SOURCE: “Becquer's ‘Disembodied Soul,’” in Hispanic Review, Vol. 47, No. 2, Spring, 1979, pp. 185-92.

In the following essay, Palley discusses the history of the “disembodied soul” motif in literature and comments on Becquer's use of it in his Rimas.

The myth or image of the disembodied soul, leaving the body during sleep or in a death-like trance, is a pervasive motif of classical, medieval and romantic thought and art. It is taken up by Plato, Cicero and Macrobius, and becomes the basis for the dream-vision of medieval literature, whose paragon is Dante's Divine Comedy. In Western tradition it was Plato who first wrote of the winged and soaring soul, that of the pair of winged horses and a charioteer. When perfect and fully-winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world. In Book X of the Republic, the myth of Er relates how the son of Armenius was slain in...