doctoring . horacio quiroga

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"Doctoring" in QuirogaAuthor(s): Norman S. HollandSource: Confluencia, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 64-72Published by: University of Northern Colorado

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"Doctoring" in Quiroga

Norman S. Holland

Hampshire College

In these pages I will be concerned with a

cluster of anxieties at once sexual and aes

thetic, that marks the writing of Horacio

Quiroga. I will concentrate on the following

stories: "El almohad?n de pluma" (1907),

"La gallina degollada" (1909), "Una estaci?n

de amor" (1912), and "El solitario" (1913),

first collected in Cuentos de amorde locura y de

muerte (1917).1 I want to suggest that in

these achievements, Quiroga devises a

counter-model of (pro)creation that incorpo

rates and extends the debunking of natural

ism begun by modernista writers such as

Rub?n Dar?o and Amado Nervo. Not sur

prisingly, two of these stories explicitly turn

on the figure of the doctor, ("el m?dico",2 the

naturalist marker par excellence. Quirogas

turn to the doctor must be read as an effort

to find a language in which (male) writer's

could once again express and control an

obsession?the female body?whose power

was rapidly being lost throughout the conti

nent to the medicalization of women and

childbirth.

The ending of "El almohad?n" invokes the

crisis I have briefly designated above. Even

as procreation was being translated into a

means of producing scientific truth and

managing bodies, Quiroga was translating

the doctor and his work into sensationalist

fiction. At the end of what first reads as a

traditional Frankenstein legend are two para

graphs that shift the tale back onto the scien

tific domain. According to these concluding

paragraphs, the protagonist is tormented

and killed by the creature she bestows life

on?a parasite that is found inside her pillow.

Estos par?sitos de las aves, diminutos

en el medio habitual, llegan a adquirir

en ciertas condiciones proporciones

enormes. La sangre humana parece

serles particularmente favorable, y no

es raro hallarlos en los almohadones de

pluma. 37)

Through this ending, a scientific

sounding discourse is endowed with a truth

bearing power. Science completes the

fiction and hence stands over fiction. This

outcome is paradoxically part of the Frank

enstein legacy as long as the "original" is read

not as the seminal, science fiction novel, but

rather as staging a rivalry between two tech

nologies: science and fiction.3 In re-enacting

this legacy, Quirogas story moves beyond

the library into the realm of the daily in order

to stress its strangeness. In other words, the

story begs to be taken as a faithful recon

struction of a normal occurrence, as a sam

ple of naturalist aesthetics. Yet the sample is

so exquisitely constructed that it needs to be

read anew as artifice, consistent with the

aesthetics of el modernismo. No longer is mo

dernismos exotic located elsewhere, it resides

in the most familial situations.

"El almohad?ns" protagonists live in a

house whose marble columns and statues

recall the palaces that house Dar?o's prin

cesses

La casa en que viv?an influ?a un poco

en sus estremecimientos. La blancura

del patio silencioso- frisos, columnas

y estatuas de m?rmol- produc?a una

oto?al impresi?n de palacio encantado.

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Dentro, el brillo glacial del estuco, sin

el m?s leve rasgu?o en las altas

paredes, afirmaba aquella sensaci?n de

desapacible fr?o. (34)

In the hands of Quiroga, Dar?o's house turns

into Nervo's "ice box." Acutely cold, neither

spouse speaks. Jord?n loves his wife without

being able to articulate it. Furthermore, his

personality freezes Alicia's girlish dreams

("sus so?adas ni?er?as de novia" [34]). She

dares not speak, afraid that whatever she

might say, no matter how mundane, will ex

pose her desires. Instead, the newly-wed

bride copes with her awakened, but still dor

mant sexuality by either acting hysterically

crying upon being touched by Jord?n, or

perversely-giving in to the parasite.

