In “The Beginning of the Book,” Jabès uses a metaphor of the book that spans through much of his work. Existence as a question of being and writing is at the core of Jabès’ work in the post-Holocaust period. Being and writing for Jabès are universal ‘unknowns.’ Therefore, a vehicle of the book represents a thin line between Jabès’s interpretation of spirituality, the universal meaning of life, and the torment of creativity.
The book question is not literal: a ‘book’ is a poetic figure of speech and one of Jabès’ profound words of life. Like the desert, Jabès also references the book in his other poems as an image of a place where disorientation entails death and orientation entails life. For Jabès, in addition to denoting the space of being, the book is a metaphor for the space of creation: a book is a place of writing, and for the poet, writing means life. Thus, finding the way in life is expressed metaphorically by saying that “all beginnings are already in the book” (Jabès 533). Orientation is sought after a disaster and in the darkness, stumbling in an “a priori doubtful interpretation of the book” (Jabès 533). The tedious process of searching for meaning for the direction in life is represented as the “opaque light of some word” that could simultaneously be the “key” and a “challenge” to finding it (Jabès 533). Thus, the book is a poetic vehicle with philosophical depth, referring to the tenor existence, catastrophe, and finding the way afterward.
In conclusion, the ubiquitous metaphor of the book builds on the author’s life reflection and the search for a higher meaning. The book is concurrently a space of creation, where ‘all beginnings’ are, and a space of doubt and feeling lost. The vehicle of the book is semantically connected with the tenor of living experience, providing clues for writing one’s story of life.
Works Cited
Jabès, Edmond. “The Beginning of the Book.” Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché, 1st ed, W.W. Norton, 1993, p. 533.