"Since movement is a metaphor for change, the best thing will be to say: nonchange is (always) change. It would appear that I have finally arrived at the desired disequilibrium. Nonetheless, change is not the primordial, original word that I am searching for: it is a form of becoming. When becoming is substituted for change, the relation between the two terms is altered, so that I am obliged to replace nonchange by permanence, which is a metaphor for fixity, as becoming is for coming-to-be, which in turn is a metaphor for time in all its ceaseless transformations…. There is no beginning, no original word: each one is a metaphor for another word which is a metaphor for yet another, and so on. All of them are translations of translations. A transparency in which the obverse is the reverse: fixity is always momentary. I begin all over again: if it does not make sense to say that fixity is always momentary, the same may not be true if I say that it never is."
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Ch. 4
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Octavio Paz
1914 – 1998
mexikanischer Schriftsteller und Diplomat
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