Both ways reaffirms her societal status:

woman as daughter of Eve. Her discovery

that she is a doubly fallen being, an Eve that

desires Jord?n, is a discovery that she is a

monster. As such she releases her own mon

strosity, her own vampire. When Jord?n an

swers her calls for help, she screams. "Jord?n

corri? al dormitorio, y al verlo aparecer Ali

cia dio un alarido de horror." (35) Her

scream defines not only their relation, but

also herself. She accepts herself as a filthy

mess and submits to punishment. "No quiso

que le tocaran la cama, ni aun que le arre

glaran el almohad?n." (36) Her punishments

are sadomasochistic. For it is she after all

who languishes helpless and alone while Jor

d?n works. And it is she in whom desire is

awakened but not satisfied, causing her to

turn to the parasite as a form of fulfillment as

punishment. When she finally dies the maid

observes blood on the cushion/pillow. Inside

it, lives a parasite, "the Frankenstein," who

sucked Alicia dry.

In this reading, Dario's house no longer

serves as a stage to liberate language in the

form of a princess awaiting her prince

charming. Put another way Quiroga's text

has lost faith in Dario's project of creating

through literature a technology that can pro

ductively counter a gendered, scientized

body and its corresponding textual economy

of a unified, aesthetic body. In its place,

Quiroga activates a deliberately fictionalized

body which remains materially effective.

Both accounts are deployed to "move" the

reader. As the reader animates the textual

body, the story slides away from the notion

of bodily effects into the realm of bodily

differences, giving rise to fear of the female's

pro-creative powers. A threatening female

productivity is certainly a significant part of

the story.

Both the science and the fiction at work in

the story remove the female body from nat

ure and set it at odds with nature. Husband

and "scientist" narrator react to Alicia in sim

ilar ways; neither recognizes desire. Their

refusal puts into play the logic of host and

parasite. It also, and unexpectedly, fore

grounds the theme of art's vampirization of

the very effect?"lifelikeness"?which the

prose purports to convey. The monster in

the pillow is not the only physical specimen

offered by the prose; the text itself is a para

site.

Quiroga's writing effectively vampirizes

the conventional and privileged modes of

literary praxis of its day for the sake of dialec

tically resuscitating the poetical topic or gen

erative trope of a dead beautiful woman in its

more original, should I dare say Poe-esque?,

version.4 In reflectively re-enacting the kill

ing of the young woman in its projected

verisimilitude, the text's complicity with the

victimizing effects of a society that impri

sions young women and perverts their sexu

ality comes into question.

Both parasite and host activate anxieties

that implicate sexuality and production. Just

as Alicia's social deformity is doubled by the

parasite's physical malformation, the mon

ster's physical being is refracted by the writ

ing's fragility. Their intertwined logic calls

attention to the figure of the writer. Despite

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the narrative frames, it is not hard to sense

Quiroga s hand at work here and in the sto

ries that follow containing female generative

power with an alternative practice, at once

male and aesthetic. For Quiroga, engender

ing begins and ends in the act of writing.

Through Alicia s body, he recovers a discur

sive model that incorporates and works to

manage the linked, although not at all equiv

alent, issues of production and reproduc

tion. His technological breakthrough allows

the writer once again to occupy a more pro

ductive role in relation to the "doctor."

In her book on Juan Carlos Onetti, Jose

fina Ludmer traces the birth of modern

River Plate narrative to the poetics of the

naturalist doctor-narrator.5 As a specialist

this narrator occupies a privileged position

viz-a-viz his or her interlocutor. This privi

leged voice tells the ignorant reader the

story and its causes. This figure informs ac

counts that display instances of the acquisi

tion and transmission of knowledge. The

doctor consistently locates this process in

heredity. As long as the fundamental site of

the transmission of genetic characters from

parents to offsprings is the female body,

there is a desire to take charge of the (pro)

creative function, an area in which the au

thor, traditionally male, is also heavily in

vested. What follows remarks on how this

competition already woven in "El alhoma

d?n" is refracted in three other stories writ

ten before Quiroga s move to Misiones.

Under cover of a familial horror story, "La

gallina degollada" restages the contest be

tween science and fiction as a battle be

tween doctor and narrator. This time the

contest is not part of the narrative frame

work; it is built into the figure of the narrator.

