Friday, May 18, 2018

From Sardinha's "On Behalf of the Commoner"

"So that it won’t be so is why we go back to the highest undertaking of our duty as Portuguese, which is nothing but the promotion between us of a restoration of intelligence. From one side and the other of the trench where Portugal cuts itself from top to bottom, swarm, in an awkward unconsciousness, the same puppets, the same fakes, whose geneology Eça de Queiróz has outlined in his work full of the utmost demolishing intent. Portugal dies, because, like a Berber tribe, it has let the roots that chain it to the eternal soul of history go dry. Thus, it is up to us - a minority, if we are to be judged - to rebuild, before anything else, the moral physionomy of nationality, by drinking in the heritage of past generations the sacred stimulae that will open before us, one after the other, the mysterious doors of the future." 
- António Sardinha in "A Prol do Comum (On Behalf of the Commoner)", 1934


Image and text from O Horizonte Português - The Sun at Night