Horace Quiroga
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (Salto, Uruguay, December 31, 1878 - Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 19, 1937) was a Uruguayan short story writer, playwright, and poet. He was one of the masters of the Latin American short story, vivid, naturalistic and modernist prose.His stories often portray nature with fearsome and horrifying traits, as an enemy of the circumstances of the human being. He has been compared to the American writer Edgar Allan Poe.
Biography
Childhood of Horacio Silvestre
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza was born on December 31, 1878, in the city of Salto, Uruguay, in the northwest of the country, on the Uruguay River. He was the fourth child of the marriage of Prudencio Quiroga and Pastora Forteza. On his paternal side he was descended from the La Rioja caudillo Facundo Quiroga. His father died when he was only six months old, when, after a day of hunting, when he got off a boat, his shotgun accidentally went off. In 1891, Pastora Forteza married Mario Barcos, who was Quiroga's stepfather. But he suffered a stroke in 1896 that left him semi-paralyzed and mute. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a foot-operated shotgun just as Quiroga, 18, entered the room.
Training
He studied in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay until he finished high school. These studies included technical training (Polytechnic Institute of Montevideo) and general (National College), and from a very young age he showed interest in literature, chemistry, photography, mechanics, cycling and country life. At that early age he founded the Salto Cycling Society and traveled by bicycle from Salto to Paysandú (120 km). At that time he spent very long hours in a machine and tool repair shop. Under the influence of the owner's son, he became interested in philosophy. He would define himself as "frank and vehement soldier of philosophical materialism." Simultaneously he also worked, studied and collaborated with the publications La Revista and La Reforma . His first notebook of poetry is still preserved, containing twenty-two poems of different styles, written between 1894 and 1897.
During the carnival of 1898, he met his first love, Maria Esther Jurkovski, who would inspire two of his most important works: The Sacrificed Ones (1920) and A Season of Love (1917). But the disagreements caused by the young woman's parents—who disapproved of the relationship, due to Quiroga's non-Jewish origin—led them to separate.
Trip to Paris
In 1899, the Revista de Salto was founded. After the suicide of his stepfather, he decided to invest the inheritance received on a trip to Paris. absent. However, things did not turn out as he had planned: the same young man who had left Montevideo in first class returned in third class, ragged, hungry and with a black beard that he would never give up again. He summarized his memories of this experience in Diary of a trip to Paris (1900).
Consistory of Gay Knowledge
Upon returning to his native country, Quiroga brought together Federico Ferrando, Alberto Brignole, Julio Jaureche, Fernández Saldaña, José María Delgado and Asdrúbal Delgado, and founded with them the "Consistory of Gay Knowledge", a kind of experimental literary laboratory where all of them would try new ways of expressing themselves and would advocate the modernist objectives of the generation of 900. Despite its short existence, the Consistory presided over the literary life of Montevideo and the controversies with the group of Julio Herrera and Reissig. The Consistory of the Gay Saber was one of the cenacles of Montevideo, along with the Panorama Tower. These places were the meeting place for writers and thinkers at the beginning of the XX century. The Consistory was held from 1900 to 1902 in a pension where Horacio Quiroga rented a room, in Montevideo. Emir Rodríguez Monegal stated that Quiroga, after his residence in Salto, went to the capital to live with Julio J. Jaureche in a boarding house located at Calle 25 de Mayo 118, second floor, between Colón and Pérez Castellano. His friend since he was a teenager, Alberto J. Brignole, lived near there (May 25, 1987). With Asdrúbal E. Delgado and José María Fernández Saldaña, they restored the old group, which was joined by a cousin of Jaureche, Federico Ferrando. In the room he shared with Jaureche, Quiroga founded the Consistory. It was his third literary cenacle, and he was baptized by Ferrando, inspired by Provencal poetic groups
The joy caused by the appearance of his first book (Coral Reefs) was overshadowed by the death of two of his brothers, Prudencio and Pastora, victims of typhoid fever in the Chaco.
