused, Yesterday, Space

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.21, Arcade Publishing

• Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.

  Octavio Paz

  Fall, Past, Men

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.48, Arcade Publishing

• Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

  Octavio Paz

  Expression, History, Silence

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.172, Arcade Publishing

• When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

  Octavio Paz

  Criticism, Decay, Firsts

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.263, Grove Press

• Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Reading, Unique

  Octavio Paz (2009). “The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History”, p.28, University of Texas Press

• Language lies outside of society because it is its foundation; but it also lies within society because that is the only place where it exists and the only place where it develops.

  Octavio Paz

  Lying, Foundation, Language

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.61, Arcade Publishing

• By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.

  Octavio Paz

  Two, Knowing, Silence

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.96, Arcade Publishing

• Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.

  Octavio Paz

  School, Order, Way

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.50, Arcade Publishing

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin