Horacio Quiroga
Salto, Uruguay
Buenos Aires, Argentina
| Horacio Quiroga | |
Horacio Quiroga
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| Born | December 31, 1878 Salto, Uruguay |
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| Died | February 19, 1937 (aged 58) Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (b. Salto-Uruguay, December 31, 1878 – Buenos Aires-Argentina, February 19, 1937) was an Uruguayan author and writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use of the supernatural and the bizarre show the influence of modernismo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Rudyard Kipling, among others. Quiroga's influence can be seen in the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar.
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Quiroga was born in Salto, Uruguay in 1878 to a middle class family. When he was only two months old his father accidentally shot himself while returning from a hunting expedition. His first attempt to make a name for himself was in the form of a magazine he helped found, Revista de Salto, which he knew would soon disappear. He then moved to Paris but, after meeting with a series of disasters, decided it was not the place for him. After returning to Montevideo he published a volume of poems, Los Arrecifes de Coral(Coral Reefs, 1901). At that period he also experimented with various drugs, including chloroform, opium, ether, and hashish, and helped found the literary group El Consistorio del Gay Saber (The Consistency of Poetic Knowledge). In 1903, while attempting to explain to a friend how to operate a gun, he accidentally fired it, killing his friend. Quiroga was interrogated, put on trial, and eventually exonerated.
After this tragedy Quiroga quickly left for Buenos Aires, where he met up with Leopoldo Lugones and joined him on an expedition to Misiones. In 1906 he bought a tract of land in the area, where he began cultivating the land, planting trees, growing honey bees, and hunting animals, as well as teaching literature at a nearby teacher's college. In 1909 he married Ana Maria Ciries, a former student, and they had two children, Eglé and Darío. In 1915 Ana Maria, deeply depressed by the hard work and loneliness of their life on the frontier, poisoned herself with cyanide.
For several years Quiroga lived in Buenos Aires, while continually visiting his property in Misiones. In 1927 he married Ana Maria Brancho, thirty years his junior, who also disliked life in Misiones, and eventually left him. In 1937 Quiroga was diagnosed with cancer and committed suicide by dosing himself with cyanide. both his children from his first marriage also committed suicide later in their lives.[1]
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