That same year, his friend Federico Ferrando —who had received bad reviews from the Montevidean journalist Germán Papini Zas— told Quiroga that he wanted to fight a duel with him. Horacio, worried about Ferrando's safety, offered to check and clean the revolver that was going to be used in the dispute. But while he was inspecting the weapon, a shot escaped and hit Federico in the mouth, killing him instantly. When the police arrived at the scene, Quiroga was arrested, subjected to interrogation and later transferred to a correctional facility. Upon verifying the accidental nature of the homicide, the writer was released after four days in prison.
Guilt over the death of his literary partner led Quiroga to dissolve the Consistory and leave Uruguay to go to Argentina. He crossed the Río de la Plata in 1902 and went to live with María, another of his sisters. In Buenos Aires, the artist would reach professional maturity, which would reach its culminating point during his stays in the jungle. In addition, his brother-in-law introduced him to pedagogy and got him a job under contract as a teacher at the examination tables of the National College of Buenos Aires.
Missiones and Chaco
Already appointed as a Spanish teacher at the British College of Buenos Aires in March 1903, in June of that same year and already an expert photographer, Quiroga wanted to accompany Leopoldo Lugones on an expedition to Misiones, financed by the Ministry of Education, in which Lugones planned to investigate some ruins of the Jesuit missions in that province. Quiroga's excellence as a photographer made Lugones agree to take him, and the Uruguayan was able to document that journey of discovery in images.
Acknowledgment
Upon returning to Buenos Aires after his failed experience in the Chaco, Quiroga embraced the short story. That is how, in 1904, he published the book of short stories El crimen de otro , strongly influenced by the style of Edgar Allan Poe, which was recognized and praised, among others, by José Enrique Rodó. These early comparisons with the "Boston Master" did not bother Quiroga, who would listen to them complacently until the end of his life and often reply that Poe was his first and foremost teacher.
For two years he worked on various stories, including rural horror and stories for children, populated with animals that speak and think without losing the natural characteristics of their species. The short novel Los perseguidos (1905) —product of the trip with Leopoldo Lugones through the Misiones jungle to the border with Brazil— and El almohadón de pluma, published in the Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas in 1905, which published eight Quiroga stories a year. Shortly after starting to publish in it, Quiroga became a famous and prestigious contributor, whose writings were sought after by thousands of readers.
Missions
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In 1906 Quiroga decided to return to his beloved jungle. Taking advantage of the facilities that the government offered for the exploitation of the land, he bought a farm (in partnership with his Uruguayan friend Vicente Gozalbo) of 185 hectares in the province of Misiones, on the banks of the Alto Paraná, and began to make the preparations for to live there, while teaching Spanish and Literature.
During the holidays of 1908, the man of letters moved into his new property, built the first facilities and began to build the bungalow where he would settle. In love with one of his students —the teenager Ana María Cires—, he dedicated his first novel to her, entitled Story of a shady love . Quiroga insisted on the relationship in the face of opposition from the student's parents and finally obtained her permission to marry and take her to live in Misiones with him. Quiroga's in-laws, concerned about the risks of wildlife, followed the couple and moved to Misiones with their daughter and son-in-law. Thus, Ana María's father, her mother, and a friend of hers settled in a house near the Quiroga couple's home.
A year later, in 1911, Ana María gave birth to her first daughter, Eglé Quiroga, at her home in the jungle. During that same year, the writer began the exploitation of his yerbatales in partnership with his Uruguayan friend Vicente Gozalbo and, at the same time, he was appointed justice of the peace (official in charge of mediating minor disputes between private citizens and celebrating marriages, issuing certificates of death, etc.) in the Civil Registry of San Ignacio.
The following year their youngest son, Dario, was born. As soon as the children learned to walk, Quiroga decided to personally take care of their education. From a very young age, he accustomed them to the mountains and the jungle, often exposing them —always measuring the risks— to danger, so that they would be able to manage on their own and get out of any situation. He was able to leave them alone in the jungle at night or force them to sit on the edge of a high cliff with their legs dangling in the void. The boy and the girl, however, did not refuse these experiences—which terrified and exasperated their mother—but rather enjoyed them. The daughter learned to raise wild animals and the boy to use a shotgun, drive a motorbike and navigate, alone, in a canoe.
