The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Hardcover

Jabès, Edmond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804726833 ISBN 13: 9780804726832

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

The late Edmond Jabes was a major voice in French poetry in the latter half of this century. An Egyptian Jew, he was haunted by the question of place and the loss of place in relation to writing. He focused on the space of the book, seeing it as the true space in which exile and the promised land meet in poetry and in question. Jabes's mode of expression has been variously described: a new and mysterious kind of literary work - as dazzling as it is difficult to define, cascading aphorisms, a theater of voices in a labyrinth of forms. The manner of his writing embodies the meaning of his writing. Jabes's book is a manifesto not only of his own poetry, but of the most advanced critical poetry written during this century, one in which he engages in dialogue with some of its outstanding philosophers (Blanchot, Levinas, and Derrida).

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Jabès explores a realm of subversiveness above suspicion, indeed a dialectic of subversion itself. Poised between the poetic and the aphoristic, Jabès’s new book calls into deep meditative question the easy, received notions of subversiveness which have become a sort of default mode for diligently dull academic scholars, and celebrates the energies of ever-freshened inquiry.”—John Hollander, Yale University

About the Author

The late Edmond Jabes was a major voice in French poetry in the latter half of this century. An Egyptian Jew, he was haunted by the question of place and the loss of place in relation to writing, and he was one of the most significant thinkers of what one might call poetical alienation. He focused on the space of the book, seeing it as the true space in which exile and the promised land meet in poetry and in question. (This is summarized from the reader's description in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier.) Very many of Jabes's books of prose and poetry have been translated into English, including The Book of Dialogue ( Wesleyan, 1987) and The Book of Margins (Chicago, 1993), both translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0804726833
• ISBN 13: 9780804726832
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 92