Octavio Paz and Julio Cortázar: Passage in India

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Octavio Paz and Julio Cortázar based on their encounter in India in 1968, as documented in letters, dedications, and testimonies. It describes the context of their stay in New Delhi, when Paz was Mexico’s ambassador, the journeys they undertook –particularly to Jaipur and the observatories of Jai Singh– and their impact on the writing of The Monkey Grammarian and Prose of the Observatory. The study revisits the parallels between both authors (formative readings, links to Surrealism, and relations between Hopscotch and Blanco) and adds an analysis of the two aforementioned works of poetic prose. It examines recurring motifs and procedures: the Galta path as a figure of discourse in Paz; the observatories of Jai Singh and the figures of eels and stars as analogical terms in Cortázar; the notion of “rite of passage”; resemblance and correspondence between heterogeneous elements; textual circularity and discursive recurrence; the dissolution of temporal succession into forms of simultaneity; and the function of eroticism as a model of union. It also considers intertextual relations with Hopscotch, 62: A Model Kit, Blanco, and The Bow and the Lyre, along with references to Eastern thought. Finally, the article describes the formal and thematic convergences between both texts through the notion of “passage”.