We explain who Horacio Quiroga was, what his most notable works were and what his life was like in the jungle of northern Argentina.
Horacio Quiroga is considered the initiator of the Latin American short story tradition.
Who was Horacio Quiroga?
Horacio Quiroga was a Uruguayan writer, playwright and poet, considered one of the most outstanding short story writers in Latin America. initiator of a tradition that continues to the present and heir to the American short story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
For much of his life, Quiroga worked as a journalist, teacher and justice of the peace, but the greatest recognition he received came from his short story work.. His books of jungle stories are well known, for which he found inspiration in the missionary jungle of northern Argentina, as well as other sinister and bloody stories such as “The Degollada Hen” and “The Feather Pillow.”
Quiroga also dedicated his efforts to reflecting on the short story as a literary genre, and produced his famous “Decalogue of the Perfect Short Story Writer,” in which he proposes the ten fundamental considerations that any short story writer must follow.
Quiroga’s life was marked by depression and death, and came to a tragic end at the age of 58, when committed suicide by ingesting cyanideHe had been diagnosed with an untreatable and inoperable cancer.
Birth and childhood of Horacio Quiroga
Horacio Quiroga was born on December 31, 1878 in the Uruguayan city of Saltoclose to the Uruguay River, in a bourgeois family: his father was the Argentine consul in Uruguay, related to the leader Juan Facundo Quiroga (1788-1835).
Death was present in the home from early on. When Quiroga was a few months old, his father died in a hunting accident.. Her mother, Pastora Forteza, remarried in 1891 and Mario Barcos, her new husband, suffered a stroke in 1896 that left him paralyzed. That same year, Quiroga’s stepfather decided to take his own life and shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Quiroga, just 18 years old, witnessed this terrible event upon entering the room.
Already at that time, Quiroga had completed secondary and technical studies in the city of Montevideo, and He had expressed his interest in literature, chemistry, photography and, especially, cycling and country life.He spent long hours in workshops repairing machinery and tools, and made trips by bicycle to nearby towns.
Devotee of philosophical materialism, He began writing his first texts (poems) between 1894 and 1897He also began to collaborate in Uruguayan magazines, such as Magazine and Reformand in 1898 he fell in love for the first time, with the young María Esther Jurkovski, whose parents did not approve of the union. This heartbreak, however, inspired Quiroga to write several later works.
Horacio Quiroga’s trip to Paris
Quiroga was in the French capital and told his experience in his Diary of a trip to Paris (1900).
Quiroga used the inheritance he received from his stepfather to travel to Paris, which was a milestone in the life of young intellectuals of the time. There a transformation took place: the educated young man who left Montevideo in first class returned in third class, ragged and decadent, after wandering impoverished for four months in the French capital. From then on he would wear the thick black beard that characterized him all his life..
Back in Uruguay, Quiroga published his Parisian experiences in his Diary of a trip to Parisand he went to Montevideo. There he founded a literary group with other writers and friends, such as José María Delgado (1884-1956), Federico Ferrando (1877-1902) and above all Alberto J. Brignole and Julio J. Jauretche, whom he had known since his adolescence. This group was called the “Consistory of Gay Saber” and presided over local literary life during its two years of existence..
In 1901 his first book appeared, Coral reefs, a compilation of more than fifty texts in verse and prose that he dedicated to Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), an Argentine poet whom he greatly admired. That same year, however, death knocked on his door again: two of his brothers, Prudencio and Pastora, died of typhoid fever.
Shortly afterwards, while Quiroga was cleaning and checking the revolver with which his friend and companion Federico Ferrando was planning to fight a duel, The mechanism of the gun was accidentally activated and the bullet took Ferrando’s life.Quiroga was arrested and questioned by police, and was held in jail for four days while the accidental nature of the murder was established.
Upon regaining his freedom, Quiroga dissolved the Consistory of Gay Saber and in 1902 decided to leave Uruguay forever. Residing in Argentina, he found work as a teacher and stayed with his sister Maria in Buenos Aires. There he collaborated with various magazines and newspapers, including Faces and masks, PBT and The nation.
Horacio Quiroga and the Misiones jungle
Quiroga fell in love with the missionary jungle and set many of his stories there.
Quiroga’s first trip to the Misiones jungle was in 1903, when He accompanied Leopoldo Lugones in an investigation into the Jesuit ruins region of. Quiroga was the photographer and the jungle took his heart from the first image captured. So much so that in 1906 he bought land in Misiones and planned his life away from the city.
