Ref:Octavio Paz
Hi Satish:
I am familiar with the works of Paz but not all that familiar with Stanley Wolpert,guess I will have to get cracking on him then.In my opinion Octavio Paz was one of the best writers of our time,come to think of it there are a few heavy weights from Latin America.
Thanks for the excellent comments on both.
Here are some reviews form amazon on 'In Light of India' and 'A Tale of Two Gardens : Poems from India 1952-1995'
I liked Jayendran Rajamony's comment particularly which is highlighted below and don't mind if I agree with him by and large.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Anyone who knows India, or simply dreams of her, will find Octavio Paz's fascinating new book In Light of India spellbinding. Paz was Mexico's Ambassador to India from 1962 until 1968; during his six years in that ancient and multicultural country, he befriended poets, politicians, and ordinary Indians, and soaked up quite a bit of India's history and tragedy in the process. The eleven essays collected here are framed by an introduction and a farewell, and divided among three sections entitled "Religions, Castes, Languages," "A Project of Nationhood," and "The Full and the Empty." In each, Paz weaves the strands of religion, art, culture, and politics as he takes the reader on a tour of India's past and present.
Paz writes with great authority on a variety of subjects, from architecture and poetry to the history of Hindu-Muslim relations on the subcontinent. But some things are beyond the comprehension of an outsider. Though he makes a heroic attempt to explain the intricacies of the caste system, the tragedy of the untouchables remains problematic. This book conveys an India at once seductive and perilous, one that will hold your interest and inspire your wanderlust until the very last page.
Eastern Religion Editor's Recommended Book
Uncertainty stalks Octavio Paz. In Light of India is Paz's return to issues addressed in his poems of India that were inspired by his residence there three decades earlier. The paradoxes of a troubled nation are persistent, and Paz revisits the unfathomable facets of India with an eye on his Mexican homeland. Beneath the sensuous veneer of modern India lies a complex lattice of religious tendrils that reach into and influence Indian history, society, literature, and art. Paz follows these tendrils as well as anyone can, piecing together a nation of beauty, profundity, and enigma. Profundity aside, if Paz were writing about dust particles, he'd be worth reading. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title
The New Yorker
His knowledge of the subcontinent's history is vast, and he displays excellent discrimination in choosing his themes from the welter that India offers. Not the least of this book's many satisfactions comes from watching a fecund, intellectually powerful sensibility engaged with a subject capacious enough to justify its attentions.
The New York Times Book Review, Raleigh Trevelyan
Octavio Paz modestly describes In Light of India--and indeed all his prose work on India--as a footnote to his poetry. The Spanish title . . . is "Vislumbres de la India," difficult to translate, perhaps, meaning glimpses dimly seen, as in twilight. But . . . the essays in this ambitious book . . . are certainly not "glimpses"; they are the result of long experience and study.
Readers Comments.
Customer Comments
Average Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 5
navinj@aol.com from Wisconsin , March 4, 1999
Part Toquvillian and Part Marco Polian
I find Paz's observation's of India to be delightfully accurate. His role as an Ambassador was not to be critical but to recount his observations at a level of serindipity. That he does superbly. Perhaps this may be the reason why President Bill Clinton who on March 1, 1999 bought this book while vacationing in Utah and while examining his soul after the Lewinsky crisis.
A reader from Louisiana , August 30, 1998
Has nice lyrical passages but weak in history
Starts off very well with the account of Paz's first visit to India. But I was shocked at his defence of the colonial history of Mexico when he makes comparisons between India and his native country. His understanding of Indian history is rather shallow. Paz was a good poet but no historian.
Jayendran Rajamony(jrajamony@gso.uri.edu) from Rhode Island, USA , June 4, 1998
An amusing but miguided adventure.
Paz's comments on Indian literature are eminently enjoyable. His commentary of ancient sanskrit poetry is very entertaining.
