The Labyrinth of Solitude

In Chapters 1-3 of The Labyrinth of Solitude, Paz locates existential solitude and the longing for communion in features of contemporary Mexican culture. In Chapters 4-6, he widens his perspective to trace this theme through a tour of Mexican history that reaches from the Conquest to the Revolution. Chapters 7 and 8 bring Paz’s focus back to the mid-20th century, in which the book was written, while Chapter 9 offers the most sustained philosophical reflection on the “dialectic of solitude” and its role in shaping myths both ancient and modern. He concludes that the pathological solitude of modernity must be countered through an awakening of our unconscious, myth making creativity.

The explication of the “dialectical” character of solitude and communion, whereby the experience of solitude necessarily gives rise to the hope of communion, resonates with the idealist philosophy of GWF Hegel. Paz’s attempt to locate this dialectic in the realm of mythology draws on the works of historian of religions Mircea Eliade, who argued that the function of ritual and myth were to infuse the “profane” time of everyday life with the “sacred” significance by re-actualizing an original cosmogonic event. Again, it is not insignificant that The Labyrinth of Solitude was written in Paris. The conclusion of the essay reflects the ideas of French surrealism, such as those of André Breton, a close associate of Paz’s.

In Chapter 7, Paz claims that it is only after the festal formlessness of the Revolution that Mexico’s deep solitude becomes self-conscious and evident. We find evidence of this claim in the writings of various members of the Mexican intelligentsia, several of whom—particularly Cuesta, Ramos, and Reyes—had a clear and strong impact on the central themes and motifs of The Labyrinth of Solitude.

Recalling Paz’s initial description of solitude within the arc of an individual human life, several observations are warranted. Solitude is the basic existential condition of humanity, but it manifests itself in different ways. Children attempt to overcome a vague, inchoate feeling of solitude through appeal to parental affection and to imaginative play, while adults attain communion with the world and others through work and commitment to ideals. It is in adolescence that the fantasy play of childhood loses its efficacy and, for a brief moment, one’s own existence becomes a question: who am I, and what should I do to be true to myself? Paz’s presentation of Mexican solitude and lack of identity in the mid-twentieth century thus corresponds to the “adolescent” moment in human life. Mexico is a nation and culture which has finally given up on the childhood fantasies and play of trying on various ideological and religious masks designed to break with its history. It must attain a new, authentic, self-created culture, but this must remain true to Mexico’s previous struggle, must recognize the various masks it has donned over time. Paz’s work, one can surmise, is an attempt to contribute to this project. In doing so, he bears the influence of thinkers such as Jorge Cuesta (who theorized that Mexicans aimed to be self-creating and, because of this, tended to deny their pasts), Samuel Ramos (who claimed that Mexican identity was constituted by the use of various metaphorical “masks”) and Alfonso Reyes (who formulated an ethical imperative for Mexican literature to remain true to the Mexican people, their struggles, and their experiences) (165). To fulfill this imperative would mean articulating cultural forms which do not deny the “oscillation” of Mexican history between various universalizing projects, Paz notes. Again, it seems that Paz has given a clue as to his own warrant for writing The Labyrinth of Solitude. Chapter 7 concludes with a crucial insight that illuminates the structure of the book as well as Paz’s aspirations as a writer: The “labyrinth of solitude” that emblematizes Mexico’s struggle for identity, its sense of orphanhood and loss, is now characteristic of all peoples living under the all-encompassing geopolitical order of the Cold War powers. The USSR and the USA have replaced the exploitive “colonial” domination with imperial domination.

