Rhymes and legends

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer confessed when writing the “Introduction” of Rhymes and legends, just two years before he died, that he did not want to take with him,

“The treasure of tinsel and winks that fantasy has been accumulating in the attics of the brain.”

So Rhymes and Legends brings together poetry and prose simply because they are all creatures of the same imagination that yearns to free itself to “sleep in peace.”
The influence on the modern imaginary of some of the poems of the Rhymes, such as:

• “The Mount of Souls”,
• “The Moonbeam”
• or “The Kiss”,

It has been immense.
For its part, the Legends are inscribed in the Gothic literature of authors such as Hoffman and Poe, which meant a break with rationalism. By rescuing popular legends, romanticism gave new meaning to reviled superstitions.
Why are mysterious or fantastic events terrifying us? They are signs of the supernatural, and since it is not possible to explain them rationally, they represent overwhelming evidence of our limited ability to understand the world.