[Octavio Paz] is a poet whose reading of surrealism enabled him to revalue and affirm the role of poetry in the twentieth century in terms of a liberating, quasi-religious vocation. (p. 3)

Surrealism did not influence Octavio Paz in the sense that it suddenly transformed his poetry and life-stance, for Paz was seeking what he found. (p. 6)

[Surrealism] affected Paz mentally, as ideas. For Paz, surrealism is an attitude of mind based on the possibility of using poetry to transcend life's inherent contradictions; to make man whole again, communing with his fellows, participating and reintegrated in experiences that defy time; a poetics of the timeless moment, the instante poético. (p. 22)

[All] that he writes falls within the opposition between attitude and activity. What Paz accepts and rejects follows a clear pattern of values based on that opposition. For Paz, surrealism as a historical movement degenerated into style and...