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Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 – 19 February 1937) was a Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, used the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states, a skill he gleaned from Edgar Allan Poe, according to some critics. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. Biography Early life Horacio Quiroga was born in the city of Salto in 1878 as the sixth child and second son of Prudencio Quiroga and Pastora Forteza, a middle-class family. At the time of his birth, his father had been working for 18 years as head of the Argentine Vice-Consulate. Before Quiroga was two and a half months old, on 14 March 1879, his father accidentally fired a gun he was carrying in his hands and died as a result. Quiroga was baptized three months later in the parish church of his native town. Training and travels Quiroga finished school in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. He studied at the National College and also attended the Polytechnic Institute of Montevideo for technical training. From a very young age, he showed great interest in a variety of subjects and activities including literature, chemistry, photography, mechanics, cycling and country life. Around this time he founded the Salto Cycling Club and achieved the remarkable feat of cycling from his home town to Paysandú, a distance of 120 kilometres (74½ miles) It was also around this time that he worked in a machinery repair shop; under the influence of the owner's son he became interested in philosophy, describing himself as a "forthright and passionate foot soldier of materialism." At the age of 22, Quiroga became interested in poetry, discovering the work of Leopoldo Lugones, with whom he would later become great friends, and of Edgar Allan Poe. This led him to dabble in various forms and styles of poetic expression himself: post-romanticism, symbolism and modernism. He soon began to publish his poems in his home town. While studying and working, he collaborated with publications such as La Revista and La Reforma, improving his style and making a name for himself. During the Carnival of 1898, the young poet met his first love, a girl named Mary Esther Jurkovski, who would inspire two of his most important works: Las sacrificadas (1920; The Slaughtered) and Una estación de amor (1912; A Season of Love). However, the young girl's Jewish parents disapproved of the relationship on the grounds that Quiroga was a Gentile, and the couple were forced to separate. In his home town, he founded a magazine titled Revista de Salto (1899). In the same year, his stepfather committed suicide by shooting himself; Quiroga witnessed the death. With the money he received as inheritance he embarked on a four-month trip to Paris, which turned out to be a failure: he returned to Uruguay hungry and disheartened. Consistory of the Gay Science and early works On his return Quiroga gathered together his friends Federico Ferrando, Alberto Brignole, Julio Jaureche, Fernández Saldaña, José Hasda and Asdrúbal Delgado, and with them founded the Consistorio del Gay Saber (The Consistory of The Gay Science), a literary laboratory for their experimental writing, in which they found new ways to express themselves and their modernist goals. In 1901 Quiroga published his first book, Los Arrecifes de Coral (Coral Reefs), but the achievement was overshadowed by the deaths of two of his siblings, Prudencio and Pastora, who were victims of typhoid fever in Chaco. That fateful year held yet another shocking event in store for Quiroga. His friend Federico Ferrando had received bad reviews from Germán Papini, a Montevideo journalist, and challenged him to a duel. Quiroga, anxious about his friend's safety, offered to check and clean the gun that was to be used. While inspecting the weapon, he accidentally fired off a shot that hit Ferrando in the mouth, killing him instantly. When the police arrived, Quiroga was arrested, interrogated and transferred to a correctional prison. The police investigated the circumstances of the homicide and deemed Ferrando's death an accident; Quiroga was released after four days' detention. He was eventually exonerated of blame. Racked with grief and guilt over the death of his beloved friend, Quiroga dissolved The Consistory and moved from Uruguay to Argentina. He crossed the Río de la Plata in 1902 and went to live with María, one of his sisters. In Buenos Aires Quiroga the artist reached professional maturity, which would come to full fruition during his stays in the jungle. His sister's husband also introduced him to pedagogy and found him work as a teacher under contract to the board of examination for the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. He was appointed professor of Castilian at the British School of Buenos Aires in March 1903. To Chaco and back to Buenos Aires In June of that year Quiroga, already an experienced photographer, accompanied Leopoldo Lugones on an expedition, funded by the Argentine Ministry of Education, in which the famous Argentine poet planned to investigate some ruins of Jesuit missions in the province of Misiones. The jungle of Misiones left a profound impression on Quiroga that marked his life forever: he spent six months and the last of his inheritance (seven thousand pesos) on some land for cotton in Chaco province, located seven kilometers from Resistencia, next to the Saladito River. The project failed, due to problems with his aboriginal workers, but Quiroga's life was enriched by experiencing life as a countryman for the first time. His narrative benefited from his new knowledge of country people and rural culture; this permanently changed his style. Upon returning to Buenos Aires after his failed experience in the Chaco, Quiroga embraced the short story with passion and energy. In 1904 he published a book of stories called The Crime of Another, which was heavily influenced by the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Quiroga did not mind these early comparisons with Poe, and until the end of his life, he would often say that Poe was his first and principal teacher. Quiroga worked for the next two years on a multitude of stories, many were about rural terror, but others were delightful stories for children. During this time he wrote the magnificent horror story, "The Feather Pillow". It was published in 1917 by a famous magazine in Argentina, Caras y Caretas ("Faces and Masks"), which went on to publish eight of his other stories that year. Shortly after it was published, Quiroga became famous and his writings were eagerly sought by thousands of readers. Love and the jungle In 1906 Quiroga decided to return to his beloved jungle. Taking advantage of the fact that the government wanted the land to be used, Quiroga bought a f.... Discover the Horacio Quiroga popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Horacio Quiroga books.