A Poet Between Civilisations

The narrative uncovers how Indian thought and philosophies shaped the mind of Mexico's greatest modernist - Octavio Paz

- NANDITA BOSE

The Western literary canon that seems an indestructible pillar of the Indian syllabi is Eurocentric, flawed, and so incomplete that it is a pity. It misses the voices of global literary eminence, a collection of South American poets and thinkers, whose thought towers over much of the world's imagination. We discover them mostly as a private mission: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Pablo Neruda, or Roberto Bolano.

And Octavio Paz, the subject of Indranil Chakravarty's The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz's Years in India, is one such entity, a literary giant we know little about. The book presents a rather unique biography of the poet. Not only is it thorough enough to sketch out his life in painstaking detail, but it also delves into background philosophies and movements that shaped Paz's mind. Yet the most unique element of this biography is that it traces his links to Indian thought and culture, especially his stint in India as a foreign dignitary.