He displays an ability to translate and com

municate physical sensation between many

different bodies, almost like an actual dis

ease. The narrator literally employs a disease

to terrify the reader.

Initially a recently married couple con

ceive a healthy son. Suddenly one day he

succumbs to an unknown illness that leaves

him mentally incapacitated, an idiot. With

each successive male child born, the same

scenario repeats itself. Finally the couple

have a baby daughter. She grows up healthy.

Just when the Mazzini-Ferraz marriage

thinks they have escaped their previous mis

fortunes, the four brothers gang up and kill

their sister. The reader's unease on reading

this ending is overdetermined by the rivalry

between doctor and narrator as to where to

locate the "original" illness, in the body or in

a certain body of language.

When their first born becomes ill, the

couple seeks medical help. For the spokes

man of naturalism, heredity is the key to the

illness. The doctor does not search for the

cause in the child, but in the parents: "El

m?dico lo examin? con esa atenci?n profe

sional que est? visiblemente buscando las

causas del mal en las enfermedades de los

padres." (48) To be expected, he blames the

mother: "en cuanto a la herencia paterna, ya

le dije lo que cre?a cuando vi a su hijo. Res

pecto a la madre, hay all? un pulm?n que no

sopla bien." (48) According to the doctor,

the mother's body is the site of illness.

Through his comments and asides, the nar

rator reacts to this medical search for a un

ivocal source. If there is one, he posits, it is

within a certain discourse on love. The par

ent's illness resides in their talk about love,

in their desire to overcome their bodily dif

ferences.

After a lengthy description of the four

boys, a note of parental disillusionment

marks the narrative. Once upon a time, the

children had been their parent's darlings:

"Esos cuatro idiotas, sin embargo, hab?an

sido un d?a el encanto de sus padres." (48)

They fulfilled their notion of love: "?Qu?

mayor dicha para dos enamoradoss que esa

honrada consagraci?n de su cari?o, libertado

ya del vil egoismo de un mutuo amor sin fin

ninguno y, lo que es peor para el amor

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mismo, sin esperanzas posibles de reno

vaci?n?" (48) The outcome of the story un

derscores the questions irony. Four idiots

are not happiness and they certainly do not

eliminate "oneness" ("egoismo"). They ex

acerbate it. Before the girl's birth, the couple

begins to blame each other for the children's

condition. Their behavior is qualified as be

longing to inferior hearts: "...que es patrimo

nio espec?fico de los corazones inferiores."

(49) Through these comments, the narrator

emerges as a character hidden in the surface

of the discourse. He gains a voice which is

ultimately in opposition to the doctor's.

While the doctor looks for an answer to the

children's illness in heredity, the narrator

suggests that the Mazzini-Ferraz marriage is

punished because it involves a basic misun

derstanding of how language works, the

matized as a question of what is love.

If we follow the narrator's "logic," the

couple have children in order to escape their

oneness. In a sense, they believe literally the

commandment that "the two shall become

one." Mistaken about what love is all about,

they can only produce "mistakes." Unde

terred by their mistake, that is, swayed by

their desire to deny difference, they have a

daughter who paradoxically affirms differ

ence most clearly. "Pero en las inevitables

reconciliaciones, sus almas se un?an con do

ble arrebato y locura por otro hijo. Naci? as?

una ni?a." (50) Healthy, different from her

brothers, she is killed.

In being surprised by the ending, the

reader participates as accomplice in the en

terprise of building the figure of the narrator

as the able transmitter of bodily sensations.

While the story asks us to recognize the

production and consumption of fiction as a

"communications technology," it also marks

the narrator as effective and efficient anti

dote to whatever nervous energy the reader

releases in reading. In managing the reader's

unease, the narrator substantiates fiction's

claim of cultural power over medicine.

These apparently opposes registers are co

ordinated within the discursive pressures

that late nineteenth-century naturalist texts

place on the concept of the individual, in

suggesting that the individual is something

that can be made.

