Argentina's best-known writer during his lifetime, Leopoldo Lugones's work spans many literary styles and ideological positions. He was influential as a modernist poet, as a precursor of the avant-garde, and also as the poet of Argentine nature. His short stories (Las Fuerzas Extranas 1906) were early examples of the fantastic in Latin American fiction and influenced Borges, Quiroga, and others They reflect an interest in the uncanny and inspired contemporary interest in animism and occultism because the protagonists of many the stories were scientists and doctors experimenting in the...