Biography / About E. B. / Bibliography / Videos

Edgar Brau was born in the Argentine City of Resistencia (Chaco), where he lived until the early stages of his adolescence.

During his childhood years, he attended classes at a Catholic school; in his free time, he practiced several sports (soccer, basketball, rugby, rowing…), wandered in the nearby woods and rivers, and, above all, visited his grandfather’s library to enjoy intense and multiple readings. His mother’s father was a Spaniard from Zaragoza who had come from Buenos Aires to run the new branch of a multinational corporation that had opened on the outskirts of Resistencia.

In the evenings, Brau continued his education at his father’s cinema, which changed its double feature program every day, so that between the ages of 7 and 12, he saw an average of ten movies a week.

Reading, movies, and contact with nature were the three pillars that sustained his cultural and spiritual development during those years

At the beginning of the 1970s, his family settled in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, where his mother was born.

After completing his third year of high school, he felt an urgent need to take up his education again (which he had interrupted to attend elementary school) and quit the classroom for good.

He started to work, to go out with girls, and to read lavishly. During the following three years, he had more than twenty different jobs. He spent all his income on books, records, and movie tickets.

By that time, he dreamed of attending classes at the National Film School in Lodz, Poland, to become a film director. One day, however, someone realized he had a talent for acting and advised him to turn his energies to the stage. He worked in a couple of plays, with positive results, and then decided to continue. His career as an actor and stage director had begun.

After working with several groups, he met Hugo Marín, a master of Greek and Elizabethan tragedies and a brilliant but arbitrary and eccentric stage director. He was, and still is, regarded by Brau as the most important Argentine theater director. It was with Marín and with Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz, one of the founders of independent theater in Argentina, that Brau completed his training as an actor and stage director.

At the beginning of the 80s, he staged two different versions of A Season in Hell, by Arthur Rimbaud, in both of which he played the role of the famous French poet.

Later on, he worked as an actor and stage director in Malditos (“Cursed Poets”), a production based on poems by Baudelaire, Nerval, and Rimbaud. It was his last theatrical performance. Believing that the Argentine reality of those times was not propitious to helping him build the kind of theatrical art to which he aspired, affected by the recent death of his admired Hugo Marín, and now curious about the existential space that his first experiences in writing seemed to promise him, he gave up acting.

For some time, he was a self-taught photographer and painter of icons. Later, he opened a shop specializing in rare books, and in time, he completed and improved his first stories. The writers who frequented the shop encouraged him to publish. His first book, El Poema y otras historias (The Poem and Other Stories), was published in November 1992. His second book, published in 1995, was a novel: El comediante (The Player).

Between that year and 2000, he published two books of poems, three short story collections, and a novel. This production includes Tres cuentos (Three Tales), Suite argentina (Argentine Suite, four short stories based on the latest Argentine military dictatorship, the Dirty War), and El sueño de Tiresias (Tiresias’ Dream), ten poetic meditations by the famous Theban soothsayer on the great Western metaphysical themes  — see Texts.

By mid-2000, his complete work in prose was chosen by the U. S. National Endowment for the Arts to be translated by Donald A. Yates (Massachusetts, 1930 – Napa Valley, 2017), the first translator and editor in English of Jorge Luis Borges.

Since then, he has been invited by various universities and American literary organizations to present his work and give courses as a Visiting Professor. Together with his translator, he also offered several bilingual readings on the West Coast.

In 2003, during one of his stays at Lake Tahoe (Nevada-California), he wrote Casablanca, a novella set in the 50s, in which a rich Argentine ranch owner (estanciero) builds on his estate a replica of the café and casino in the film of the same name, opens it to the public and manages to reproduce, by means of doubles, all the incidents in the movie (Texts). The novella was translated into English by Andrea G. Labinger – see Wikipedia / Grokipedia

In September 2006, a collection of his works entitled Casablanca and Other Stories was published in the United States by MSU Press (see The Washington Post: “For the first time in English, the Argentine labyrinths of Edgar Brau” by Michael Dirda).

