issue 7 home | broken news | criticual urgencies | cyber bag | ec chair | ficciones | gallery
letters | reviews | secret agents | serials | stage and screen
HomeArchivesSubmitCorpse CafeCorpse MallOur GangHot SitesSearch
Excerpt from
DÈsir d'un commencement

by Edmond JabËs
Excerpt from
Desire for a Beginning

translation by Kevin P.Q. Phelan

Desir d'un commencement was published in 1991, the year Edmond Jabes died in Paris at the age of 78. His expulsion with other Jews from his native Egypt in 1957 during the Suez Crisis prompted a deep investigation into his Jewish heritage. "...un livre - disait-il - que je n' Ècrirai jamais parce que nul ne peut l'Ècrire, Ètant un livre: A medley of questioning voices, at times aphoristic, speak about exile, memory, and language in an inexhaustible series of exchanges on the search for meaning. In 1987, he received France's National Guard Prize for Poetry. Many of his works have been beautifully translated by the poet Rosemarie Waldrop.

* * *



"...un livre - disait-il - que je n' Ècrirai jamais parce que nul ne peut l'Ècrire, Ètant un livre:
"-- contre le livre.
"-- contre la pensÈe.
"-- contre la vÈritÈ et contre le mot. "-- un livre, donc, qui s'Èmiette ‡ mesure qu'il se forme.
"-- contre le livre, car le livre n'a, pour contenu, que lui-mÍme et il n'est rien.
"-- contre la pensÈe, car elle est incapable de penser sa totalitÈ et mÍme le rien.
"-- contre la vÈritÈ, car la vÈritÈ c'est Dieu et Dieu Èchappe ‡ la pensÈe; contre la vÈritÈ, donc, qui demeure, pour nous, une lÈgendaire inconnue. "-- contre la parole, enfin, car la parole ne dit que ce qu'elle peut et ce peu est le rien que seul le rien pourrait exprimer.




"Et pourtant, je sais:
"-- que le livre s'Ècrit contre le livre qui cherche ‡ l'anÈantir.
"-- que la pensÈe pense contre la pensÈe qui lui envie sa place.
"-- que la vÈritÈ s'impose, ‡ travers l'instant vÈcu, en tant que seul instant ‡ vivre.
"-- que le mot, en s'effaÁant, ne rÈvËle rien d'autre que la dÈtresse de l'homme qu'il efface".






     Prendre congÈ du jour. Nuit propice. Noire est la couleur de l'ÈternitÈ.





     La mÈmoire remue l'ombre; tel l'ombre- chevalier, son univers d'eau.





     Mettre ses idÈes au propre, comme on essange un torchon.






     Penser l'origine, n'est-ce pas, d'abord, mettre ‡ l'Èpreuve l'origine?
      DÈsir d'un commencement.






     (Ah ce livre, ce livre qui serait mien, tels mon cåur et mes yeux, telles mes mains et mes jambes.
      Ce livre qui emplit mes pensÈes.
      Mais si l'on me demande: "A quoi penses-tu? Tu sembles absent", je rÈponds, imperturbable: "A rien".
      Ce Rien mon unique livre?)






     Si, comme l'Ècrivait Heraclite: "La foudre crÈe l'univers", peut-Ítre, pouvons-nous dire que la blessure crÈe l'homme.





     Comme, de l'abÓme de la nuit, ont surgi les astres, l'homme de la seconde moitiÈ du vingt- tiËme siËcle est nÈ des cendres d'Auschwitz.





Ne point contrarier le cours du fleuve. Laisser les rÍves d'eau l'aiguiller.





Dans la soif, Èviter de boire une eau polluÈe. On la reconnaÓt ‡ sa trouble transparence. Elle a la limpiditÈ de la non-puretÈ.





     L'Èvidence, comme le vide qu'elle Èvince, dÈrange; car elle met en difficultÈ la vÈritÈ de laquelle elle s'est dÈtachÈe.
      Astres lucides; chaque fois, aux prises avec leur passÈ.
      Le nÈant scintille.



Indatable regard.
MÈmoire d'horizon.





     Un bloc de glace n'est jamais qu'une quantitÈ limitÈe d'eau que le froid a surpris.
     Il n'a plus qu'une raison d'Ítre; glacer ‡ son tour.

This translation is dedicated to Yelena Baishanski. Thanks also to Sheila Steeples, Pierre Alexander Jones Crowley, Simon Green, and Mark Spitzer for their comments and criticism.








* * *



"...a book," he said, "that I will never write because no one can write it, as it is a book:
"-- against the book.
"-- against thought.
"-- against truth and against the word.
"-- a book, therefore, that unravels as it forms.
"-- against the book because the book has, for content, only itself, and it is nothing.
"-- against thought because thought is incapable of conceiving its totality or even nothing.
"-- against truth because truth is God and God eludes thought; against the truth, therefore, which remains for us a legendary unknown.
"-- against speech, finally, because the spoken word only says what it is able to and this fragment is the nothing that only nothing can express.


"And yet I know :
"-- that the book writes against a book which is seeking to annihilate it.
"-- that thought thinks against a thought which craves its position.
"-- that truth is imposed through the lived moment as if it were the only moment to be lived.
"-- that the word, as it fades, reveals nothing but the distress of the man it erases".






     Taking leave of day. Propitious night. Black is the color of eternity.





     Memory rouses shadow; like the shadow-knight his water universe.





     Cleanse your ideas like one soaks a dish-rag.






     To think the origin : is it not, above all, to put the origin to the test?
     Desire for a beginning.





     (Ah, this book, this book that would be mine, like my heart and my eyes, like my hands and my limbs.
     This book fills my thoughts.
     But if someone asks : "What are you thinking? You seem absent", I reply undisturbed: "Nothing."
     This Nothing -- my only book?)






     If, as Heraclitus wrote: "Lightening creates the universe", perhaps we can say the wound creates man.





     Just as stars sprang out of night's abyss, man in the second half of the 20th Century was born from the ashes of Auschwitz.





Do not impede the river's course. Let the dreams of water guide it.





When thirsty, avoid drinking polluted water. One recognizes it by its cloudy transparency. It has the limpidity of the impure.





     Evidence, like the void it evinces, is disturbing, for it endangers the truth from which it has detached.
     Lucid stars, each time at grips with their past.
     Nothingness shimmers.



Undatable gaze.
Memory of the horizon.




     A block of ice is never more than a limited quantity of water surprised by the cold.
      There is only one reason left to be; to freeze in its turn.

Kevin P.Q. Phelan recently moved from Brooklyn to New Orleans. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Global City Review, among others. He founded, edits and produces murmur, a literary journal devoted to conversations between young and established poets and writers. For information about how to obtain a copy, please contact KPQP@compuserve.com.

Email: KPQP@compuserve.com

HomeArchivesSubmitCorpse CafeCorpse MallOur GangHot SitesSearch

Exquisite Corpse Mailing List Subscribe Unsubscribe

©1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with this site, please contact the webmistress.

.