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Contents » Cover |
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Essays
I have long admired Jabès's work since its introduction to American readers over 20 years ago with The Book of Questions. His scrutiny of Self and the Word adds to centuries of mystic work determined to unravel and re-knot the labyrinthine hidden meanings within the Jewish holy books and their symbolic representation of the Chosen, humanity. Among the last of his works translated into English, Desire for a Beginning consists of a series of aphorisms aimed at stirring memory as "shad roils its world of water," at the "wound" that "creates man," at "having the book as witness" and thereby "having the entire universe vouch for us." Illuminated by digital images by Ed Epping, this tiny book, true to its genre, encourages contemplation, bewilderment and revelation. Jabès reminds us that "the void is more daring than the whole" and "we die only one death: the one we did not expect." He assures us that the void is a comforting part of us (or rather we of it) and that to open oneself to it is to find eternity: "Young, the world, in the eyes of eternity, and so old in the eyes of the instant."
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