Edmond Jabès

Edmond Jabès Poems

Edmond Jabès Biography

Edmond Jabès (French: [ʒabɛs]; Hebrew: אדמון ז'אבס‎, Arabic: إدمون جابيس‎; Cairo, April 16, 1912 – Paris, January 2, 1991) was a Jewish writer and poet, and one of the best known literary figures to write in French after World War II. The work he produced when living in France in the late 1950s until his death in 1991 is highly original in its form and its breadth. The son of a prominent Jewish family in Egypt going back to the 15th century, he was born and brought up in Cairo where he received a classical French education. He began publishing in French and writing for the theater at an early age. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1952 for his literary accomplishments. His work after the exile from Egypt reflects a consciousness deeply troubled by the brutal reality of Auschwitz. His work exhibits a profound sense of melancholy and an acute sense that the Jew is constituted and always remains in exile. When Egypt expelled its Jewish population (Suez Crisis), Jabès fled to Paris in 1956, which he had first visited in the 1930s. There he rekindled friendships with the surrealists although he was never formally a member of that group. He became a French citizen in 1967, the same year that he received the honor of being one of four French writers (alongside Sartre, Camus, and Lévi-Strauss) to present his works at the World Exposition in Montreal. Further accolades followed—the Prix des Critiques in 1972 and a commission as an officer in the Legion of Honor in 1986. In 1987, he received France's Grand National Prize for Poetry (Grand Prix national de la poésie). Jabès's cremation ceremony took place a few days after his death – at age 78 – at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Jabès is best remembered for his books of poetry, often published in multi-volume cycles, at least fourteen volumes translated by Rosmarie Waldrop – Jabès's primary English translator. They often featured references to Jewish mysticism and kabbalah.)

The Best Poem Of Edmond Jabès

At the Threshold of the Book

'What is going on behind this door?'
'A book is shedding its leaves.'
'What is the story of the book?'
'Becoming aware of a scream.'
'I saw rabbis go in.'
'They are privileged readers. They come in small groups to give us their comments.'
'Have they read the book?'
'They are reading it.'
'Did they happen by for the fun of it?'
'They foresaw the book. They are prepared to encounter it.'
'Do they know the characters?'
'They know our martyrs.'
'Where is the book set?'
'In the book.'
'Who are you?'
'I am the keeper of the house.'
'Where do you come from?'
'I have wandered.'
'Is Yukel your friend?'
'I am like Yukel.'
'What is your lot?'
'To open the book.'
'Are you in the book?'
'My place is at the threshold.'
'What have you tried to learn?'
'I sometimes stop on the road to the sources and question the signs, the world of my ancestors.'
'You examine recaptured words.'
'The nights and mornings of the syllables which are mine, yes.'
'Your mind is wandering.'
'I have been wandering for two thousand years.'
'I have trouble following you.'
'I, too, have often tried to give up.'
'Do we have a tale here?'
'My story has been told so many times.'
'What is your story?'
'Ours, insofar as it is absent.'
'I do not understand.'
'Speaking tortures me.'
'Where are you?'
'In what I say.'
'What is your truth?'
'What lacerates me.'
'And your salvation?'
'Forgetting what I said.'
'May I come in? It is getting dark.'
'In each word there burns a wick.'
'May I come in? It is getting dark around my soul.'
'It is dark around me, too.'
'What can you do for me?'
'Your share of luck is in yourself.'
'Writing for the sake of writing does nothing but show contempt.'
'Man is a written bond and place.'
'I hate what is said in place I have left behind.'
'You trade in the future, which is immediately translated. What you have left is you without you.'
'You oppose me to myself. How could I ever win this fight?'
'Defeat is the price agreed on.'
'You are a Jew, and you talk like one.'
'The four letters JUIF which designate my origin are your four fingers. You can use your thumb to crush me.'
'You are a Jew, and you talk like one. But I am cold. It is dark. Let me come into the house.'
'There is a lamp on my table. And the house is in the book.'
'So I will live in the house after all.'
'You will follow the book, whose every page is an abyss where the wing shines with the name.'

Translated by : Rosmarie Waldrop

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