Exilio, invencion, autodestruccion

Abstract

In 1926, Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga compiled a collection of short stories originally published as separate works between 1919 and 1925 under the title of Los desterrados, in which late-modernist themes such as insanity, death and excess are developed. The purpose of this study is to analyze these stories as not only sharing a common setting in the Misiones region of Argentina at the turn of the 19th century, but also, as better understood as a whole, as if the collection were a type of musical composition containing common themes and variations. In this sense, "El regreso de Anaconda" serves as a type of musical overture, functioning as an esthetically mapped-out piece that articulates the central themes of the work as a whole: the impossibility of return from exile, amateur invention and technological progress as a path to self-destruction, all experienced from the outskirts of the modernization project.