STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Mexican writer, poet, essayist and former diplomat Octavio Paz Thursday won the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature for his 'impassionate writing with wide horizons,' the Swedish Academy announced.
Paz, who was in New York at the time of the award's announcement, told a news conference, 'I was surprised because I didn't expect the prize. One or two years ago I knew I was a candidate, but this time, no. I didn't have the slightest idea, so I was doubly surprised.'
'The prize means great love for a writer, I suppose. Not in the sense of a passport to immortality but it gives the opportunity to have a wider audience,' he said.
A candidate for the Nobel literature prize throughout the 1980s, Paz published his first collection of poems in his teens and at the age of 76 remains active as a writer, critic and lecturer. He has devoted much time to attempts to increase understanding between North America and Latin and South America.
A robust, medium-built man with thick greying hair and blue eyes, Paz told reporters that among the writers he most admired were T.S. Eliot and French surrealist poets.
Swedish Academy secretary Sture Allen said the Academy, in awarding the prize to Paz, 'Paz's writing is characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity. Impassionate writing with wide horizons.'
The Academy cited Paz works such as 'The Labyrinth of Solitude' published in 1950 in which it said the author explored his identity as a Mexican 'and in a broader meaning Latin American.'
'Sor Juana,' or 'The Traps of Faith,' from 1982 was held up as an application of literary history and the history of ideas in depicting Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century lady-in-waiting who later became a nun.
In addition, the Academy said, 'Paz has written exquisite love poetry. At the same time sensuous and visual.'
'Paz's poetry and essays evolve from an intractable but fruitful union of cultures: Pre-Colombian Indian, the Spanish Conquistadores and Western Modernism,' the citation said.
'His poetry consists in other words to a very great extent of writing both with and about words,' it said.
The Academy said that as a publisher of magazines, of which Vuelta was the latest, Paz was a 'lodestar in the the tide of opinion.'
It said that in his latest collection of poems -- 'A Tree Within' -- Paz readers were confronted with a series of reflections on death. 'Paz turns inwards on himself in a new way.'
Born in 1914 in Mexico City, Paz' paternal grandfather was a public official and novelist and one of the first authors in the region to write sympathetically about the plight of the country's Indian population.
As a young man, Paz studied law, the profession of his father, without taking a degree and in 1938, he witnessed the Spanish Civil War from Madrid, from a Republican perspective.
On his return to Mexico in 1938, Paz became one of the founders of the journal Taller (Workshop).
'As one of its contributors he exerted strong influence on contemporary literature,' the Swedish Academy said. 'This he has retained with great open-mindedness, for example through other journals he has founded and edited.'
In 1943, Paz traveled to the United States on a Guggenheim Award, and also entered his country's diplomatic service, serving as Mexico's ambassador to India, France, Switzerland and Japan.
He resigned his diplomatic career in 1968 in protest against his government's suppression of student demonstrations during the Olympic Games in Mexico in that year.
Paz held the Charles Elliot Norton Chair of Poetry at Harvard in 1971-72 before receiving an honorary doctorate in 1980.
In 1981, Paz was awarded the most prestigious literary prize of the Spanish world -- the Cervantes Prize and in 1982 he was awarded the American Neustadt Prize.
The Nobel Literature prize is one of a series of six prestigious awards -- in medicine, peace, physics, chemistry, economics and literature -- instituted by Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite. It was first awarded in 1901.
Other prizes are announced in Stockholm. The 1990 Medicine Prize was announced Oct. 8 to two Americans -- Joseph E. Murray of Brigham and Women's Hospital of Boston and E. Donnall Thomas of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Department of Seattle for their research into organ and cell transplants.
The Peace Prize will be awarded in Oslo Oct. 15 and the Physics and Chemistry Prizes on Oct. 17.
The sixth prize, in economics, was set up by the Swedish National Bank in 1968 as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. The winner of this award will be made known Oct. 16.
Paz was described as a 'Mexican writer, poet and essayist ... with a wide international perspective.'
In announcing the award, academy secretary Sture Allen said, 'Paz's writing is characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.'
Paz published his first collection of poems in his teens and in his 76th year remains active as a writer and critic and visiting lecturer at Harvard, the academy said.
Paz received an honorary doctorate at Harvard in 1980.NEWLN: more
Although Paz has been a candidate for the Nobel literature prize throughout the 1980s, his choice by the Swedish Academy was likely to be controversial in Latin America.
Unlike the majority of his peers, apart from Spanish, Paz also writes and publishes in English and has devoted much of his time to attempts to increase understanding between North America and Latin America.
The Swedish Academy said Paz's works evolved 'from an intractable but fruitful union of cultures: pre-Colombian Indian, the Spanish Conquistadores and Western Modernism.'
'His poetry consists ... to a very great extent of writing both with and about words,' the citation said.
The academy said as a publisher of magazines, of which Vuelta is the latest, Paz was a 'lodestar in the tide of opinion.'NEWLN: more
The academy cited Paz's 'The Labyrinth of Solitude,' which was published in 1950, for exploring his identity as a Mexican and, in a broader meaning, a Latin American.
'The Traps of Faith' from 1982 was held up as an application of literary history and the history of ideas in depicting Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century lady-in-waiting who later became a nun.
'Paz has written exquisite love poetry,' the academy said in its citation. 'At the same time sensuous and visual.'
The academy said in his latest collectionof poems, 'A Tree Within,' Paz readers were confronted with a series of reflections on death. 'Paz turns inwards on himself in a new way,' the citation said.NEWLN: more
Paz was born in 1914 in Mexico City and his paternal grandfather, a public official, was a novelist and one of the first authors in the region to write sympathetically about the country's Indian population.
As a young man, Paz studied law, the profession of his father, without taking a degree and in 1938 he witnessed the Spanish Civil War from Madrid from a Republican perspective.
On his return to Mexico in 1938, Paz became one of the founders of the journal Workshop.
'As one of its contributors, he exerted a strong influence on contemporary literature,' the Swedish Academy said. 'This he has retained with great open-mindedness, for example, through other journals he has founded and edited.'
In 1943, Paz traveled to the United States on a Guggenheim Award and also entered his country's diplomatic service.
Paz has served as Mexico's ambassador to India, France, Switzerland and Japan. He quit his diplomatic career in protest against his government's suppression of student demonstrations during the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968.
Since then he has devoted himself to lecturing.
In 1981, Paz was awarded the most prestigious literary prize of the Spanish world, the Cervantes Prize, and in 1982 he was awarded the American Neustadt Prize.
Following Thursday's announcement, Allen said the awarding committee had not chosen a woman because only few women had been nominated.
'We considered good women authors in the same way as the men. There were several worthy candidates but it is surprising that so few women are suggested to us,' Allen said.
'This year there were 150 candidates, 25 of whom were women,' Allen said.
Asked why author Graham Greene -- popularly known as 'the man who never won the prize' -- had again been overlooked for the award, Allen said, 'No comment. Today is Paz's day.'
