SOURCE: "Rosalía de Castro: Two Mourning Dreams," in Hispanofila, Vol. 82, September, 1984, pp. 21-27.

In the following essay, Palley analyzes Castro's somber, dream-like poems "A mi madre" and "En sueños te di un beso, vida mía."

The encounter with a departed beloved person in dream, in the subconscious or pre-conscious mind, in an under - or other-world which resembles both, is a major motif of literature that goes back to Ulysses' meeting with his mother in Book XI of the Odyssey: "As my mother spoke, there came to me … the one desire, to embrace her spirit, dead though she was. Thrice, in my eagerness to clasp her to me, I started forward with my hands outstretched. Thrice, like a shadow or a dream, she slipped through my arms and left me harrowed by an even sharper pain."¹ Achilles' dream of Patroclus (in book XXIII of the...