Authorial scenery in Octavio Paz's "Nocturno de San Ildefonso"

The purpose of this paper is to analyze in "Nocturno de San Ildefonso" (1974) the various "authorial scenery" as Jose-Luis Diaz defines the device in which the "imaginary writer" is inscribed to assume a position or literary identity and structure their public performance. In this autobiographically evocative poem, the then sixty-year-old poet recalls and reconstructs through fragments his youthful past, his first aesthetic and ideological concerns, as well as his poetic initiation. With clear romantic roots, the authorial scenery present in "Nocturno de San Ildefonso" constitute the framework for his mature self-figuration as a visionary poet and his youthful self-representation as a budding ideologue and polemicist, at the same time that he defines, through powerful imagery, his poetic conception. This analysis is relevant because it allows us to identify some strategies through which our major poet, Octavio Paz, actively participates in the creation of a self-image that reaffirms his legitimacy and prestige in the Mexican literary field.