Octavio PAZ - Beautiful letter on the political events of 1989.

Octavio PAZ (1914.1998) Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

Autograph letter signed to the writer Claude Roy.

A small 4° page on paper addressed to him. Mexico. October 14, 1989.

Interesting letter from the Mexican poet, first of all rejoicing at the future publication of his friend, before welcoming the uprisings of the Chinese people and the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall. He ends by praising the Chinese poet Bei Dao.

“Dear Claude, Thank you for your lines. It’s a very good idea to re-edit On the Edge of Time . I am very happy (and flattered) with the choice of my little article as a preface to your book. We must keep the pretty title: Le Sablier de Claude Roy . (It’s from you I imagine). I corrected the first of my article (no translation error: errata) and changed the beginning a little. Yes, the upheavals in Eastern Europe and China never cease to amaze us, give us hope and magnify us once again. In New York, Marie-José and I met two very intelligent and friendly young Chinese poets, Bei Dao and Dao Dao. I have just read, in English, a book of poems by Bei Dao: a true poet. My friends have Loleh (the wife of C. Roy) and there is Claude of our friends Marie-José and Octavio. »

Bei Dao (1940-), whose real name is Zhao Zhenkai, is a Chinese writer, both poet and novelist. At the end of the seventies, he was still a construction worker and it was not until 1979 that he published his first novel Waves . In the 1980s, Bei Dao wrote four other short stories: Melody , The Moon on the Manuscript , Crossing and 13 Rue du Bonheur . During the Tiananmen Square Protests in 1989, his poem “ Huida ” (The Response) was one of the emblems of the revolt. Then in Berlin, Bei Dao was prohibited from returning to China and was forced into forced exile until 2006. Au bord du ciel and Paysage above zero , published by Éditions Circé, bring together poems written between 1989 and 1996. We find in these two collections the concerns that have always been those of Bei Dao: the attention paid to language, the taste for short forms and for paradox. He received numerous literary prizes, including the PEN/Swedish Tucholsky Prize and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in 1990. He was also nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.