SOURCE: Oviedo, Ollie O. “The Surrealist Leitmotifs of Octavio Paz's ‘Salamandra/Salamander.’” In Selected Essays from the International Conference on Surrealism and the Oneiric Process, 1990, pp. 149-68. Carrolton, Ga.: West Georgia College, 1992.

In the following essay, Oviedo examines surrealism and poetic modes in “Salamandra.”

Any attempt to understand the poetic “modes” of Octavio Paz will require that readers first establish each poem's basic structure and, secondly, that they find the modal approach to each composition.¹ This will allow them to establish a progression from Paz's poetic mode, which will mostly depend on the external referents and thematic content, to his most distilled expression of underlying poetic vision. But as readers we must recognize beforehand that the paradigm behind the poetic leitmotifs of Paz's text is that of transcendence through suffering. This is expressed by Paz through the development of leitmotifs in the form of myths; rebirth following death...