ABSTRACT
When Octavio Paz returned to Mexico City from Spain in 1938, he renewed the contact with the Contemporaneos that his excursion to the Yucatan had interrupted. He now attended the group's daily meetings at El Cafe Paris, after which he would wander the streets of Mexico City. If Paz did read Prufrock's inability to 'force the moment to its crisis' as a critique of the Contemporaneos, it would not be the only example in his work of Eliotic personae commandeered to serve a polemical purpose. Although Eliot is credited with the diagnosis of the Contemporaneos' failings, it is Pablo Neruda who is the repository for the virtues that they lack. The ferocity with which they are turned here on the Contemporaneos suggests that the emotions at work transcend this specific polemic, and they will find varied expression in response to the events of the ensuing years.
