Blanco

Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 1967. First, Limited Edition. Very good. 8vo., 9 x 6 3/4 in. (229 x 173 mm); printed in black and red, Bodoni type on Antique RLCH paper, joined to create a continuous 'concertina' of 32 pages (joined every 4) and printed on one side only. Leporello binding with printed boards and cream cloth spine, title in black, slipcase. The binding is faintly thumbed and slipcase has a closed tear to the base and some rubbing at corners but overall this delicate book is in wonderful condition. One of the 29 lettered and privately circulated copies, as stated on the limitation page, from a run of 529 (500 copies numbered).
EXTRAS: "Aviso al lector" sheet printed on yellow paper. A scarce example of one of the 29 privately circulated lettered copies. The entire run consisted of 529 copies, 500 of these being the numbered ones available to purchase.

Octavio Paz wrote this poem in New Delhi between July and September of 1966, while he was serving as Mexico's Ambassador to India.

As outlined in the "Aviso al lector", separately printed and included in this copy of the work, «Octavio Paz conceives the long poem as a different form and governed by its own logic, not as an expansion or extension of the short poem.» He begins experimenting with "poetry of movement, signs in rotation" culminating in Blanco. «Appearance, disappearance and reappearance of certain themes, presences, words, obsessions, the shape of Blanco is that of the spiral. There are two main currents-word and eroticism-that come together, separate and come together again. The text allows multiple readings: it is a cluster of meanings, a poem that contains several poems. ... The same poetic requirement governs the visual conception of the page and explains the particularities of this edition. Typesetting is one aspect of verbal composition. On the one hand, it is a kind of punctuation, not orthographic but rhythmic; on the other, it is the space where the written sign is displayed, analogous to the time of elocution.»

Octavio Paz Lozano (1914 -1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. Politically, Paz was a social democrat, who became increasingly supportive of liberal ideas without ever renouncing his initial leftist and romantic views. Although he broke with the early Marxist/communist beliefs, Paz continued to consider himself a man of the left, the democratic, "liberal" left, not the dogmatic and illiberal one. He was also a promoter of incremental change, not revolution. In 1968, he resigned from the diplomatic service in protest of the Mexican government's massacre of student demonstrators in Tlatelolco. While participating in the political and diplomatic life of his country, Paz was also a prolific author and poet, publishing scores of works during his lifetime, many of which have been translated into other languages. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.