Abstract
The fantastic short story is one of the most famous literary genres in the Hispanoamerican literature. Its history has begun a long time before the appearance of the world-renowned names as Jorge Luis Borges or Julio Cortázar - in the 19th century with Romanticism and, in particular, Modernism (at the turn of the 20th century).
In that period, the centre of the fantastic literature was the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires, a growing, cosmopolitan city where a lot of modernist writers settled. Two great authors met there - the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío and a young Argentinian Leopoldo Lugones.
Both tried to introduce supernatural motives in their stories and Lugones has become one of the founders of the modern Hispanoamerican fantastic literature - his short stories reflect the complicated and ambiguous relation of the modernist artists with the modern world and the natural sciences.