Octavio Paz

"I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers."

Octavio Paz

Mexican Poet

1914 - 1998

Speakers are often evaluated and rated by their audiences.  While 90% of the audience may enjoy the presentation, there is often 10% who didn't like it.  Usually the problem does not lie with the speaker, but rather the audience member.  Either the person is angry at his boss who make him come or he is upset about something that is happening in his life.  

When people label books or paintings as dangerous, corrupt or incendiary, the problem lies not with the books or paintings.  The problem is in the passions of the audience member doing the labeling.  When a person is afraid of his own desires, he blames that which is outside himself instead of blaming himself.  Sometimes when someone condemns something too loudly, he is hiding his own desires.  

Don't let the negativity of others bring you down.  The problem rests with them, not with you.  Stand up for yourself and your creative work.  Believe in what you create.

Here is a poem by Octavio Paz.

Last Dawn

Your hair is lost in the forest,

your feet touching mine.

Asleep you are bigger than the night,

but your dream fits within this room.

How much we are who are so little!

Outside a taxi passes

with its load of ghosts.

The river that runs by

is always

running back.

Will tomorrow be another day?

Fernando Del Paso

Venus de Milo
Ancient Greek Statue

"Literature and music exist in time: they have a beginning and an end.  Painting and sculpture exist in space. . . . Where does the Venus de Milo begin: in her navel, in her breasts, or in her head?  Where does an abstract painting begin: in the lower left corner, or in the center?"

— Fernando Del Paso

Mexican Novelist, Painter and Poet

1935 -

Back of
Venus de Milo

De Paso has raised a very interesting question:  where does a painting or a sculpture begin?  When analyzing a painting, people often identify at what point the eye is drawn into the painting.  At what point do we the viewer enter into the picture?  But that point of entry is not the beginning of the painting.  In fact, paintings and sculptures have no beginning.  They just are here and now.

The flip side of this question is:  where does the novel exist?  In the head of the writer?  On the pages of the book it is printed in?  In cyberspace somewhere?  Or in the head of the reader?  And what novel are we talking about?  Is the novel that is in the writer's head the same as the novel on the page?  Is the novel that is in the reader's head the same as what is in the writer's imagination?  

Fernando Del Paso

How many times have you as a reader altered the novel on the page by changing the looks of a character or the physical location of the story.  Unlike the painting which is concrete and visual, the novel is nebulous and changing.  Yes, we can impose our stories upon the painting, but the painting still exists outside of us.  We change the novel as soon as it enters our brain.  We have altered the story as imagined by the novelist.

Have you ever wished that a novel would not end?  You may even have slowed down your reading so that the ending would be delayed?  Novels exist in time and have a beginning and a ending, but we can continue to revisit them through our memory.