Having established in the previous two

stories that against science, and more specif

ically, medicine, fiction has its own powers,

three years later Quiroga rescues the doctor

as the hero of "Una estaci?n de amor." As we

shall see below, the doctor and its concomi

tant belief in heredity is deployed as a strat

egy of control that belies a constant fear of

the female body as a machine beyond regula

tion.

The manifest structure of "Una estaci?n

de amor" is again a love story. As the title

indicates, the affair is organized around the

seasons. The tale's fourfold structure sug

gests that the fundamental essence of narra

tive duplicates the seasonal changes within

the order of nature. The perception of nat

ure anticipates knowledge through our affini

ties with its repetitions. This idea which

enjoyed a revival among the romantics

gained a new currency among the natural

ists. On the surface "Una estaci?n" plays out

these affinities.

The first season?spring?is of course the

time to fall in love. So the narrative opens

with the young N?bel falling in love with

Lidia. Although the tale exploits this order

of things (a literary convention), its factual

ness (an implied universality) is bracketed

by the discourse's insistence on the protago

nist's age and the action's time frame. Spring

as the season for love gives way to a specific

human time-adolescence, and a calendar

date?carnival. Carnival, moreover, occurs in

the southern hemisphere at the height of the

summer. Consequently, these facts work

against what appears to be the organizing

trope.

Concealed behind the seasonal trope is a

battle between parents and offsprings.

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N?bel's father opposes his son's involvement

with Lidia. In turn, her mother tries to ma

nipulate the father-son conflict to her advan

tage. The generational conflict participates

in a more general economy about the (pro)

creative force of Carnival.6 As such, "Una

estaci?n" can be read as the battleground

between rival forces: Carnival and the Law.

The narrative is inscribed between the noise

of carnival (contamination) at the beginning

and the re-affirmation of the Law (purity) at

the end. The other three seasons trace the

outcome of this confrontation.

Although on the surface the plot's unfold

ing depends on the direction of the move

ment which traditionally has been depicted

as either upward or downward, Quiroga's

discourse will insist that the seasonal move

ments are cyclical, repetive. The text re

minds us of this fact by calling the love affair,

a childish infatuation ("infantil idilio" ). The

sliding of the seasons into repetition touches

the protagonists' character as well. Come

"summer," the son acts like the father.

After a four month hiatus, the younger

N?bel's love is rekindled by the young wom

an's aloofness. Alarmed by this develop

ment, the older N?bel's intervenes. He

warns him that Lidia can contaminate him

with the disease ("podredumbre" [69]) that

surrounds her. She potentially embodies her

mother's "sins" of being a kept woman and a

drug addict. Yet the father's fears are ground

less. For the son has not even sealed his love

with a kiss though he has not lacked oppor

tunity. Futhermore he shares his father's

concerns: "As?, la inquietud del padre de

N?bel a este respecto tocaba a su hijo en lo

m?s hondo de sus cuerdas de amante.

?C?mo hab?a escapado Lidia?" (69). Their

common concern with purity effectively

functions as a defense mechanism against

the spread of the disease that they both

dread.

It is a "dis-ease" with appearances and

ultimately, language itself. N?bel's father is

opposed to the marriage because of the kind

of (sexual) relations Lidia's mother has ("qu?

clase de relaciones tiene la madre de tu novia

con su cu?ado" [67]). Furthermore, though

Lidia is not contaminated yet, his fortune or

N?bel's inheritance will be if they marry:

"Pero si la madre te la quiere vender en

matrimonio, o m?s bien la fortuna que vas a

heredar cuando yo muera, dile que el viejo

N?bel no est? dispuesto a esos tr?fi

cos,...(68) When the young lover tells Li

dia's mother that his father will neither meet

her nor bless the marriage, she also recurs to

heredity as antidote. She insists that he find

out how his family made his fortune and how

many obstacles did his father have to over

come to sleep with his future wife.