Recognition of our profound, shared solitude may be the key to creating new forms of community that resist the hegemony of Cold War ideologies, Paz suggests in Chapter 8. Paz endeavors to show how the situation of Mexico within the Cold War geopolitical landscape served to intensify its experience of solitude and “orphanhood.” In this connection, he suggests that a coalition of developing nations could form through the shared experience of marginalization and solitude. This step would imply, one may infer, casting off the “masks” of foreign ideologies and forging a way ahead that is true to the people of the developing world and their experience. It would follow that Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, an attempt to achieve a “mature” expression of Mexican identity in the modern world, is also intended to contribute to this revolutionary potential among developing nations (193-94). It is not clear that any such alternative coalition of developing nations has formed. Still, Paz was prescient in anticipating that anti-imperialist elements would play a massive role in shaping the geopolitical situation of the future.

Chapter 9 presents the broadest and deepest view of the philosophical issues that shape Paz’s approach to Mexican history, culture, and identity. Here we find many of the initial themes of the book recapitulated—in particular, the role of solitude and communion in the arc of individual human lives. Paz makes plain here the “dialectical” character of solitude and communion. Our experience of “solitude” indicates to us that some greater degree of communion—that is of shared meaning, belonging, unity—has been lost and can perhaps be retained. The use of “dialectic” to imply the necessary “back and forth” interplay of conceptual opposites is peculiar to the tradition of nineteenth-century idealism of GWF Hegel, who formulated dialectic as an immanent law of all reality including logic, nature, and history. Paz uses the term in much the same way, though his claims are more modest: he only develops a dialectical picture of human history and culture, rather than reality itself. For Paz, it is at least true that human life reflects the dialectic between a “lost" state of communion, a painful—even guilt ridden—experience of solitude or separateness, and, finally, the promise of communion regained.

Again echoing a Marxian theme, Paz suggests that the abstract character of modern labor and the alienation of workers means that modern human beings cannot see themselves reflected in the world that their labor creates. Solitude becomes a continual condition, an endless hell, rather than a period ordeal. Erotic love offers a brief respite from this solitude, but the social expectations that are placed upon such unions make them difficult, Paz claims.

In previous cultures, religion and myth provided humanity a way to represent this dialectic and cope with it as an existential condition. They did so by affecting a union between the sacred world and the world of work, the profane, every day world, and the creative, divine forces that created the world and gave it meaning. In these cultures, solitude was a temporary state. In the modern world, however, solitude is a pervasive pathology. Paz's argument is a clear echo of the works of historian of religions Mircea Eliade, founder of the so-called “Chicago School.” According to Eliade, certain patterns could be detected across religions and myths: particularly important was the idea that rituals purport to actually participate in the events detailed in myth. This clearly echoes in Paz’s description of myths as providing a sense of communion with an eternal reality and his description of the Catholic Eucharist as actually making-present the redeeming sacrifice of Christ.

In all mythic forms, there is a trajectory of withdrawal and return, loss and restoration, solitude and communion. Myths narrate and represent this dialectic. For Paz, the most important symbol of these is the labyrinth—a single, sinuous, and arduous path—which leads, inexorably, from solitude and exile to the sacred center of reality in which communion is regained.

The implication of the concluding passages is that some revival of our myth-making capacity will be essential to overcoming pathological solitude. Modern life believes it is “wide awake” but is actually trapped in a nightmare. It’s “rationality” is like a maze or a hall of mirrors from which we cannot escape. The image of the mirror is important. Each attempt to step outside of one’s self leads only to an encounter with one’s own reflection, cast back into the depths of solitude. Equally important is the “maze” like character of rationality. Reason is a maze which leads to dead ends and impasses. This contrasts with the mythic labyrinth, which leads to communion by a single path, and which requires steadfastness and faith to traverse.

The task of modern humanity is, perhaps, to transform the mythical “labyrinth of solitude” such that it can become a means to transcendence once again. Following surrealists such as André Breton, Paz suggests that we must tap into the creative powers of the unconscious mind to liberate ourselves from this world. The significance of beginning “to dream once more with our eyes closed” (212) thus appears to be Paz’s call to reawaken our capacity to make myths, to narrate the dialectic of solitude in a way that will help us escape from our modern malaise, and remake the world in a more humane, less alienating shape.