Return to Buenos Aires
Ana María Cires (1890-1915) committed suicide by ingesting a sublimation agent used in photographic development, which caused her eight days of agony during which she was attended by Horacio. Very affected, he would hardly mention his first wife again. After the suicide of his young spouse, Quiroga moved with his children to Buenos Aires, where he received a position as accountant secretary at the Uruguayan General Consulate in that city, after arduous efforts of some oriental friends who wanted to kill him to free him.
Throughout 1917, he lived with the children in a basement at 164 Canning Avenue (today Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz), alternating his diplomatic work with setting up a workshop in his home and working on many stories, ranging from being published in prestigious magazines such as those already mentioned, "P.B.T." and "Thumbnail." Most of them were compiled by Quiroga in several books, the first of which was Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1917). The writing of the book had been requested by the writer Manuel Gálvez —head of Cooperativa Editorial de Buenos Aires—, and the volume immediately became a huge success with the public and critics, and consolidated Quiroga as the true master of the Latin American short story.
The following year he settled in a small apartment on Calle Agüero, at the same time as the appearance of his celebrated Cuentos de la selva —collection of children's stories starring animals and set in the Misiones jungle. Quiroga dedicated this book to his children, who accompanied him during that period of poverty in the damp basement with two small rooms and a kitchen-dining room.
With two important promotions in the consular ranks (first to second-class district consul and then to second-class consul) also came his new book of short stories, The Savage (1919). The following year, following the idea of the Consistory, Quiroga founded the "Agrupación Anaconda", a group of intellectuals that carried out cultural activities in Argentina and Uruguay. His only play ( Las sacrificadas ) was published in 1920 and premiered in 1921, the year in which Anaconda y otros cuentos , another book of short stories, was released.. The Argentine newspaper La Nación also began to publish his stories, which by now were already popular. He also collaborated on The Weekly Novel . Between 1922 and 1924, Quiroga participated as secretary of a cultural embassy to Brazil (whose Academy of Letters distinguished him especially) and, on his return, saw his new book published: The desert .
For a long time the writer dedicated himself to film criticism, being in charge of the corresponding section of the magazines Atlántida, El Hogar and La Nación. He also wrote the script for a feature film ( La jangada florida ) which was never filmed. A short time later, he was invited to form a School of Cinematography. The project, financed by Russian investors and which would have the inclusion of Arturo S. Mom, Gerchunoff and others, did not prosper.
Return to Missions
Shortly after, Horacio returned to Misiones. This time he was in love again, this time with a 17-year-old girl, Ana María Palacio. Quiroga tried to convince her parents to let her go to live with him in the jungle. Their refusal and the consequent love failure inspired the theme of her second novel, Past Love, published in 1929. Finally, tired of the suitor, the young woman's parents took her away and Quiroga found herself forced to give up his love. In a part of his house, Horacio set up a workshop where he began to build a boat that he would baptize "Seagull". In his house —now converted into a shipyard— he was able to complete this work and, already in the water, he piloted it down the river from San Ignacio to Buenos Aires and made numerous river expeditions with it.
Second marriage
At the beginning of 1926 Quiroga returned to Buenos Aires and rented a villa in the suburban part of Vicente López. At the very height of his popularity, an important publisher dedicated a tribute to him, in which literary figures such as Arturo Capdevila, Baldomero Fernández Moreno, Benito Lynch, Juana de Ibarbourou, Armando Donoso and Luis Franco participated, among others. A lover of classical music, Quiroga frequently attended the concerts of the Wagnerian Association, a hobby that he alternated with the tireless reading of technical texts and manuals on mechanics, physics and manual arts.
By 1927 Horacio had decided to raise and tame wild animals, while he was publishing his new book of short stories, Los desterrados, which is considered his most successful. Quiroga had already set his eyes on who would be his last and definitive love: María Elena Bravo, a schoolmate of his daughter Eglé, who succumbed to his claims and married him in the course of that same year without even having turned twenty.
