Horacio Quiroga and the Short Story

Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay) is considered part of the use in the 1920s of regional settings which are patently American and which are used to represent both uniquely American and universal problems and conflicts.  The authors demonstrate a faith in America, after disappointment with Europe in WWI.  The Mexican Revolution turns writers’ attention to unique Latin American realities.  Their program seems to attempt an integration of divergent national interests through literature.

The differences can be seen in the completely different racial situation in the new world, different landscape.  Leads to hope for new values and new civilization through these rising new republics.

Other examples are novels by Rómulo Gallegos (Doña Barbara), Jorge Rivera, (The Vortex), political writings of Vasconcelos in Mexico, the Mexican “novel of the revolution” and Mariano Azuela (The Underdogs).

Quiroga’s focus on the bizarrre, on the surprise ending, on the irrational makes him the link to the great story writers of following generations such as Borges, Felisberto Hernandez, Julio Cortazar, etc.

Regional literature develops into the social protest novel of the 30s (Icaza, Huasipungo) and the later Communist authors.  Stylistically, the literature draws mostly from the REALIST tradition, but it maintains some characteristics of Romanticism (focus on the individual, appreciation of popular culture, rebellion against oppressive forces in politics and society, indomitable role of Nature, love portrayed as sentimental, etc.) while at the same time drawing on Modernismo for carefully chosen language, polished style, and focus on the artistic endeavor as worthwhile in itself. 

End of Modernismo:  A fellow poet of Darío’s announces: “Tuércele el cuello al cisne” (“Twist the neck of the swan”) in 1910, calling for an end to swans, azure lakes, princesses, the remote and exotic.  In its place comes narrative and poetry which may still embody the spirit and impetus toward renovation of the language while exploring more profound, searching questions and exhibiting more social concern.

REALISM attempts to portray settings and characters as if through the lens of camera, with much emphasis on details, facts, objective and measurable reality.  Authors use costumbrismo, as they did in romanticism, to describe local customs.  Much focus is placed on the determining aspects of character and place, as if describing a scientific experiment.  In Europe this style is prevalent from 1850 until the innovations of the 1920s.  It arrives in Latin America later, as do most literary influences. Some models in Europe were Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, Zola, Pereda, Perez Galdós, and Pardo Bazán.  Latin American realists were Blest Gana (Chile), Matto de Turner (Perú) and Cambaceres (Argentina).

NATURALISM, a logical extension of Realism, coexists with Realism from around 1900-1930.  Its method is to use a scientific approach exhibit the ways in which historical moment, race, social class, and environment determine one’s existence.  Naturalist writers choose stories of the poor and working class, trying to uncover reasons for exploitation, poverty and misery.  They draw on the theoris of Hippolyte Taine, Comte and Darwin. 

 

Horacio Quiroga, "The Decapitated Chicken" and “The Wilderness”

Quiroga wrote during a period of massive European emigration to his native Uruguay and his adopted country, neighboring Argentina. The new migrants came particularly from the poorer parts of Southern and Eastern Europe, and the social changes this produced caused considerable anxiety to the traditional, "criollo" elites in the Southern Cone of South America. Some of  this anxiety can be felt in these stories.

Quiroga’s characteristic style:

Focus on character, character flaws.  Nature.  Psychology, morbid fixation on death. 

The frontier:  Compare with our West. Obstacles to be overcome, wild forces to be tamed.

Gender Roles:  Characters’ fixation on rigid roles not compatible with frontier, which demands flexibility. 

Usual themes: Man living intensely in Nature.  Being pushed to the breaking point, caught in bizarre situations arising out of the combination of human weakness and carelessness, accident and a pitiless natural environment which man cannot control.

Protagonist:  never an intellectual, usually a pioneer.  An accident happens--a snake bites him (“Drifting”) the river rises, drought happens.  Suddenly he is a lonely man fighting for his life.  Survival depends on ingenuity, tenacity, courage.  Accidents convert natural human frailty or failings into tragic flaws.  But sometimes the protagonist is at fault as well--as in “Drifting” where a man had fought with his neighbor, who now refuses to help.  In “Wilderness,” the man has to go to find a servant because his difficult character had run off all the other possible servants in the neighborhood. 

Notice that Nature is portrayed differently in Latin America, compared to Europe.  Society is a fallible, fragile and ultimately unimportant when compared to Nature.  Man's calculations and attempt to order and control are futile--Nature defies control. 

Quiroga is one of the authors we can point to who helps to define the very different character of Latin American reality and who points the way to MAGIC REALISM.

Stories: 

A la deriva (Drifting):  snake bite, canoes down river....

Un hombre muerto (A Dead Man):  Man accidently falls on his own machete in his banana plantation 

Los fabricantes de carbón (The Charcoal Burners) based on Quiroga’s own failed attempt to start up a charcoal business.

Anaconda:  Animals as protagonists, band together to fight the snake serum factory, defend the natural order. 

La insolación (Sunstroke)

LIST of books:

              Cuentos de amor locura y muerte 1917

              Cuentos de la selva 1918

              Anaconda 1921

              La gallina degollada y otros cuentos 1925

              Los desterrados (1926) (The Exiles) about real-life types he has met.  More realist than the fantastic ones he made up a la Poe.

              Mas allá 1935