Octavio Paz: Between Going and Coming
Throughout Octavio Paz's life, his childhood, intellectual interests, and bilingual identity have shaped his worldview. He was a poet who articulated this view in his works, including the powerful poem "Between Going and Coming". In minimal words, this piece encapsulates the paradox of motion versus delay/pause in human existence, explaining why Paz writes and enters a liminal world while doing so. The poem itself may seem very basic, but the speaker is not coming or going; he finds himself somewhere between the two. "The moment scatters. Motionless, I stay and go: I am a pause ." It exists at a point of suspension: the moment when he is still, the very moment that will provide him with self-awareness. These moments constitute the essence of the poem; Paz argues that human experience is best understood through the interplay between motion and delay (or time). This philosophy holds that our individual lives have meaning only in the continuous moments of awarenes...