Friendships
In addition to the aforementioned Leopoldo Lugones and José Enrique Rodó, Quiroga's work in the literary and cultural field earned him the friendship and admiration of great and influential personalities. Among them, the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni and the writer and historian Ezequiel Martínez Estrada stand out. Quiroga affectionately called the latter "my younger brother".
Caras y Caretas, meanwhile, published seventeen biographical articles written by Quiroga, dedicated to characters such as Robert Scott, Luis Pasteur, Robert Fulton, H. G. Wells, Thomas de Quincey and others. In 1929 Quiroga experienced his only sales failure: the aforementioned novel Pasado amor , which only sold the meager number of forty copies in bookstores. At the same time he began to have serious marital problems.
Last return to Misiones
Starting in 1932, Quiroga settled for the last time in Misiones, in what would be his final retirement, with his wife and their third daughter (María «Pitoca» Helena). For this, and having no other means of livelihood, he got a decree to be promulgated transferring his consular post to a nearby city. Jealousy dominated Quiroga, who thought that in the middle of the jungle he could live peacefully with his wife and the daughter of his second marriage.
But a political ups and down caused a change of government, which did not want the services of the writer and expelled him from the consulate. Some of Horacio's friends, such as the writer from Salta Enrique Amorim, arranged for Quiroga's Argentine retirement. Starting from this problem, the epistolary exchange between Quiroga and Amorím became numerous. The letters that are preserved show that Horacio shared with his confidante most of his problems —almost all of an intimate and family nature—, asking for advice and help: Quiroga's wife —like her unfortunate predecessor— did not care. he liked life in the mountains and the fights and violent discussions became daily and permanent.
At this time, a collection of previously published short stories titled Beyond (1935) went on sale. Based on his interest in the works of Munthe and Ibsen, Quiroga opted for new authors and styles, and began planning his autobiography.
Illness
In 1935 Quiroga began to experience bothersome symptoms, apparently related to prostatitis or another prostate disease. The efforts of his friends bore fruit the following year, granting him a retirement. As the pain and difficulties in urinating intensified, his wife managed to convince him to move to Posadas, a city where the doctors diagnosed him with prostate hypertrophy. But Quiroga's family problems would continue: his wife and daughter abandoned him permanently, leaving him —alone and sick— in the Misiones jungle. They returned to Buenos Aires, and the writer's mood fell completely at this grave loss. Quiroga wrote in a letter to Martínez Estrada: "When I considered that I had accomplished my work -that is to say, that I had given all of myself- I began to see death in a different way. Some pains, worries, disappointments, accentuated that vision. And today I am not afraid of death, friend, because it means rest".
When the state of prostate disease meant that he couldn't take it anymore, Horacio traveled to Buenos Aires for doctors to treat his ailments. Interned at the prestigious Hospital de Clínicas in Buenos Aires at the beginning of 1937, an exploratory surgery revealed that he was suffering from an advanced case of prostate cancer, intractable and inoperable. María Elena was by his side in the last moments, as well as a large part of of his large group of friends.
On the afternoon of February 18, a board of doctors explained to the man of letters the seriousness of his condition. A little later, Quiroga asked permission to leave the hospital, which was granted, and he was thus able to take a long walk around the city. He returned to the hospital at 11:00 p.m. When Quiroga was admitted, he had found out that a monster was locked up in the cellars: an unfortunate patient with frightful deformities similar to those of the infamous Englishman Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man"). Pityed, Quiroga demanded and succeeded in having the patient—named Vicente Batistessa—released from his confinement and placed in the same room where the writer was hospitalized. As expected, Batistessa became a friend and paid eternal adoration and great thanks to the great storyteller, for his great human gesture.
