The Modern Novel

Biography

Juan Emar was born Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi in Santiago in 1893. His father was a senator and businessman. The family travelled a lot to Europe during Emar’s childhood. While his father wanted him to be a lawyer, he was able to become involved in the artistic and literary world of both Santiago and Paris, at his father’s expense. In 1918 he married his cousin, Herminia Yáñez (Mina), and the couple went to live in Paris. He worked in the Chilean Embassy, while studying painting and drawing. He returned to Santiago, much influenced by the current artistic trends in Europe. He divorced and remarried and started writing columns on art for the La Nación, the paper founded by his father. He adopted the pseudonym Jean Emar, later changed to Juan Emar, from the French j’en ai marre, meaning I am fed up. He continued till 1927, when the newspaper was seized by the government (and his father deported). He later took up writing, producing three novels in the same year, all of which went against the contemporary realistic trend and adopted modernist European models. They were rejected by the critics and did not achieve any success till well after his death, in the 1970s and 1980s. He spent much of the rest of his life working on Umbral, a 5000 page novel, only published well after his death. He died in 1964. None of his work is available in English.

Other links

Juan Emar
Juan Emar (in Spanish)
Juan Emar (1893-1964) (in Spanish)
Biografía de Juan Emar (in Spanish)
Blog on Juan Emar (in Spanish)
Juan Emar, el hombre del pijama azul (in Spanish)