The Nobel Prize-winning poet and man of letters Octavio Paz was also a brilliant reader of other writers, and this book selects his best critical essays from over three decades. In the sixteen pieces collected here, Paz discusses a wide range of poets and writers, both American and international, from Robert Frost and Walt Whitman to William Carlos Williams; from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Luis Bunuel to Alexander Solzhenitsyn; and from Charles Baudelaire to Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Breton, and Henri Michaux.Paz writes, "I believe that a writer's attitude to language should be that of a lover: fidelity and, at the same time, a lack of respect for the beloved object. Veneration and transgression." When this original thinker meets these writers, each essay is an adventure of the mind.
- ISBN10 0856353035
- ISBN13 9780856353031
- Publish Date 1 January 1991 (first published 31 December 1986)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 16 April 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
- Edition British ed.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 220
- Language English