My Life With the Wave

“My Life with the Wave” was first published in the volume Eagle or Sun?, which is a collection of Paz’s prose poems. On its own, the piece is not explicitly about Mexico, but it is a striking example of the author’s surrealist work. The surrealist movement began in France following World War I, and in the 1940s, Paz met André Breton (considered the “father” of surrealist literature) in Paris while he lived there as a Mexican diplomat. In art and literature, Surrealists utilize juxtaposition and striking imagery to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, and between conscious and unconscious thought. As a result, surrealist work exists in a realm of confusion, where it is difficult to distinguish what is true or possible. The narrator’s love affair with the wave exists in precisely this space, and Paz’s imagery is so vivid and tangible and the lovers’ deep emotions are on such transparent display that it reads like a real relationship between a man and a woman.

The story serves as an allegory for tumultuous love, as forceful and unpredictable as an ocean wave.