This story is about exactly what the title suggests – a man in a relationship with a wave. I was a bit skeptical at first that Paz wouldn’t be able to pull this off. But he did, and he did so brilliantly. It bears all the hallmarks of love and romance and how difficult it is to hold on to that which is wild.
First published in 1949 as part of his collection Águila o sol?. The English translation by Eliot Weinberger appeared in 1976 in the collection Eagle or Sun?, published by New Directions
A surreal tale. It appears in Paz’s Selected Poems, so definitionally it’s a prose poem. I ruled out Anne Carson’s ‘Merry Christmas from Hegel’ for this reason, so I feel I can indulge myself just once on this account. The very short story – only a couple of pages long – recounts the narrator’s walk at night when he is assaulted by a man looking to mollify his girlfriend with a bouquet of blue eyes. Does the narrator possess the prized eye-colour, or will he be spared the knife? Reminiscent of Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, but more conventionally structured. A model of how to use foreshadowing, employing the senses to anticipate the dramatic climax.
First published in Spanish in 1949. Collected in English in Selected Poems of Octavio Paz, New Directions, 1984. Read the story online here
A Personal Anthology 