In 2007, Words Without Borders published Woodstock, a three-part poem about the famous music festival, translated into English by Michele MacKay Aynesworth — Texts

Between 2009 and 2013 he wrote and published the following works: El Proyecto Golem (The Golem Project), a story that takes place at an unspecified future date and narrates how the Israelis manage to bring Hitler back to life with his memory intact (Texts); Fausto (Faust), a play in which the character is now a bright Argentine biologist at Princeton, who, while considering the possibility of destroying the formula he has just discovered (which will enable man to live for a thousand years) is interrupted by the devil Mephistopheles, who has the mission of preventing that destruction (synopsis and contents on YouTube); and Como salmos (Like Psalms), twenty-six poems in which arguments with God and arguments about the existence of God build, through contradiction, a metaphysics in which the answer always seems to bring about a new question.

He also completed two photo-poem portfolios: Cuaderno de caminante – Coghlan (A Wanderer’s Photo Album – Coghlan) and Mujer en sílabas I (Woman in Syllables I) (Photography); and the book De lo que dura a lo que pasa, 2007-2009 (From What Endures and What Perishes, 2007–2009), consisting of conversations with Martina Rolandi Ricci — this book and a second volume that included conversations held between 2014 and 2018, were published in 2023.

In February 2014, he published El oficio de Gulliver (Gulliver’s Craft ), a novel that narrates a fifth voyage of Swift’s character (in 1722), during which he discovers an enormous and unknown island near the coast of Patagonia. Based on its unique social and cultural traits, he gives this place the name Incognitahriah. Every few years, the island shrinks until it reaches the size of a tortoise, without affecting daily life, as everything is reduced proportionately. After a time —always variable— it expands again. Beyond the various and bizarre adventures of the main character —such as his friendship with an anteater named Tito, whom he teaches to speak, or their visit to an asylum excavated in a huge glacier where they meet figures like Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Rilke, Wittgenstein, Emily Dickinson, Rimbaud, Whitman, the Chekhovian lady with the dog, among others— the work is a satire on contemporary issues (sports, journalism, art, religion, poverty, medicine, the pervasiveness of music, to name a few) and a reflection on prevailing values in the world — Texts.

After that (and after burning a thick notebook filled with numerous ideas for short stories, novels, poems, and plays, as well as some half-written stories), he decided to give up writing. Some time later, he began giving literature lessons to Rabito, a stray cat, in Buenos Aires. Four videos, under the title Tetralogía de Rabito (Rabito Tetralogy), give an account of those lessons — Videos

About Edgar Brau

“I believe that Faust (along with his extraordinary novel El oficio de Gulliver, a Swiftian evocation unlike anything anyone has ever achieved before) establishes Brau as the most prominent author in contemporary Argentine literature. The depth of structure and content, the novelty of the philosophical and theological themes, the remarkable alternation between poetry and prose, and the parallels —with luminous qualities of embroidery— of irony and criticism combine to create a dramatic work of exceptional importance and prominence, one that rises far above the dense literary leaf litter that seems to cover everything today.” — “There has never before been a book like Argentine Suite. It is one of the most impressive allegations against a dictatorship that, by way of fiction, I have ever read. These stories, I think, are what Poe would have written had he experienced the events of the past half-century in Buenos Aires. And they represent for 20th century Argentina what The Slaughteryard (El matadero) by Esteban Echeverría represents for 19th century Argentina.” — “Edgar Brau has returned the fable to literature.” — “Translating Brau’s work implies the challenge of faithfully communicating the sweep of his seemingly boundless imagination.” DONALD A. YATES, the first translator and editor in English of Jorge Luis Borges

“The atmosphere in Brau’s fiction (each of his stories can be crudely summarized as being controlled by a gimmick) ranges appealingly from the mysterious to the claustrophobic, from the horrific to the lyrical and transcendent; and even to the comically grotesque… Haunting!” —  “Casablanca and Other Stories is the first selection of his work to be published in English, but one hopes that others will follow soon”. MICHAEL DIRDA, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, The Washington Post

