Mexican Genius: Reviewing El Laberinto de la Soledad

01 Feb, 2024

Self-discovery is above all the realisation that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall — that of our consciousness — between the world and ourselves.

This captivating line immediately grips the reader out of a state of inertia and into one of contemplation on the opening page of book-length essay El Laberinto de la Soledad, known in English as The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Mexican poet, intellectual, diplomat and Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz. Laberinto is a book that requires patience and attentiveness from the reader for full appreciation of its literary grace and conceptual depth to be reached. Whilst opportunities for meaningful engagement present themselves frequently in the effortless prose of isolated lines, experience of the book as a whole is made all the richer by taking the time to pore over it slowly, preferably incrementally, when the brain is most alert. In other words: caffeinated. Laberinto was first published in its original Spanish language in 1950, then translated into English and a host of other European languages in subsequent years. My particular version is the 1961 translation by Lysander Kemp, published by Grove Press, which made for a flawless read.

It is no understatement to say that this is a work unlike any I have read before: in a masterly unification of seemingly disparate themes and theoretical postulations discussed over nine sub-essays, Paz illustrates with keen insight a compelling interpretation of the character of Mexico and the forces by which the nation’s collective conscious arrived at its present iteration. Paz’s conception of the Mexican relies on the notion that an inherent sense of solitude is responsible for national perspectives on identity, culture and death. What stands out most beautifully about Laberinto is the universality of its language and thus its ideas. Whilst a considerable number of essays such as ‘The Conquest and Colonialism’ and ‘The Mexican Intelligentsia’ cogitate on the political history of Mexico, others like the closing philosophical essay ‘The Dialectic of Solitude’ deal with the concern of solitude more directly. In this discourse, solitude is examined as ‘the profoundest fact of the human condition’ which man desires to escape from in communion. Thus, to be aware of oneself is to be aware of a ‘lack of another’ — or of one’s own solitude.¹

This is a solitude caught in an immortal dance of dualities that, in Paz’s Mexico, governs ‘all classes, castes and individuals’ locked in a fragmented performance that seeks union under the guise of dissimulation.² It transpires in the Mexican who ‘does not want to be either Indian or Spaniard’ nor the mixture of both that he is, but rather an ‘abstraction’ whose origin is in the nothingness of his own self;³ in the fiestas of Día de los Muertos that through a celebration of death inspire rebirth, marking the end of one year and the beginning of another wherein ‘everything attracts its opposite’ with an explosive avoidance of the self;⁴ in a distinctly Mexican Catholicism born from the ‘superimposed’ religion of the Spanish coloniser and the ‘ineradicable presence’ of indigenous myth;⁵ in the incongruence between the United States as an economic and democratic power built in its ‘own image’ and Mexico as a developing nation in search of self whose legacy is counter-reformation and feudalism;⁶ and in Mexico’s attempt at reconciliation with its ‘real nature’ amid the tumult of the Mexican Revolution.⁷

The stylish straightforwardness of Paz’s prose offers abundant thinking points to the reader, packaged in the poetic expressions of a writer whose way with words and apparent sensitivity to the intricacies of life equal a remarkable read that invites many moments of introspection — and the odd smirk at a subtle undertone of sardonic humour. In contrasting the North American against the Mexican, Paz writes: ‘We get drunk in order to confess, they get drunk in order to forget’.⁸ A mere few pages later he says: ‘To what extent does a liar really lie? Is he really trying to deceive others? Is he not the first victim of his deceit, and the first victim to be deceived? The liar lies to himself, because he is afraid of himself.’⁹ Being that I’ve a deep appreciation for frank statements of universal truth, pencil marks abound throughout my well-worn copy.

I recommend this accomplished masterpiece to anyone interested in forming a comprehensive understanding of Mexico and its peoples whilst challenging their own critical thinking on matters of the existential. In Laberinto, Paz has created an important contribution of serious cultural significance to Mexican, Latin American and Global literature that is altogether deserving of the acclaim it has received as the definitive written portrait of Mexico. With a willingness to open oneself to multi-layered ideas and an embrace of curiosity, readers will doubtless be rewarded with a deeper understanding of both the book and themselves.