Figures and Figurations
A beautiful gift edition of Figures & Figurations: the collaboration between the Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz and his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie José Paz.\ Figures & Figurations, one of the last works completed by the great late Mexican poet Octavio Paz before his death in 1998, is a stunning collaborative project with his wife, the acclaimed artist Marie José Paz. In response to ten of her collage-constructions, he wrote ten new short poems; she in turn created two...
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A beautiful gift edition of Figures & Figurations: the collaboration between the Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz and his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie José Paz.The New York Times Book Review - Calvin BedientAn imagination not afraid to be extravagant is Paz's appeal,his provocation.
Figures & Figurations\ \ By OCTAVIO PAZ MARIE JOSÉ PAZ \ A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK\ Copyright © 2002 Marie José Paz, Heir of Octavio Paz\ All right reserved.\ ISBN: 0811215245\ \ \ \ Chapter One\ Calm Sand-clock moon: night empties out, the hour is lit. Your Face \ A hand-whose hand?- blue skin, red nails, holding a palette. I want to be a face, says the palette. And the hand turns it into a mirror, and in the mirror, your eyes, and your eyes become trees, hills, clouds. A path winds through the double row of insinuations and allusions. On this path I reach your mouth, fountain of truths just born. The Brushes Awake Creature of wind, whirlwind of whitecaps, a dragon between floating clouds and a ball of fire spinning in a sky that looks like earth. Little dragon, you lope through a dream of sleeping brushes, barely a puff of air that half-opens eyelids. The box unfolds its wings and begins to fly. Imperial Fireplace Flames have turned to stone and the stones a group of pyramids, quiet geometry beneath an unmarked sky. Two sphinx-paws defend it, two recumbent lions watch over, guarding the portico, two other lions, winged, dressed in the aquatic arms of the Nile. A double emblem of desert and water, sterile powers that joined, procreate. Little monument of fire in a corner of the room. Egypt burning, encrusted on the façade of winter. Cipher Wall tattooed with signs like the body of the starry night. Up there,neither clouds nor stars: an architecture of wood, arcades and niches populated by echoes. Horizon of petrified time: each stamp is a cipher, each cipher a window, each window a glance that drills through the days and unveils its face: not of yesterday or tomorrow, but of now. The windows are stamps and the stamps are omens turned into fortunes: The couple meets and entwines. She and he are a living stamp, the undressed cipher of the daily beginning again. India These letters and sinuous lines that entwine and separate on the paper are like the palm of a hand: are they India? And the paw of tawny metal -forged by the sun, chilled by the moon- its claws squeezing a hard glass ball and the iridescent sphere, the thousands of candles, burning and shining, that the faithful launch each night, floating on the lakes and rivers: are they a prophecy, a riddle, the memory of an encounter, the scattered signs of fortune? -They are the scepter of chance, left at the foot of the tree of time by the king of this world. Enigma We are born from a question, each one of our acts is a question, our years are a forest of questions, you are a question and I am another, God is the hand that tirelessly writes universes in the form of questions. Door What's behind that door? Don't knock, don't ask, no one answers, nothing can open it, not the picklock of curiosity nor the little key of reason, nor the hammer of impatience. Don't talk, don't ask, come closer, put your ear to it, can't you hear it breathing? There, on the other side, someone like you asks: what's behind that door?\ \ \ \ \ Excerpted from Figures & Figurations by OCTAVIO PAZ MARIE JOSÉ PAZ Copyright © 2002 by Marie José Paz, Heir of Octavio Paz\ Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.\ \
Calm2Your Face4The Brushes Awake6Imperial Fireplace8Cipher10India12Enigma14Door16The Arms of the Trade18The Constellation of the Body20The Dream of Pens22Here24The Whitecaps of the Hours43Afterword: Octavio and Marie Jose49
\ Calvin BedientAn imagination not afraid to be extravagant is Paz's appeal,his provocation. \ —The New York Times Book Review\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyCentered on 12 lovely collaborations between 1990 Nobel prize winner Octavio Paz (1914-1998) and his wife of 30 years, this book presents poems he wrote to accompany her full-color, neo-surrealist collages ("Calm," "Cloud Box," "Imperial Fireplace"). The gentle and satisfying collection is fleshed out with a section of the Spanish versions of the poems, a short prose piece by Octavio Paz, and an afterword by French poet Yves Bonnefoy. (Dec.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.\ \
