Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End

by Edmond Jabès

Published for the first time in English, this is the last substantial work by the late French author Edmund Jabès, presented here with the subtle digital images of Ed Epping. In a series of short aphorisms, Jabès continues his lifelong interrogation of "The Book" both within the Jewish cultural tradition and twentieth-century modernism. Jabès' life work is driven in part by Mallarmè's concept of the limit, of the space beyond limits, and the space defined by such a limit. His work is pervaded by a sense of melancholy and loss, and never so much as in Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End, as its title would suggest. Even in his last work, Jabès continues to struggle admirably with questions of being and not-being, of life and art, displaying the intelligence and passion of a great writer.

Genres: Poetry, Literature, France

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Edmond Jabes was a major voice in French poetry in the latter half of this century. An Egyptian Jew, he was haunted by the question of place and the loss of place in relation to writing, and he was one of the most significant thinkers of what one might call poetical alienation. He focused on the space of the book, seeing it as the true space in which exile and the promised land meet in poetry and in question. (This is summarized from the reader's description in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier.) Very many of Jabes's books of prose and poetry have been translated into English, including The Book of Dialogue ( Wesleyan, 1987) and The Book of Margins (Chicago, 1993), both translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day is sick of images.
Madness. Madness.
Night, sick of oblivion.

[Armen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The happiness we feel in loving is not necessarily tied to a happy love.

It is a need for love.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does a book show us? – First, the author’s distress. Then his shamelessness.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

"’And yet I know:
— that the book is written against the book that tries to destroy it.
— that thought thinks against the thought that covets its place.
— that truth comes through the lived moment as the one moment to be lived.
— that the word in vanishing reveals the very distress of man who vanishes with it.’”

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The void is more daring than the whole."

So ends, or begins, this transfixing testament of constant erasure and unbecoming.

We are defined by the futility of our consciousness, which is always seeking to hold what cannot be held, that which is always shifting like the sand of memory.

A devastating meditation, pregnant with illusion, disintegration, and fragmentation.

How can we be whole,
in a world always (un)becoming anew
?

[NhaThuyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

all beautiful books can save me for some moments at least.

shoot the heart. and then sleep.

wake up missing. sleep dreaming.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Cosa fa vedere un libro? - In primo luogo, lo sconforto dell'autore. Poi, la sua impudenza." (p. 31)

"Di giorno costruisci. Di notte, dubiti." (p. 75)