The Labyrinth of Solitude

The Labyrinth of Solitude (Spanish: El laberinto de la soledad ) is a central essay in literary and philosophical works of the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz was first published in 1950, revised in 1959 and expanded to include a chapter and finally in 1970 to the ( self-) critical part PostData supplemented, which is characterized by the Tlatelolco massacre and the policies of the PRI.

The essay draws on a discussion about the identity and the nature of the Mexican, who won in the course of the late porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution in importance. This discussion has been hitherto by Samuel Ramos, Leopoldo Zea and Alfonso Reyes and other members of the Ateneo de la Juventud dominated that were based on the European tradition of folk psychology. Paz is linked to important elements of the discussion on, but distances itself explicitly from this tradition and turns in his attempt to explain the essence of Mexican, French moralism to.

An important concept of the discussion on the nature of the Mexican, the Paz is taking up the " Mexicanism " ( Mexicanidad ). In the course of the essay he is in different contexts ( loneliness / Odyssey, masculinity / " chingar ", Politics, Religion / Myth ) explained.

The Labyrinth of Solitude stands in the tradition of psychoanalysis, of a specifically Mexican, intellectual nationalism ( the Paz rejects ) and literary tendencies. Recognizable are also elements of a philosophical structuralism.