Suicide
Desperate for present and future suffering, and realizing that his life was over, Horacio Quiroga entrusted Batistessa with his decision: he would anticipate cancer and shorten his pain, to which the other promised to help him. That same morning and in the presence of his friend, Horacio Quiroga drank a glass of cyanide that killed him in a few minutes. "It is a death that is born from within, that despite the form it assumes... it is but the natural culmination of that life. A death tailored to the man who was Quiroga". His corpse was veiled at the Casa del Teatro of the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) that counted him as founder and vice president. Later, his remains were repatriated to his native country. One of Quiroga's wishes was that when he died his body would be cremated and his ashes scattered in the Misiones jungle.
As his family and friends longed for his return to Salto, they decided to look for something that would be symbolic and that is why they decided to make the urn in carob and so they asked the Russian sculptor Stepán Erzia. Erzia spent twenty-four hours working on this piece that is in the Casa Quiroga Museum in Salto, Uruguay.
Her three children also committed suicide. Eglé a year later, in 1938, Darío in 1952 and María Elena in 1988.
Alfonsina Storni told a friend that compassion was unworthy in the face of a man like Quiroga, before his death she wrote:
Die like you, Horacio, in your right mind,
and as always in your stories, it's not bad;
a lightning bolt on time and the fair is over…
They will say there.
You can't live in the jungle with impunity,
nor face to the Paraná.
Good for your steady hand, great Horace …
They will say there.
“It does not hurt every hour –it is written-,
The final kills us.”
A few minutes less… who accuses you?
They will say there
Style
A follower of the modernist school founded by Rubén Darío and a reader of Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, Quiroga was drawn to themes that encompassed the strangest aspects of nature, often tinged with horror, disease, and suffering for humans. Many of his stories belong to this current, whose most emblematic work is the collection Tales of love, madness and death .
On the other hand, the influence of the British Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book) can be perceived in Quiroga, which would crystallize in his own Tales of the Jungle, an exercise fantasy literary divided into several stories starring animals. His Decalogue of the perfect storyteller, dedicated to young writers, establishes certain contradictions with his own work. While the decalogue proclaims an economical and precise style, using few adjectives, natural and plain writing and clarity of expression, in many of his stories Quiroga does not follow his own precepts, using ornate language, with abundant adjectives and a vocabulary ostentatious at times.
As his particular style developed further, Quiroga evolved towards a realistic portrayal (almost always harrowing and desperate) of the wild nature that surrounded him in Misiones: the jungle, the river, the fauna, the climate and the terrain form the scaffolding and scenery in which his characters move, suffer and often die. Especially in his stories, Quiroga describes with art and humanism the tragedy that persecutes the miserable rural workers of the region, the dangers and suffering to which they are exposed, and the way in which this existential pain is perpetuated to subsequent generations. He also dealt with many topics considered taboo in society at the beginning of the XX century, revealing himself as a risky writer, unaware of the afraid and advanced in the ideas and treatments of him. These particularities are still evident when reading his texts today.
Some scholars of Quiroga's work believe that the writer's fascination with death, accidents, and disease (subjects that relate him to Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire) is due to the tragic life that fell to his lot Whether this is true or not, Horacio Quiroga has truly left some of the most transcendental pieces of 20th-century Spanish-American literature for posterity.
Analysis of his work
His first book, Los Arrecifes Coral, made up of eighteen poems, thirty pages of poetic prose and four stories, Quiroga reveals his immaturity and adolescent confusion. A separate point for the stories, in which the modernist and naturalist style that would identify the rest of his work is already in germ. His two novels Story of a shady love and Past love deal with the same theme —which obsessed the author in his personal life —: love between mature men and teenage girls.
In the first one, Quiroga divides the action into three stages. In the first, a nine-year-old girl falls in love with a grown man. In the second part, the man, who had not realized the girl's love, after eight years (she is now seventeen) begins to court her. In the third part, the man narrates the last stage of her love: ten years have passed since the young woman abandoned him. The action begins here: it is the present time of the novel. In Past love history repeats itself: a mature man returns to a place after years of absence and falls in love with a young woman whom he had loved as a child.
