Quiroga, Horacio

Quiroga, Horacio (ôrä`syō kērō`gä), 1878–1937, Uruguayan short-story writer. Quiroga is considered a master of the short story. His work was deeply influenced by Kipling, Poe, Chekhov, and Maupassant as well as by the modernismo movement. In 1900 he took a short trip to Paris, then went to Argentina, where he lived the rest of his life—a good deal of it as an unsuccessful agricultural pioneer. His collections of stories Cuentos de la selva (1918), Anaconda (1921), and El desierto (1924), which echo the tales of Kipling, reflect his life in the jungle. His concern with strange and morbid themes is evident in Cuentos de amor, de locura, y de muerte [tales of love, madness, and death] (1917). Quiroga's writings also include witty, sophisticated stories such as those in Mas alla [beyond] (1935).

Bibliography

See A. Livingston, tr. and ed., South American Jungle Tales (1959).

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Quiroga, Horacio 

Born Dec. 31, 1878, in Salta; died Feb. 19, 1937, in Buenos Aires. Uruguayan writer.

Quiroga spent almost his entire life in Argentina. His first collection of verses, The Coral Reefs (1901), was influenced by French modernist poets of the early 20th century. His subsequent works were influenced by E. Poe. The collections Stories of Love, Madness, and Death (1917), Stories of the Jungle (1918; Russian translation, 1957), The Savage (1920), Anaconda (1921; Russian translation, 1960), The Exiles (1926), and On the Other Side (1935) contain many realistic short stories and tales about nature, which the author depicted as a force that is tragically hostile to man. Quiroga also dealt with themes of the fantastic, “that which cannot be grasped by the mind,” and pathological psychology. Many of his stories are permeated by pessimism and fatalism.

WORKS

Cuentos, vols. 1–13. Montevideo, 1940–45.

REFERENCES

Kuteishchikova, V. N. Roman Latinskoi Ameriki v XX veke. Moscow, 1964.
Jitrik, N. H. Quiroga. Buenos Aires [1959].
Rodriguez Monegal, E. El desterrado: Vida y obra de Horacio Quiroga. Buenos Aires, 1968.
Rela, W. H. Quiroga. Guía bibliográfica. Montevideo [1967].