-...?Preg?ntale de d?nde ha sacado su

fortuna, robada a sus clientes ...?Su

familia irreprochable, sin mancha, se

llena la boca con eso ... D?gale que le

diga cu?ntas paredes ten?a que saltar

para ir a dormir con su mujer, antes de

casarse (70)

Her hostile questions separate the lovers un

til Lidia's illness reunites them four days

later. Left alone with Lidia in her bedroom,

young N?bel suddenly suspects he is being

framed. He flees in the name of a pure love,

"un amor puro en toda su aureola de po?tico

idilio." (71) His concern with purity marks

him as his father's son. Their difference is a

generic necessity that arises from the same

Law which defines them as one. Their

sameness confirms the power of heredity,

the force of the doctor, not only to keep the

body healthy, but also language.

Eleven years pass before the lovers meet

again. During this time, that is, between

"summer" and "autumn," young N?bel has

become the father. His father died. And he

married and fathered children. When he ac

cidentally runs into Lidia's mother, he can

act as his own agent. Using Lidia's illness as

an excuse, she proposes that she invites

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them to his country house. He accepts her

proposal: "Ante el tratado comercial que le

ofrec?an, se ech? en brazos de aquella rara

conquista que le deparaba el destino." (74)

Nonetheless, come "winter," they travel in

separate railroad cars to his country estate.

Once there, he consumes his passion for

Lidia in an atmosphere reminescent of mas

ter and servant. Immediately afterwards, he

recalls Dostoevsky's words, "que hasta ese

momento no hab?a comprendido: 'Nada hay

m?s bello y que fortalezca m?s en la vida,

que un recuerdo puro.'" (76) His recollection

confirms his father's "truth:" One cannot

escape heredity. In confirming this truth's

irony, N?bel completes the medical studies

he interrupted when his father died. He be

comes the doctor.

When N?bel sees both mother and

daughter injecting themselves with mor

phine, he attempts to save Lidia by with

holding the drug from her mother. Although

he plays doctor, he does not define himself

as one. When Lidia asks him if there is a

doctor on the estate, N?bel answers no.

?No hay m?dico aqu??-murmur? [Li

dia].

?Aqu? no, ni en diez leguas a la re

donda; pero buscaremos. (77)

He never sends for a doctor though he

knows Lidias mother is dying because of his

decision to withhold the morphine.

Through N?bel, Quiroga energizes the fig

ure of the doctor and the embodiment of the

Law of the Father. And we are left to wonder

what that significance is, a question that is

given a provisional answer if we contrast

Dario's and Quiroga's "jewel" stories.

Of his many stories, "El rub?," first pub

lished in Azul..., 1888, distinctly marks

Dario's break with the aesthetics of

realism/naturalism. The opening lines dis

parage the recent invention of an artificial

ruby by the French chemist called Fremy.

The gnomes attack the invention as another

attempt to imitate, that is to falsify, nature.

The gnomes' exaltation of nature and the

concomitant idea that their culture precedes

from it forms part of a romantic ideology

which comes under attack when the eldest

gnome sets the record straight. The ruby, he

recounts, is not the result of nature's sponta

neous work, but came about through the

death of a captive woman.

This patriarchical narrator recalls observ

ing the woman at a noisy bathing feast. Al

though she and her companions are

supposed to be engaged in a form of ritual, a

kind of lawlessness easily insinuates itself in

the gnome's description: "Brazos, espaldas,

senos desnudos, azucenas, rosas,..., ecos de

risas ?ureas, festivas;...".7 He sees just parts

of the human body and only hears noises.

Their monstrosity is reinforced when his

listeners guess that the observed are

nymphs, not human beings, women: "?Nin

fas? -No: mujeres." (66) At the opportune

moment, the gnome carries one of them

away. Later, when the captive tries to escape

from the gnomes' cave and rejoin her be

loved she bleeds to death. Her blood stains

the diamond-encrusted opening; it turns the

stones into rubies. The storyteller signals

the end of the tale with a pause and then

with the rhetorical question: "?Hab?is com

prendido?" (68) The gnomes assert their

understanding by destroying the fake ruby

and then dancing frantically, "una farandola

loca y sonora." (69) While the others dance,

Pluck, who had brought back the fake ruby

in the first place, takes to the air. What the

reader had understood depends on how

Pluck's celebratory flight is interpreted.