“In this time of writers-winners-of-literary contests, Brau’s work stands out with the purity, depth, and selfless originality that the most authentic literature has always exhibited… His Gulliver’s Craft (and we could also say his Faust, his The Golem Project, his Argentine Suite, his Tiresias’ Dream…) is a prodigy. He is the secret king of current Argentine literature.” ESTEBAN PEICOVICH, writer and journalist

“These brilliant and haunting stories (Casablanca and Other Stories), superbly translated, introduce American readers to a contemporary Argentine fiction writer of startling power and subtlety, a writer whose stories it is no overstatement to mention are in the same breath with those of Poe and Borges. Prospective readers have a real treat in store.”  JOHN T. IRWIN, writer, literary critic, editor – Decker Professor in the Humanities and Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins University.

“Brau’s work includes fantasy as well as the more complex aspects of reality. Assisted by a splendidly displayed imagination, it explores themes whose universality connects the present with the eternal.” — “How many poets today are capable of sustaining, with the utmost verbal dignity and genuine poetic vision, a poem the length of Tiresias’ Dream? This work is an epic feat and a heroic epic. It is a continuous forging of emotional and mental richness that the verse translates or interprets. And this deserves great praise, an all-encompassing praise”. — “It is evident that Brau loves the linguistic material he has received; he explores and cultivates it, transforming it into a Spanish language whose mastery and purity are a source of wonder today.” RODOLFO MODERN, writer – secretary general of the Argentine Academy of Letters.

“I enjoyed Casablanca and Other Stories very much. These stories have the same level as those of Stevenson and Poe — two authors who had such an influence on Mr. Borges. Congratulations, Mr. Brau.” MARGARET ATWOOD, writer

“It is difficult to express the fusion of fascination and unease that reading The Golem Project produces. Fascination for the brilliant imagination and the power of the writing, and unease because the act of bringing the monster back into the world, the implications of this fact, become akin to the central question posed at an examination table presided over by gods… Literature, it must be said, rarely produces such effects.” — “El oficio de Gulliver is a magical, fascinating novel. It should be published alongside Swift’s work.” ROBERT MEZEY, writer – translator of the complete poetry of Jorge L. Borges

“I’m reading El comediante, and I’m constantly amazed. Amazed by the masterful quality of the writing, something atypical in contemporary Argentine literature. Amazed by the author’s imagination, by the wealth of variations and incidents that unfold with the utmost naturalness (the chapter “Corona,” brimming with profound psychological eroticism, is an extraordinary work in itself), by the depth of the observations, by the intelligence of the composition… Never before has an Argentine novelist amazed and delighted me so much.” — MARTHA MERCADER, writer

“Edgar Brau’s imagination, not only in the invention of characters and situations but also in descriptive details, is impressive. He is a poet of prose. A prose rich in exact words, in a flexible syntax, in euphonic sentences. I did not expect such elegance, such lyrical quality… I imagine him occupying a first place in Argentine literature.” — ENRIQUE ANDERSON IMBERT, Harvard University 

