I wrote down the words past, present, and future, making me remember one of my favorite poems – Cântico Negro (Black Chant) written by the Portuguese poet José Régio, compiled in the book (Poems of the Devil and God), published in 1926 – who talks about one’s choosing its fate without caring about other’s wills.
"come this way" — some say with sweet eyes opening their arms, and certain that it would be good if I would listen when they say: "come this way"! I look at them with languidly, (my eyes filled with irony and tiredness) and I cross my arms, and I never go that way... this is my glory: to create inhumanity! to accompany no one. — for I live with the same unwillingness with which i tore my mother's womb no, I won't go that way! I only go where my own steps take me... if to what I seek to know no one can answer why do you repeat: "come this way"? I rather crawl thru muddy alleys, to whirl in the wind, like rags, to drag my bleeding feet, than to go that way... if I came to this world, it was only to deflower virgin forests, and to draw my own footsteps in the unexplored sand! all else I do is worth nothing. how can you be the ones that give me impulses, tools and courage to overcome my own obstacles? the blood of our ancestors runs thru your veins, And you love what is easy! I love the Far and the Mirage, I loves the abysses, the torrents, the deserts... go! you have roads, you have gardens, you have flower-beds, you have a nation, you have roofs, and you have rules, and treaties, and philosophers, and wise men. I have my Madness! I hold it high like a torch burning in the dark night, and I feel foam, and blood, and chants on my lips... God and the Devil guide me, no one else! everyone's had a father, everyone's had a mother; but I, who never begin or end, was born of the love between God and the Devil. ah! don't give me sympathetic intentions! don't asks me for definitions! don't tells me: "come this way"! my life is a whirlwind that broke loose, it's a wave that rose. it's one more atom that ignited... I don’t know which way I’ll go, I don't know where I'm going to, - I know I'm not going that way!
Régio was born at the beginning of the XX century in the northern village of Vila do Conde, a time where Portugal was living its last blows of the monarchy. Portugal was in constant metamorphosis, being death and poverty the price of these consecutive changes. In less than 30 years, Portugal killed 2 kings, implemented a Republic, had 45 governments from 1910 to 1926, killed a dictator, killed thousands of unprepared soldiers in WWI, and started one of the worst European fascist dictatorships in 1930, which only ended in 1974 with another war. José Régio lived all this, being defiant of everything that occurred throughout this period of time.
The poem works a manifest with modernists premisses that dictated his poetic work and the presentist generation – presentism is the philosophical belief of the inexistence of past nor future. It only exists an (eternal) present. Nevertheless, it is important to clarify the difference between presentism and eternalism – this last one doesn’t deny the existence of the past, although eternalists argue that figures from the past have nothing to with the present nor future.
If we analyze the poem, we can notify a constant interaction between the Devil and God, which represent the grotesque and the sublime. Their movement is the reason why the poetic subject is shouting because his attitudes are a reflection of their relation. Therefore his acts are stranger. His individuality resides in his choices and not in the paths everyone seeks. For him, it is imperative to always opt for a different way, even if it is obscure or difficult to cross – the necessity of being unique and being against destiny. He must avoid the future at all costs, and for him, it is not a problem to be placed in the same place as the crazy and the deviants, because he knows his psychological nature.