Richard Gott, GuardianAlthough the Mexican Octavio Paz Lozano (1914-1998) is celebrated as an anthropologist, essayist, professor, critic and translator, it is as a poet that he enjoys worldwide fame and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990 for his passionate and wide-ranging writing, characterized by sensual intelligence and humanistic integrity. Paz published dozens of works during his lifetime, and his poetry was translated into English by the likes of Samuel Beckett, Charles Tomlinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Muriel Rukeyser. His earlier poetry clearly shows his Marxist and Surrealist inclinations and the profound influence of Hinduism and Buddhism on him. His later poetry reflects his passions such as modern painting and his ideas about love and eroticism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Most of his major works are available in English thanks to translation by the distinguished translator Eliot Weinberger, who is the editor of The Collected Poems of Ottavio Paz 1957-87. Octavio Paz served as Mexico's ambassador to India and immersed himself deeply in the country and was able to escape the tourist image despite cultural and language barriers. His explorations in our country are visible in some of the very titles of his poems: Madurai, Vrindaban, The Day in Udaipur, Sunday in the Elephanta Caves, the trilogy on Himachal Pradesh. In Light of India is Paz's most personal prose work to date and in his Acknowledgments, he states that "this is not a systematic study, but a more or less ordered collection of the reflections, impressions and objections that India provoked in me". In it he mentions his close friend J.Swaminathan whom he met during his second stay in India and describes him as “a painter and poet, he was a spirit who combined an originality of vision with an intellectual rigor”. The poem To the Painter Swaminathan is Octavio Paz's dedication to Jagadish Swaminathan, who he describes as an iconoclast and India was an overwhelming presence in his creative life and is quite evident in the poem. Paz maintained an admirable poise and poise in his approach to the immense reality of India and avoided both extremes of aversion and admiration and this particular quality distinguishes him from the multitude of writers who portray a partial perspective of India and its people. Paz's poems are full of a language that sings and pushes perception out of its everyday circles. In the poem To the Painter Swaminathan, Paz skillfully uses various tones and shades to present an image of immense passion that stimulates the mind of the reader with its intimate connection with our culture, civilisation, philosophy, art and ethics. The poet witnesses the creative frenzy of the painter at work, who tries to dose the colors and give new life to the canvas using only a rag, a knife and a range of colours. Paz takes the blank canvas as a challenge as the void must be filled significantly otherwise the calling becomes fruitless. Seeing the canvas, the narrator recalls the matador's moment of truth when he comes face to face with the raging bull. The narrator describes the colors in such detail that they come to life while reading the poem: the blue flame of cobalt, the amber greens burned fresh from the sea, the Mexican red that gradually turns into the black of Kali's colors. lip. Kali is the Indian goddess known for her ferocity, she is artistic and looks at life in an abstract way. Kali in Indian mythology is known as the goddess of beauty and power and the art of pushing someone beyond their boundaries so that they can grow. The right use of colors.