Ootacamund Analysis

Octavio Paz was born on March 31, 1914 in Mexico City. Paz's grandpa was very intellectual and had a huge library, instantly submerging Octavio in literature. At age 19, he went to Spain for the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. In 1962 he was appointed the Mexican Ambassador to India. This was incredible to his work and he shows this in the books called The Grammarian Monkey and East Slope. He quit his job later to go protest against the government in Tlatelolco at the Olympic Games. After that he went back to his work as a publisher and editor. In 1980 he was proclaimed honorary doctor at Harvard. He got the Cervantes award back in 1981. This award is the most prestigious award for spanish speakers. He then got the American Neustadt Prize in 1982. Paz wrote over 20 books in his lifetime, and won the literature nobel prize in 1990. He died April 19, 1998 near his birthplace, in Mexico City.

Words I didn't know and I feel are worth mentioning:
Todas- the people who live in Nilgiri falls.
Sumeria- translates to "land of the civilized king" or "native land".
Ishtar- goddess of love, war, fertility, and sex. The counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna.
Verandah- roofed platform along the outside of a house.

Cecil Hotel- very fancy hotel in Alexandria Egypt built in 1929.

Jacaranda- tropical American tree with blue flowers and good smelling trunk.

Cyclopean castles- castles made of massive irregular blocks- not very neatly built.

Mycenae- city founded by Perseus.

Machu-Picchu- Ancient Inca fortress in the Andes of Peru.

This poem seems to be about nature and how it doesn't care a single bit about humans. The line "Miss Penelope (canary-colored hair,woolen stockings and walking stick) has been saying for thirty years: Oh India, country of missed opportunities . . ." (Paz's Ootacamund) told me this because it mentions how "white people" and "the American dream " type people just want the goods of different areas; how India has many more resources than we are getting out of it. White people don't appreciate the land as they should. This stanza also popped out to me: "A vision on the mountain road: the rose camelia tree bending over the cliff. Splendor in the sullen green, fixed above an abyss. Impenetrable presence, indifferent to vertigo-and language" (Paz's Ootacamund). The last sentence in particular made me think that wilderness does not care that we have learned to talk and communicate. It flourishes whether we are there or not- it doesn't need anything but other nature. This world is not ours, and we shouldn't treat it as so.

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today."

~Dale Carnegie

Works cited:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_nature.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1990/paz-bio.html
http://www.biography.com/people/octavio-paz-9435456#awesm=~oEbjoQSMQFm1J7