#186 Between the Yogi and the Commissar: Octavio Paz and The Bow and the Lyre
By Enrico Mario Santí
Excerpt
"Paz published El arco y la lira (The Bow and the Lyre) in 1956, three years after returning to Mexico. In 1954, and for little more than a year, he had worked on the book while holding a fellowship at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico. In securng this fellowship he was probably aided by Alfonso Reyes, President of the Colegio, whom Paz had been telling about the book, at least since 1951, in their frequent correspondence while Paz was away, first in Paris, and later in New Delhi and Tokyo. The earliest mention of the book, or its germ, comes in a letter from Paris of 24 May 1951 where he describes the collection of essays that eventually would become Las peras del olmo (1955). In its manuscript, he said then, was "a 60-page essay about poetry in the modern world.""
Enrico Santí was a Fellow at the Wilson Center from September 1, 1989-March 31, 1990. This working paper is part of a larger work published by Harvard University Press.
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