https://notablepeopleproject.org/edgar_brau

Bibliography

– El Poema y otras historias /The Poem and Other Stories (short stories). Antigua Librería de Marie Roget, Buenos Aires, 1992 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– El comediante/The Player (a novel). Antigua Librería de Marie Roget, Buenos Aires, 1995
– Tres cuentos /Three Tales (short stories). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 1998 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– El Viaje /The Journey (short stories). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 1998 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– Dos historias fantásticas /Two Fantastic Stories (short stories). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 1998 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– La Torre y Babel /The Tower and Babel (poems). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 1999.
– Suite argentina / Argentine Suite (four stories based on the latest Argentine military dictatorship, the Dirty War). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2000 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– Mares de Ahab /Ahab’s Seas (poems). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2000
– El fin de Cronos /The End of Chronos (Diaries 1999-2001). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2001
– El sueño de Tiresias /Tiresias’ Dream (poems). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2001
– Casablanca (novella). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2003 (Translated by Andrea G. Labinger) – See Wikipedia / Grokipedia
– El hijo /The Child (a play). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2003
– Woodstock (a poem). NAPHTA & SETTEMBRINI, Buenos Aires, 2005 (Translated by Michele MacKay Aynesworth)
– De lo que dura a lo que pasa I /From What Endures to What Perishes I (conversations, 2007-2009). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2014
– De lo que dura a lo que pasa II /From What Endures to What Perishes II (conversations, 2014-2018). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2023
– Fausto /Faust (a play). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2012 – See YouTube
– Como salmos /Like Psalms (poems). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2013
– El Proyecto Golem /The Golem Project (novella). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2014 (Translated by Andrea G. Labinger)
– El oficio de Gulliver /Gulliver’s Craft (a novel). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2014 – Synopsis and Contents on LinkedIn (Articles)
– Hugo Marín, Hombre de teatro. METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2023
– Pequeño diario americano – octubre-noviembre 2000 /Short American Diary –  october-november 2000 (diaries) METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2023
– La bendición del presidente /The President’s Blessing (short stories). METZENGERSTEIN, Buenos Aires, 2023 (Translated by Donald A. Yates)
– Mujer en sílabas I /Woman in Syllables I  (photographs-poems)
– Cuaderno de caminante – Coghlan /A Wanderer’s Photo Album – Coghlan (photographs-poems)
– En los tableros del dinosaurio /On the Checkerboards of the Dinosaur (poems) – Unpublished
– La profecía la hará Merlín /This Profecy Merlin Shall Make (poems) – Unpublished
– La lámpara y la memoria /The Lamp and the Memory (aphorisms) – Unpublished
– Mujer en sílabas II /Woman in Syllables II (photographs-poems) – Unpublished

Videos on YouTube

TETRALOGÍA DE RABITO / RABITO TETRALOGY
I) “Malditos” – Poemas de Baudelaire y de Nerval recitados por E. B. a Rabito, un gato de la calle – English subtitles  — see Videos
II) “Con Rimbaud” – Fragmentos de Una temporada en el infierno interpretados por E. B. – English subtitles — Videos
III) “En Woodstock” – Poema de E. B. leído por su autor – English subtitles
IV) “A Dios, Rabito” – Gato de la calle evocado por su amigo escritor – English subtitles
………………………………

– “Faust”, A Tragedy by Edgar Brau. Plot, Characters, Style, and Innovative Theological-Philosophical Concepts (The devil, Hell, The name Faust, Blind God)
– “El Proyecto Golem” – Hitler resucitado por los israelíes – Edgar Brau
– Charles Baudelaire – “Le serpent qui danse” – Recited by Edgar Brau — Videos
– Charles Baudelaire – “Recueillement” – Recited by Edgar Brau
– Charles Baudelaire – “Épigraphe pour un livre condamné” – Recited by Edgar Brau
– Sobre Chéjov – Su obra y el modo “ideal” de poner en escena sus piezas teatrales
– “Faust” – Goethe – Quique von Coghlan, the Cat — Videos
– Arthur Rimbaud, El poeta que era otro
– Dostoievski y lo fantástico psicológico
– Dante y Rimbaud – Coincidencias y Divergencias
– Gulliver’s Craft (Swift’s Gulliver on a fantastic travel to Patagonia) – A Novel by Edgar Brau – Synopsis and Contents
– “Epígrafe para un libro de diarios” – Poema de E. B. leído por su autor —  Videos
– “Lázaro” – Poema de E. B. leído por su autor
– Dios es nada más (nada menos) que un símbolo
– “Casablanca” – Bogart’s and Bergman’s Casablanca recreated in the Argentine pampas
– Shakespeare in Bears and Butterflies
– La música es la madre
– Absolutos en vías de trueque (A propósito de cierta noche) — Videos