His opinions on politics and nationalism seem to indicate prejudices formed from other Western interpretations of India. A country which may have some amusing aspects, but which is by and large populated by the ignorant and the poor. And if at all there is anything good in India, it must have come from Europe. Paz too recites the same idiocies. Gandhi is portrayed more as a product of Western thought, than of Indian philosophy. While Indian nationalists are likened to religious fanatics, Tamils (of whom I am one), Paz says, "are separatists." The only thing I would like to be separate from are such pathetically ignorant statements.
Misinformed commentaries on the Gita can be classified into two --- those that insult the reader's intelligence and those that reflect the writer's ignorance. Paz's comments on the Gita probably fall in the latter category. While he accepts Krishna's words that the Self neither kills nor dies, he seems to worry about the "suffering" that war brings. Paz seems unable to comprehend that the Self which cannot die or kill can also not suffer. Gita is about "save himself, not how to save others" for Paz, because he fails to see the underlying Advaita. It is surprising that someone as perceptive as Paz missed the point about how "himself" and "others" are really the same.
Rajeev Dehejia (dehejia@ibm.net) from Toronto, Canada , April 28, 1998
A place to start in understanding India
In reading foreigners write about India, too often you see them get caught on the horns of the complexities and contradictions of India. Invariably their real subject is not India, but how foreigners perceive India. What makes Paz's book special is that he is really writing about the Indian mind, and like an Indian he is able to wrap his mind around the contradictions without attempting to resolve them. This book is now my top recommendation for anyone trying to get past castes, dust, and buses falling over cliffs to begin to understand India. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title
sponder@pacbell.net from Fremont, Calif. , January 4, 1998
In Light of India: A Reverent, Thoughtful "Adios"
Paz's technical, highly informative swan song, as he wound down his amabassadorial stint, is at once distant, respectful...and oddly wistful. One can picture him, gazing contemplatively out of the window, as his train wisks him through the Indian countryside, his elbow on the sill, head in hand...A rather grand, respecful Goodbye, with just a hint of saddness and yearning...which is what this book represents. Paz's envious, strangely misplaced attempts to compare his native Mexico to the country-of-his-dreams (India) seem a bit desperate and even clumsy at times. One could sense Paz's wish: "If only my Mexico were as majestic, grand and enigmatic..." Or atleast had as many software startups per capita. Perhap's Paz will convert to Hinduism by his 85th birthday. An informative, (too) reverent, but decent piece of work...Almost has the mood and (deliberate) distance of Langston Hughes' "Big Sea", but far more exacting, patient and academic in its use of the english language and (again) far more technical...A lot of starch in this one. A worthy edition to one's own library - or to Paz's works, in general. SP
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'A Tale of Two Gardens : Poems from India 1952-1995'
Reviews
The New York Times Book Review, Raleigh Trevelyan
Several beautiful and evocative poems included in A Tale of Two Gardens are from his East Slope, already well known to his admirers. Mr. Paz also contrasts Mexico with India, and this in part is the theme of the title poem . . . where he evokes a romantic abandoned garden he had loved as a child and the garden he and his wife, Marie-José, had in Delhi.
Synopsis
Octavio Paz, 1990 Nobel Prize winner, declares that his many nonfiction books on the subject of India are only footnotes to his India poems. Those collected here cover more than 40 years of Paz's many and various commitments to Indiaas Mexican ambassador, student of Indian philosophy, and, above all, poet. "Paz's poetry is a seismograph of our century's turbulence, a crossroads where East meets West."PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.
A Tale of Two Gardens collects the poetry from over 40 years of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz's many and various commitments to India - as Mexican ambassador, student of Indian philosophy, and above all, as poet. Despite having written many acclaimed non-fiction books on the region, he has always considered those writings to be footnotes to the poems. From the long work "Mutra," written in 1952 and accompanied here by a new commentary by the author, to the celebrated poems of East Slope, and his recent adaptations from the classical Sanskrit, Paz scripts his India with a mixture of deft sensualism and hands-on politics. |
