Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey [Hardcover]

Octavio Paz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2000

Itinerary is somewhat autobiographical, for it is the story of the evolution of my political ideas. An intellectual biography but also a sentimental and even passionate one: what I thought and think about my time is inseparable from what I felt and feel. Itinerary is the story and description of a journey through time, from one point to another, from my youth to my present moment. The line that traces this plan is neither straight nor circular but a spiral that turns back ceaselessly and ceaselessly distances itself from the point of departure. What we are living today brings me close to what I lived seventy years back and, simultaneously, irremediably and definitively distances me. Strange lesson: there is no turning back but there is no point of arrival. We are in transit. Itinerary is the final work of a great thinker and magnificent writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I am not writing my memoirs," claims Nobel laureate Paz in this posthumously published autobiographical essay, though in charting the development of his political convictions, the Mexican poet and writer furnishes readers with a rich history of his intellectual life. Though he was born into a privileged family in the early years of the Mexican Revolution, a brief period spent in Los Angeles when his Zapatista father was forced to flee the country gave Paz a taste of what it was like to be an outsider. Perhaps as a result, international Communism attracted him as a young man, and he enthusiastically supported the movement until Stalin's excesses forced him to make a painful break with youthful ideals and friends like Communist stalwart Pablo Neruda. Paz's belief that there is a fundamental difference between systemic revolutions (like Communism) and popular revolts (like the Mexican Revolution) grounds much of his work; personally, he felt a similar divide between mind and soul, and came to believe that only criticism, "our sole moral compass in private and in public life," gives us the tools to reconcile reason and passion. The long essay "Itinerary" is bookended by two shorter pieces, one an essay explaining Paz's best-known work, The Labyrinth of Solitude, the other a letter in which he describes the town of Mixcoac, where he grew up. Supplemented by a foreword by Charles Tomlinson and an afterword by translator Wilson, these three texts constitute a valuable overview of a distinguished career. Though the book may be read as an introduction to Paz, the essays presuppose some prior knowledge of his oeuvre and will be best appreciated by those already familiar with his major work. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"Itinerary is somewhat autobiographical," says Paz, "for it is the story of the evolution of my political ideas." This is the final work of the Nobel prize winner, who died in 1998.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st US Edition edition (November 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151005621
• ISBN-13: 978-0151005628
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,332,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an intellectual journey of the mind, May 13, 2001

By 

M. H. Bayliss "book queen" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey (Hardcover)

This is NOT an autobiographical essay, although you might suppose so after the opening story of his exile to California and then later back to Mexico where he was treated as a stranger. This episode serves more as a kernel from which grows his political and social education and experience. Paz briefly traces his political growth from childhood to maturity, through Mexico, the Yucatan (which he points out is so very different from the rest of Mexico), Paris, Spain, India, etc... The editor does his best to provide background history, but be warned that Paz assumes you have the same strong knowledge of Mexican history that he does. I though the highlight was his piercing conclusion about the evil in ourselves, "Evil is human, exclusively human. But not all is evil in humans. Evil nests in their awareness, in their freedom. In there also lies the remedy, the answer to evil... to fight evil is to fight ourselves. And that is the meaning of history."

The writing is clear throughout -- Paz writes well in prose form as well as poetry. A bit hard to follow sometimes, but aren't all intellectual journeys?

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Words Became My Dwelling Place, the Air My Tomb", July 4, 2003

By 

James Paris "Tarnmoor" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey (Paperback)

Poet Octavio Paz has journeyed across much of the twentieth century landscape in this short book of essays. As a son of La Malinche (see his LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE), he maintained a clearheaded sense of balance while his contemporaries were losing their heads over communism, surrealism, existentialism, and all the other isms that characterized that time.

What has always amazed me that Paz was at one and the same time both a truthsayer and a poet. Even to someone like myself whose Spanish is less than idiomatic, his poetry possesses a beauty and limpidity that are almost never met in combination. Only Emily Dickinson of the poets I know has this quality. One of my favorites is the poem "Epitafio sobre ninguna piedra" from which the title of this review is taken.

Now that communism is all but extinct, one forgets that only a short while ago it held so many intellectuals in thrall. Looking at our situation today, Paz concludes that "if I am sure of one thing it is that we are living an interregnum; we are walking across a zone whose ground is not solid; its foundations, it basis has evaporated. If we wish to climb free from the marsh and not sink into mud we should quickly work out a morality and a politics." I think that, as a people, we have not. I am reminded of Yeats's "The Second Coming":

The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity

A final word: Toward the end is a beautiful little essay entitled "Imaginary Gardens: A Memoir" which, while responding negatively to a proposal for a public park, lets loose a Proustian flood of memory regarding the past of the town where Paz was raised, Mixcoac.

This little book, which can be read in a single sitting, deserves a wide readership. I loved it and feel impelled to seek out more of Paz's work.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PAZitively brilliant..., April 18, 2001

By 

Michael (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey (Hardcover)

The agile synthesizing mind at the height of its powers: Skip the 'Labyrinth' and go straight to this.