In mid-flight, Pluck praises, among other

things, "el oro, y el agua diamantina y la

casta flor de lis." (69) His praise is not a

nostalgic yearning for an aristocratic ideol

ogy as Fran?oise Perus claims in her valu

able essay on Dar?o,8 but the staging of the

elder gnome's notion of writing. Pluck re

peats what has been said before: Beauty ("lo

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puro") is born out of woman Earth ("madre

Tierra"). (69) His words suggest that the

basic scence of writing is precisely a double

relationship or somebody assimilating what

has been left unsaid and as a result spoken.

The something left unsaid is both unneces

sary and pertinent. In repeating what has

been said before, Pluck posits that before as

the language of truth. It is not a truth to be

found outside storytelling. There is not out

side, no origin. The ruby and the tale it

engenders are both artifice, pure decor, but

veiling that artifice is repetition. Repetition

delineates the doube nature of authorship,

always two: one who tells and another who

profits from its excess. This delineation ef

faces what is said by the old gnome in favor

of the movement of telling, that is, of spac

ing.

In shifting our attention to the movement

of telling, the reader becomes a partner in

crime. We become the elder gnomes ac

complice. When he makes the gnomes be

lieve in their superiority over Fremy, he

calms them down. He channels the unrest

caused by the news of Fremy s discovery

into organized disorder, into a dance. In this

dance, Fremy's enterprise can be scorned

because it invokes a basic misunderstanding

of what mimicry and production are all

about. Fremy remains trapped in the na

ivetes of realism. Science is derogatorily dis

missed as the doings of the expert ("hechura

del sabio" [68]). So are the gnomes. Busy

celebrating their superiority, they ignore that

for the narration to succeed it also has to

eliminate the female body, a gesture which

mimics the chemist's act. The upshot of this

crime is that the elder gnome puts an end to

dissonance. No longer do the younger

gnomes pose a threat to this patriarchical

narrator. Through storytelling, fiction can

(re)imposes order. Pluck's flight celebrates

the old gnomes' triumph. Dario's writing

stages Pluck's celebration. His celebration

brakets the festive and religious character of

the women's bath. As a simulacrum of sacri

fice, Pluck's praise ceases to be a unique,

exceptional event, it pertains to Western cul

ture and there lies its uniqueness.

A consequence of a story like "El rub?" is a

radical emptying of the category of produc

tion that the critique of realism/naturalism

centrally requires. While Dario's story posits

that the copy is always other and dissolves

this otherness by suggesting that its effectss

belong to an eternal arranging of the artifacts

of Western culture, Quiroga maintains the

importance of an individual producer. By

taking account and offering accounts of pro

duction, Quiroga can incorporate the cri

tique of naturalism that a text such as "El

rub?" commences but cannot completely

carry out because the category of production

remains embedded in the female generative

sphere. By contrast, I want to close these

remarks by turning to Quiroga's own "jewel,"

"El solitario."

"El solitario" provides an almost diagram

matic instance of what I have traced so far: a

double writing by which (re)production is

displaced or disavowed or rewritten in an

other register. The story can be quickly

summarized. Maria, Kassim's wife, threat

ens his livelihood when little by little she

falls in love with the very profession to which

he exposed her: "la tarea del artifice." (101)

Her love exceeds the professional bounda

ries of propriety. She wants to own, to keep,

the jewels he makes. When she breaks the

unspoken, but always present codes of be

havior, Kassim has no recourse but to rees

tablish them by killing her. Unlike in "El

rubi," Maria's blood does not become the

tale's referent. The diamond solitaire does

not turn into a ruby but remains a murder

weapon. What is most perverse about the

story is, however, not its murderous treat

ment of the wife but the violence of its

symmetries : female/procreation/monster

versus male/creation/ artist, and the urgent

translation of these events into a didactic

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lesson.

