The Aesthetics of the Sacred. Octavio Paz’s “Entrada en materia"

Abstract

What is Octavio Paz trying to say when he writes that poetry strives to “make the world sacred” and “change life”? What relationship maintains the “sacred” with the aesthetic? And, how does such a requirement, formulated in this essays, show itself in the poem “Entrada en materia” (in Salamandra, 1962 and 1990)? The following semiotic reading of the poem intends to show, on the one hand, the poetic procedures and means with which the text creates a specific aesthetic effect (linked with the notion of the sacred) and on the other, the conditions that the subject of the poem must obey (along with the reader) in order to be able to grasp this effect.

After a theoretical reflection on aesthetic grasping and an introduction to the subject of the city in Paz’s longer poems, we discuss the two versions of the poem from 1962 and 1990 in relation with its textual organization. The second part of the article offers a textual analysis of the poem, centering on the different types of relationships that the subject maintains with the spatial, temporal and figurative dimensions. Special attention is paid to the image of the sacred and the use of the poetic word.