WIDE, the margin between carte blanche and the white page. Nevertheless it is not in the margin that you can find me, but in the yet whiter one that separates the word-strewn sheet from the transparent, the written page from the one to be written in the infinite space where the eye turns back to… Continue reading Edmond Jabès
It is not only a new language that we need — primitive, subtle, sensual, obscene — but a new hierarchy of the passions… — Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill, (Paris Press, October 1, 2002) Originally published 1930.
In your loneliness, you hear the word from far away and then, in gratitude, look at it so closely that you cannot but drown in it. — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions: Volume II [Yaël; Elya; Aely; El, Or the Last Book] (Wesleyan; Revised ed. Edition, September 15, 1991) Originally published January 1st 1967.
Ah, the sun will catch me, in my disturbing transparency. What am I but an awareness of the dark, forever? — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions I. Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop. (Wesleyan; Rev. ed. Trans. from the French edition, September 15, 1991) Originally published 1963.
Wandering creates the desert. – Edmond Jabès, quoted in A Nomad Poetics: Essays. Written by Pierre Joris. (Wesleyan November 5, 2003)
At the end there is double despair: that of the writer, / and that of the witness. — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions , Vol 1 [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book] (Wesleyan; Rev. ed. Trans. from the French edition September 15, 1991) Originally published 1963.
It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to lose it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You… Continue reading Edmond Jabès
I wrote you. I write you. I wrote you. I write you. I take refuge in my words, the words my pen weeps. As long as I am speaking, as long as I am writing, my pain is less keen. I join with each syllable to the point of being but a body of consonants,… Continue reading Edmond Jabès
The Vale of Soul-Making 