Paz's Call to his readers: 
Paz's Call to his readers: " All of the histories of all peoples are symbolic. I mean that history and its events and protagonists allude to another, occult history, and are visible manifestations of a hidden reality. That is why we ask ourselves what the true meaning is of the Crusades, the discovery of America . . . .We live history as if it were a performance by masked actors who trace enigmatic figures on the stage."
"Despite the fact that we know our actions mean something, say something, we do not know what they say and therefore the meaning of the piece we perform escapes us. Does anyone know it?"
"Every moribund or sterile society attempts to save itself by creating a redemption myth which is also a fertility myth, a creation myth. Solitude and sin are resolved in communion and fertility. The society we live in today has also created its myth. The sterility of the bourgeois world will end in suicide or a new form of creative participation. This is the 'theme of our times', in Ortega y Gasset's phrase; it is the substance of our dreams and the meaning of our acts."
The key idea linking all of our authors is the directive Paz insists on giving all of us when he writes:
"Each history is a geography and each geography is a geometry of symbols."
"History is knowledge situated between science and poetry."
"A historian describes like a scientist . . . has visions like a poet."
"History gives us an understanding of the past and sometimes of the present."
"It is wisdom rather than learning."
Paz says he attempted to describe his "view of Mexican character through Mexican history."
because for him living is synonymous with "to be surrounded by historical circumstances."
p. 333.
"Labyrinth -- one of the most fertile & meaningful mythical symbols, the TALISMAN, or the object of restoring health and freedom to a people at the center of a sacred area."
"The past has left us orphans, as it has the rest of the planet, and we must join together in inventing our common future.
World history has become everyone's task, and our own labyrinth is the labyrinth of all mankind."
How do we assess his suggestion that:
In the Octavio Paz book of essays on Mexico and its history there is a section from pages 195-212 entitled "The Dialectic of Solitude".
"Human's" writes Paz are "nostalgia and search for communion." to paraphrase his opening paragraph on p. 195.
Summary notes on the Dialectic of Solitude.
"The dialectic of solitude is clearly revealed in the history of every people."
Necessity of myths | Analysis of history's importance | defining labyrinth | Dialectic of Solitude
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