Miguel Ángel Asturias's poetry reflects the cultural duality that surrounded him in his formative years. His sonnets could only have been written by a person who was immersed in European culture; other poems could only have been written by someone familiar with Mayan culture. Asturias gained knowledge of the latter in early childhood by listening to the Mayan household servants telling their traditional tales and later by reading and translating into Spanish French versions of the ancient Mayan texts. Giuseppe Bellini notes "los módulos y los ritmos propios de la antigua poesía maya, especialmente en la reiteración, la metáfora, la imagen simbólica, el paralelismo, creando una atmósfera de sugestiva eficacia, evocadora de mundos remotos, proyectados en el tiempo presente" (the modules and the rhythms peculiar to ancient Mayan poetry, especially in the reiteration, the metaphor...