The Book of Questions

by Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (Translator)

Le Livre des questions, t. I, 1963
Le Livre de Yukel (Le livre des questions, t. II), 1964
Le Retour au livre (Le livre des questions, t. III), 1965

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The Book of Questions, of which volumes IV, V, VI are together published here, is a meditative narrative of Jewish Experience, and, more generally, man's relation to the world. In these volumes the word is personified in the woman Yael, silence in her still-born child Elya. Even though words imply ambiguity and lies, they are the home of the exile. A book becomes the Book, fragments of the law that are in some way unified, where past and present, the visionary, and the common place, encounter each other. For Jabes every word is a question in the book of being. Man defines himself in the world against all that threatens his existence- death, the infinite, silence, that is, God, his primal opponent. How can one speak what cannot be spoken?

175 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published July 1, 1976

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

[Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very meditative book. As other volumes unfold, I'm sure it will be more clearly. To some extent, it reminds me a feeling of reading Susan Sontag's Death Kit, where entering a death hall full of quotations like in this book. Nearly each line in this book can be pondered for a full day, if yesterday, was actually a full stop.

Without mentioning the yellow star and gas chamber, one could easily group this meditative book with Rumi's poems in 12-13 centuries. It does not contain holocaust plot or details, however, assemble it like a mosaic movie. Wonderfully written.