Knowing Quiroga's personal history, the autobiographical characteristics of both novels are evident: even the name of the protagonist of Historia de un amor turbio is Eglé (that was the name of Quiroga's daughter, from one of whose companions the writer fell in love with and who would become his second wife). Quiroga's sentimental vicissitudes with very young girls populate the drama of these two novels, with special emphasis on the opposition of his parents, a rejection that Quiroga had accepted as an integral part of his life and with which he had always had to deal.
Leaving aside Quiroga's theatre, little known and which critics have always called "an error", the most transcendental of his work are the short stories, a genre in which the author reaches maturity, promoting in the same sense to the entire Latin American narrative. Horacio Quiroga is the first to worry about the technical aspects of the short story, tirelessly polishing his style (for which he always returns and searches for the same themes) until reaching the almost formal perfection of his latest works.
Clearly influenced by Rubén Darío and the modernists, little by little oriental modernism begins to become decadent, describing nature with meticulous precision, but making it clear that its relationship with man always represents a conflict. Losses, injuries, misery, failures, hunger, death, animal attacks, everything in Quiroga raises the confrontation between nature and man, just as the Greeks did between man and destiny. The hostile nature, of course, almost always wins out in Quiroguian narrative.
Quiroga's morbid obsession with torment and death is accepted much more easily by the characters than by the reader: the author's narrative technique presents protagonists accustomed to risk and danger, who play according to clear and specific rules. They know not to make mistakes because the jungle is unforgiving, and when they fall, they do so with some "sportsmanship" and often die, leaving the reader anxious and distraught.
Nature is blind but fair; the attacks on the farmer or the fisherman (a swarm of angry bees, an alligator, a blood-sucking parasite, a snake, the flood, whatever) are simply parts of a frightful game in which man tries to wrest from nature some goods or resources (as Quiroga tried in real life) that she flatly refuses to give up; an unequal struggle that often ends with human defeat, insanity, death, or simply disappointment.
Hypersensitive and excitable, given to impossible love affairs, frustrated in his business ventures but still emotional and extremely creative, Quiroga drew on his own tragic life and the nature he studied and suffered with his iron will as a worker and his subtle look of a meticulous observer to build a narrative work that most critics considered (and still consider) "poetically autobiographical". Perhaps in this "internal" or "organic" realism of Quiroga's pieces resides the irresistible charm that they still exert on readers today, who, without realizing it, discover in their pages the true nature of the writer who, perhaps as very few in Latin American literature, was capable of whispering his own words in the ear, although sometimes the murmur turns into a desperate cry.
It is considered that he was the first Uruguayan film critic; In his work, the association of Hollywood with "the lack of artistic creation and freedom" and cinephilia as resistance are noticeable.
Books
Bibliographic chronology of publications during the author's lifetime:
- Travel Journal to Paris (Testimony and observations, Ed. Espuma Pages, Montevideo, 1900)
- Coral reefs (Prose and verse, The Enlightened Century, Montevideo, 1901)
- The crime of the other (counts, Ed. Emilio Spinelli, Buenos Aires, 1904)
- The persecuted (Relato, Ed. Arnaldo Moen and Hno., Buenos Aires, 1905)
- History of a turbid love (Novela, Ed. Arnaldo Moen and Hno., Buenos Aires, 1908)
- Counts of love, madness and death (Coop. Editorial Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1917)
- Counts of the jungle (Children's stories, Soc. Coop. Editorial Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1918)
- The Wild (Coop. Editorial Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1920)
- The sacrifices (Scenic counts in four acts, Soc. Coop. Editorial Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1920)
- The dead man (count), Diario porteño La Nación, Buenos Aires, 1920)
- Anaconda (Figures, Agencia Gral. de Librería y Publicaciones, Buenos Aires, 1921)
- The desert (counts, Ed. Babel, Buenos Aires, 1924)
- Los desterrados (counts, Ed. Babel, Buenos Aires, 1926)
- Past love (Novela, Ed. Babel, Buenos Aires, 1929)
- Native land (counts, Ed. Crespillo, Buenos Aires, 1931)
- Beyond (Tables, Soc. Friends of the Rioplatense Book, Buenos Aires - Montevideo, 1935)
Adrift 1907
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