As so many of Quiroga's stories, "El solita

rio" appears as if it were a sensationalist

piece ripped out of (or ripped off) a newspa

per. Like any news item, the tale is a space to

disseminate and implat the desires of a spe

cific social class. Kassim is an artist, "h?bil -

artista aun?". (101) When he kills his wife,

he does it in the name of the art. He kills to

reestablish order.

To return to "Una estaci?n de amor," the

lesson of "El solitario" is addressed to Lidia

and other young women who aspire to move

up the social ladder through marriage. Not

satisfied with what her husband earns, Maria

pushes Kassim to murder her when she

overssteps her place in the social hierarchy.

Lidia avoids Maria s fate by not appearing at

the train window.

El tren parti?. Inm?vil, Nebel sigui?

con la vista la ventanilla que se perdia.

Pero Lidia no se asom?. (78)

She deflates Nebel's expectations, while

recognizing his authority. Through this op

eration of negation and reinvestment,

Quiroga preserves the possibility that fiction

can speak in a "pure" voice. Yet, all these

stories depend and stress the impurity or

dissonance embedded in language and em

bodied by the female.

As I indicated, the narrative tactic that

supports Quiroga's writing economy is the

displacement or rewriting of the figure of the

expert doctor as a strategy of control over

the generative power of the female body.

Quiroga appears to fear what results from

dismantling the doctor's truth. Conse

quently, he fills the blank page up with the

same: an uncontrollable force embodied by

the female body. His representation extends

beyond the plot to the natural/unnatural rela

tionship between a (male) storyteller and a

(female) reader. This asymmetrical relation

ship sets forth an econmy of nervous energy

and imagination. In the process, these four

stories resist the easy unification and classifi

cation proscribed by both a naturalist and a

modernista poetics.

Thanks are due for research support from

the Hewlett-Mellon Fund of Hampshire

College.

Notes

1 I follow the chronology established by

Alberto F. Oreggioni for the Biblioteca

Ayacucho editon of Horacio Quiroga, Cuen

tos, ed. Emir Rodr?guez Monegal (Caracas:

Editorial Ayacucho, 1981). As the editor

notes, Quiroga did not give much thought to

the organization of his collections of stories.

All Quiroga citations will be from this edi

tion.

2 Throughout Spanish America, doctor

can designate any expert or educated per

son; "medico" is employed to refer to some

one who practices medicine. Quiroga plays

with this distinction at the end of "Una esta

ci?n de amor," as discussed below.

3 On science and fiction as communica

tions technologies, see, Donna Haraway, "A

Manifesto for Cyborgs," in Femenism/Postmo

dernism, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York:

Routledge, 1990). Another critic who has

elaborated on the complexities of literature

and gender in relation to science is Teresa de

Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on

Theory, Film and Fiction (Bloomington: Indi

ana University Press, 1987).

4 Quiroga read and admired Poe for having

grounded his writing in the nervous system.

I will address Quiroga use of sensation in

what follows. In thinking about the effects of

reading on the body, I am indebted to D.A.

Miller, "Cage aux Folles: Sensation and

Gender in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in

White? Representations 14 (Berkeley: Califor

nia University Press, Spring 1986).

5 See Josefina Ludmer, Onetti: Los procesos

71



10/10

de construcci?n del relato (Buenos Aires: Edi

torial Sudamericana, 1977), p. 122-125.

6 A pathbreaking effort to rethink this

economy in terms of music can be found in

Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Econmy of

Music (Minneapolis: Universsity of Minne

sota Press, 1985).

7 Rub?n Dar?o, Azul..., (Madrid: Espasa

Calpe, 1972), p. 66. All Dar?o citations will

be from this edition.

8 See Fran?oise Perus, Literatura y sociedad

en Am?rica Latina: el modernismo, (M?xico:

Siglo XXI Editores, 1980), p. 129-130.

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