Text, Figure, Monogram: The Embodiment of the I in the Essayistic <em>écriture</em> at Octavio Paz’s <em>El mono gramático</em>

This article traces the characteristics of “essayistic” as a genuine mode writing in Modernity, using Octavio Paz’s El mono gramático an example. work is regarded one most complex by 1990 Mexican Nobel Prize laureate and resists classification. It stages ambivalent unstable figures “the essayistic,” describing intents shaping general, giving aesthetic form to subject particular. The hope for consistent self-formation driven deep metaphysical ideal, which, however, repeatedly shattered. In figure Hindu Monkey God Hanumān, monkey grammarian, Paz walks fine line “writing oneself” between figurative integral embodiment self disintegrating analytic discursivity. 'The unfolds ethos aesthetics endeavor which forces compromise, leaving it unmet aspiration, forever fractured incomplete. realizes itself processually ascesis intransitive describes self-critical performative textual practice.