Rabindranath Tagore, Aimé Césaire and Pablo Neruda – poet activists and historic figures from different geo-cultural spheres (Asia, Africa/Caribbean, Europe and Latin America) who wore their affiliations on their sleeves, were able to respond to the burdens of history in their time, from the second half of the nineteenth century (Tagore was born in 1861) to the early twenty-first century (with the death of Césaire in 2008).

Their activism and literary work challenged the contradictions of an unequal and unfair world system and developed a new understanding of their society and the world in order to establish a concrete and universal humanism. The work and paths of these three major writers are a reflection at the highest level of the interrelationship between the universal and the particular in understanding the complex processes of modernity.