We analyze the cultural references (film, pictorial, literary and musical) that permeate Campo de amapolas blancas, by Gonzalo Hidalgo Bayal (2008a [1997]). Our analysis is not only based on the formal and rhetorical perspective that imbues this work's narrative prosody, but as recreation of the intellectual and emotional debt contracted by the author with the cultural notions and ideals (philosophical and aesthetic) that condition the work. The alliance between thought and emotion permeates this brief and somber novel, which masterfully plays with an alter ego of the writer.