Leopoldo Antonio Lugones Argüello (13 June 1874 – 18 February 1938) was an Argentine poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, historian, professor, translator, biographer, philologist, theologian, diplomat, politician and journalist. His poetic writings are often considered to be the founding works of Spanish-language modern poetry (not, however, modernismo). His short stories made him a crucial precursor and also a pioneer of both the fantastic and science fiction literature in Argentina. Early life Born in Villa de María del Río Seco, a city in Córdoba Province, in Argentina's Catholic heartland, Lugones belonged to a family of landed gentry. He was the firstborn son of Santiago M. Lugones and Custodia Argüello. His father, son of Pedro Nolasco Lugones, was returning from the city of Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero when he met Custodia Argüello while stopping in Villa de María, a locality that was at that time disputed territory between the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Córdoba. It was his mother who gave young Leopoldo his first lessons and was responsible for his strict Catholic upbringing. When Lugones was six years old and following the birth of a second child, the family moved to the city of Santiago del Estero and later to Ojo de Agua, a small town situated in the south of the province of Santiago del Estero close to the border with Córdoba, where the poet's two younger brothers were born: Ramón Miguel Lugones (1880, Santiago del Estero), and the youngest of the four children, Carlos Florencio Lugones (1885, Ojo de Agua). Later his parents sent him to study at the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, in Córdoba, where his maternal grandmother lived. In 1892 the family would move to that city, at the time when Lugones was beginning his forays into the fields of journalism and literature. He first worked for La Montaña, a newspaper, and was in favour with the aristocratic Manuel Quintana, a candidate to become a president of Argentina. This brought him first to Buenos Aires in 1896, where his literary talent developed quickly. That year, he married Juana Agudelo, from whom he had a son, Leopoldo Polo Lugones, who would become the notorious chief of the Federal Police during the dictatorship of José Félix Uriburu. In 1899, he became an active Freemason. Career Lugones was the leading Argentine exponent of the Latin American literary current known as Modernismo. This was a form of Parnassianism influenced