The Labyrinthe of Solitude

I'm feeling a little down and a bit sad today, so my mind naturally wandered to this title by Octavio Paz.  It isn't a volume of poetry.  It's a famous book of essays he penned and published in 1950 about the character of his country, Mexico, and the people who populate it.  For most of the second half of the 20th century, it was considered the best portrait of the elusive character of those south of our border.  For most of the last century, Americans merely had stereotypes about Mexico, and this is what happens with a book like Labyrinthe -- in the past seventy years it has become somewhat stereotypical. The country continues to shift and its people change over time.  I would guess most people in Mexico would consider this book passe and as a finger pointing only toward the fading past.

Still, this video captures something of the feeling of the book, beginning with a remarkable array of faces at about the two minute mark.  The voice-over or narration is in Spanish, of course, which I don't speak, but I don't care and neither should you.  I'm sure they're quoting from the book but the images tell the tale.  

This video was probably produced in the mid-to-late Eighties, when Paz had a regular television show in Mexico.  That's him at the start of the video.  But as when you travel in another country, it is the faces themselves that convey to you the reality, the living truth of the country itself.  So with these.

And we all occupy the Labyrinthe of Solitude, do we not?