Desire for a Beginning, Dread of One Single End

Published for the first time in English, this is the last substantial work by the late French author Edmund Jabès, presented here with the subtle digital images of Ed Epping. In a series of short aphorisms, Jabès continues his lifelong interrogation of "The Book" both within the Jewish cultural tradition and twentieth-century modernism. Jabès' life work is driven in part by Mallarmé's concept of the limit, of the space beyond limits, and the space defined by such a limit. His work is pervaded by a sense of melancholy and loss, and never so much as in Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End, as its title would suggest. Even in his last work, Jabès continues to struggle admirably with questions of being and not-being, of life and art, displaying the intelligence and passion of a great writer.

Edmond Jabs, born in 1913, settled in France ater being expelled from Egypt with his fellow jews during the 1956 Suez Crisis. In 1987 he received France's National Grand Prize for Poetry. His other books available in English include The Book of Dialogue, The Book of Resemblances (three volumes), and The Book of Questions (two volumes). He died in Paris in 1991.