Interviewer: By the end of the forties you had published two major books, the poems collected in Freedom on Parole (Libertad bajo palabra) and The Labyrinth of Solitude. I've always been curious about the title of Freedom on Parole. Does it have anything to do with the futurist poet Marinentti's "words on leave" (parole in liberta)?
Paz: I am afraid not. Marinetti wanted to free words from the chains of syntax and grammar, a kind of aesthetic nihilism. Freedom on Parole has more to do with morals than aesthetics. I simply wanted to say freedom is conditional. In english, when you are let out of jail you're "on parole," and "parole" means speech, word, word of honour. But the condition under which you are free is language, human awareness.
Interviewer: So for you freedom of speech is more than the right to speak your mind?
Paz: Absolutely. Ever since I was an adolescent I 've been intrigued by the mystery of freedom. Because it is a mystery. Freedom depends on the very thing that limits or denies it, fate, God, biological or social determinism, whatever. To carry out its mission, fate counts on the complicity of our freedom, and to be free, we must overcome fate. The dialectics of freedom and fate is the theme of Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, although in Shakespeare fate appears as passion (love, jealousy, ambition, envy) and as chance. In Spanish theater - especially in Calderon and Tirso de Molina - the mystery of freedom expresses itself in the language of Christian theology: divine providence and free will. The idea of conditional freedom implies the notion of personal responsibility. Each of us, literally, either creates or destorys his own freedom. A freedom that is always precarious, And that brings up the title's poetic or aesthetic meaning: poem-freedom-stands above an order-language.
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