Revivification and Revision: Horacio Quiroga's Reading of Poe

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe suffered from a malady common to nineteenth-century American authors living on both continents: economic circumstances that necessitated a reliance on market forces of a polity and society with which he clashed. Poe often criticized his contemporary social, political, and literary spheres, and expressed a particular distaste for what he deemed folly of a national literature (Exordium to Critical Notices 1027). Perhaps as a remedy to this folly, he wrote, the at large [forms] only proper stage for literary histrio (1027; Editorial Miscellanies 1076). (1) In this declaration, Poe emphasizes an artistic cosmopolitanism that is not suggestive of a hypothetical global community, but rather, a severance that denies a particular political attachment. Ironically, at time Poe claimed over nation as stage for literature, United States was extending its reach throughout this same world at large, exemplifying a different cosmopolitan impulse that manifested itself in an expanding global presence and hemispheric hegemony. This paper considers variance of these two cosmopolitanisms--the negation of a national particularity proposed by Poe against economic and political expansion at work on a global scale by United States--as they emerge in several alterations made to Poe's work by Uruguayan author Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937). In his Decalogo del perfecto cuentista 10 Commandments of Perfect Short-Story Writer), status of Poe as a literary predecessor deliberately chosen by Quiroga is clear. first of these commandments reads: cree en un maestro--Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chejov--como en Dios mismo (I) [Believe in a master--Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chekov--as in God himself]. Yet this principle is tempered by third mandate on list: resiste cuanto puedas a la imitacion, pero imita si el influjo es demasiado fuerte (III) [resist imitation as much as possible, but do imitate if influence is too strong]. tension between these two tenets--between choosing a model and resisting imitation--is evident in Quiroga's treatment of Poe, and illustrates moreover tension between text and context--between international proliferation of Poe's literary influence and simultaneous growth and consolidation of U.S. influence in Latin America--that is necessarily attendant to Quiroga's adaptations of Poe. In following discussion, I trace appearance of this tension in Quiroga's work through a comparative examination of his multiple renderings of Poe's 1846 short story, The Cask of Amontillado. Over course of about twenty years in early twentieth century, Quiroga published El tonel del amontillado (1901; The Cask of Amontillado), El crimen del otro (1904; The Crime of Other), La lengua (1921; The Tongue), and Una bofetada (1920; Slap in Face), each of which alludes to The Cask of Amontillado. These distinct rewritings of Poe's classic tale demonstrate development of an increasingly problematic engagement with Poe as Quiroga attempts to navigate between an aesthetic appreciation of Poe's works (and hence, his selection of Poe as model) and shadow of Poe's socio-political context (i.e., his identity as a U.S. author). These rewritings, consequently, provide a critical index for fin-de-siecle presence of United States in Latin America. A complex engagement with rewriting Poe emerges in ambiguities of Quiroga's first rendering of The Cask of Amontillado. El tonel del amontillado, published in collection Los arrecifes de coral (The Coral Reefs) in 1901, is a short narration whose title is a literal translation of original. In this piece, Poe's Fortunato is disinterred, his clothing aun polvoreado de cales (82) [still dusty with limestone], and he enthusiastically recounts his past adventures to an unnamed narrator. In this short story, Quiroga dramatizes process of rewriting by duplicating it: story not only resurrects Poe's tale, but employs a literal process of resurrection, bringing Fortunato out of Montresor's vaults, still covered with limestone dust. …