The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories

The Texas Pan American Series

The Decapitated Chicken

and Other Stories by Horacio Quiroga

Selected & translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Introduction by George D. Schade

University of Texas Press
Austin

The Texas Pan American Series is published with the assistance of a revolving publication fund established by the Pan American Sulphur Company.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Quiroga, Horacio, 1879–1937.
The decapitated chicken, and other stories.

(The Texas Pan American series)
CONTENTS: The feather pillow.—Sunstroke.—The pursued, [etc.]
I. Title.
PZ3.Q5Del0   [PQ8519.Q5]   75-40167
ISBN 0-292-77514-8
ISBN 978-0-292-75350-1 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-75351-8 (individual e-book)

Copyright © 1976 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved

Illustrations by Ed Lindlof in the printed book do not appear in this ebook.

Contents

Introduction

The Feather Pillow (1907)

Sunstroke (1908)

The Pursued (1908)

The Decapitated Chicken (1909)

Drifting (1912)

A Slap in the Face (1916)

In the Middle of the Night (1919)

Juan Darién (1920)

The Dead Man (1920)

Anaconda (1921)

The Incense Tree Roof (1922)

The Son (1935)

Introduction

A new edition of Horacio Quiroga stories—in this case, the first selective translation into English ranging over his complete work—reminds us of a superb writer and offers a pretext for talking about him. Of course, the round dozen stories which make up this volume can speak for themselves, and many translations appear unescorted by an introduction; nonetheless, readers who are not acquainted with Quiroga may wish to learn something further about this author, generally regarded by the critics as a classic and one of the finest short-story writers Latin America has produced. Surveying his work afresh, we find that this favorable verdict still holds true and that his achievement continues to be admirable. Quiroga stands apart from the bulk of his contemporaries in Spanish American literature and head and shoulders above most of them.

Certain thematic designs run through Quiroga’s life and also through his stories. He was born the last day of the year 1878 in El Salto, Uruguay, and died by his own hand in February, 1937, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fifty-eight–year span of his lifetime was crammed with adventure, hazardous enterprise, and recurrent tragedy and violence, particularly suicide. When he was a babe in arms, his father was accidentally killed when a shotgun went off on a family outing. Later his stepfather, desperately ill and of whom Horacio was fond, shot himself, and the young Quiroga, seventeen at the time, was the first to come upon the grisly scene. In 1902 Quiroga accidentally shot and killed, with a pistol, one of his best friends and literary companions. In 1915 his first wife, unable to endure the hardships of life in the jungle of Misiones where Quiroga insisted on living, committed suicide by taking a fatal dose of poison, leaving the widower with two small children to raise. Finally, Quiroga himself took cyanide to end his own life when he realized he was suffering from an incurable cancer.

His love affairs and marriages were also turbulent. He married twice, both times very young women; his second wife, a friend of his daughter, was nearly thirty years his junior. The first marriage ended with his wife’s suicide; the second, in separation. This singular amount of violence marring the writer’s personal life cannot be overly stressed, for it explains a great deal about his obsession with death, which is so marked in his work.

Quiroga’s zest for adventure and the magnetic attraction the jungle hinterland of northern Argentina held for him are also biographical details that have great impact on his work. His first trip to the province of Misiones occurred in 1903, when he accompanied his friend and fellow writer Leopoldo Lugones as photographer on an expedition to study the Jesuit ruins there. Next came a trip to the Chaco to plant cotton, where he built his own hut and had his first pioneering experience. In 1906 he bought some land in San Ignacio, Misiones, and from that date on divided his time between the hinterland and Buenos Aires. He tried various experiments in Misiones, such as the making of charcoal and the distillation of an orange liqueur. These endeavors ended in failure but provided him with good material for his stories, as did his myriad other activities there, like constructing his bungalow, furniture, and boats and hunting and studying the wildlife of the region.

In his teens Quiroga began writing under the aegis of the Modernist movement, which dominated the Spanish American literary scene at the turn of the century. Soon, however, he reacted against the decadent and highly artificial mode of his first book, Los arrecifes de coral (Coral reefs, published 1901), which contained Modernist poems, prose pieces, and stories, and turned to writing tales firmly rooted in reality, though they often emphasized the bizarre or the monstrous.

Commentators have tended to discount the significance or merit of some of Quiroga’s early works, such as the longish story “The Pursued.” Recently this tale has received more favorable critical attention. Our translator, who has made an excellent selection of Quiroga’s stories that few would quarrel with, maintains that “The Pursued” is the most modern piece he wrote because of what it anticipates. It is undeniably one of Quiroga’s more ambiguous and inscrutable stories, lending itself to various interpretations as it elaborates on the theme of madness.

Another early story, “The Feather Pillow,” first published in 1907, is a magnificent example of his successful handling of the Gothic tale, reminiscent of Poe, whom he revered as master. The effects of horror, something mysterious and perverse pervading the atmosphere, are all there from the beginning of the story, and Quiroga skillfully, gradually readies the terrain, so that we are somewhat prepared for, though we do not anticipate, the sensational revelation at the end. But this story takes on much more meaning and subtlety when we realize that the anecdote can be interpreted on a symbolical level: the ailing Alicia suffers from hallucinations brought on by her husband’s hostility and coldness, for he is the real monster.

For three decades Quiroga continued writing and publishing stories in great quantity—his total output runs over two hundred—many of them also of impressive quality. Certain collections should be singled out as high points: Los desterrados (The exiled, published 1926) and Cuentos de amor, de locura, y de muerte (Stories of love, madness, and death, published 1917). The splendid title of Cuentos sets forth his major themes and could properly be the heading for his entire work. Quiroga also achieved great popularity with his Cuentos de la selva (published 1918), translated into English as Jungle Tales, a volume for children of all ages, permeated with tenderness and humor and filled with whimsy. These delightful stories are peopled by talking animals and are cast in a fable mold, usually with an underlying moral.

“Anaconda,” which describes a world of snakes and vipers and how they battle men and also one another, is one of Quiroga’s most celebrated stories.