But before that, Quiroga made his debut as a storyteller with resounding success. In 1904, his first book of short stories appeared, The crime of the otherpraised by José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917) and heavily influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, from then on he would continually be compared to the American master of the story.
In 1905 a short novel appeared, The persecutedwhere he reflected on his first experiences in the jungle. But his greatest notoriety came from his collaborations in magazines such as Faces and masks, where he published his famous story “The Feather Pillow.” At the time of his highest quotation, Quiroga published around eight stories a year in these magazines..
Anxious to leave the city, Quiroga acquired 185 hectares of land in San Ignacio, in the Misiones jungle, and There he began to plan the place where he would later live.. At that time he was a professor of Spanish and literature, and he devoted his 1908 vacation entirely to the construction of a bungalow on the banks of Alto Paraná.
Quiroga’s first marriage
Quiroga He fell in love with one of his students from Colegio Normal 8, Ana María Cires.and dedicated his next literary work to her, Story of a murky love1908. Although her French parents were opposed to the union, Quiroga proposed marriage to her in 1909.
That same year they got married and They left Buenos Aires to settle in MisionesQuiroga, meanwhile, resigned from his teaching position to devote himself to his yerba mate plantations and was later appointed justice of the peace in San Ignacio, a position he performed very poorly.
In 1911, the couple had their first daughter, Eglé, a natural birth in the solitude of the missionary hut, and the following year their youngest son, Darío, was born, but this time in Buenos Aires. Quiroga devoted enormous attention to his children: he personally took care of their upbringing, teaching them how to deal with the jungle, raise animals and shoot a shotgun.
Quiroga’s life in the jungle was precarious; he built everything with his own hands.
Quiroga made everything with his own hands, he acted as a barber, tailor, pedicurist and even hunted wild animals in the jungle. The rest of the time was spent writing, a task that never stopped.. However, the life of the couple was spent amid economic hardships: neither the cultivation of oranges, nor the civil servant’s salary or the money from collaborations in magazines in Buenos Aires were significant sources of money.
Finally, in 1915, His wife ingested a strong dose of a chemical compound for developing photos and, after a week of agony, he died. Quiroga, extremely affected, buried her in San Ignacio and never visited her grave again. At the end of 1916, she decided to return with her children to Buenos Aires.
Quiroga’s return to Misiones
From 1916 to 1925, Quiroga lived in Buenos Aires, performing diplomatic functions in the Uruguayan consulate. His life revolved around his children and his writing, which was then going through a great moment. His tormented experiences crystallized into works of importance, as Tales of love, madness and death (1917), jungle tales (1918) and The wild (1919).
In 1920 he founded another literary society, called “Anaconda Group”, while collaborating with different magazines and the newspaper The nationwrote his first and only play (the sacrificedreleased in 1921) and his only film script (The flowery jangada) which was never filmed. Furthermore, during this period he had an affair with the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938), whom he often mentions in his correspondence.
Quiroga decided to return to Misiones and fell in love again, this time with a 17-year-old girl named Ana María Palacio, whose love did not prosper because her parents took her abroad. The disappointment inspired Quiroga to write The past love (novel published in 1929) already build with his own hands a boat called “seagull”, in which he sailed down the river from San Ignacio to Buenos Aires.
In a letter to Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (one of Argentina’s greatest essayists and one of his best friends, whom he called “brother”), Quiroga explained his relationship with the jungle:
I will only see tomorrow or the day after in the deep sleep that nature offers us, its most peaceful rest. I have to die, watering my plants, and planting on the same day of dying. I do nothing but integrate myself into nature, with its laws and harmonies that are very obscure, even for us, but exist.
Taken from: The roots of Horacio Quiroga (1961) by Emir Rodríguez Monegal.
In 1926, back in Buenos Aires, Quiroga rented a villa in Vicente López, on the outskirts of the city. There he faced the third and most mature of his literary periods, the peak of which is represented by his book of short stories. The exiled (1927). At that time he received numerous tributes to his work and his figure, despite the fact that his novel The past love It only sold forty copies.
Quiroga He married for the second time in 1927, with Maria Elena Bravo, a schoolmate of his daughter Eglé., whose age was around 20 years old. And the following year her third daughter, María Helena, nicknamed “Pitoca”, was born.
Quiroga’s illness and death
Quiroga returned to the Misiones jungle for the last time with his second wife, María Elena, in 1935.
By 1932, Quiroga’s married life had ceased to be happy. The writer refused to meet the schedules and demands of his work with the Uruguayan consulate, and was constantly plagued by jealousy, given his wife’s youth. Added to this was a feeling of…