The Book of Questions: El, or the Last Book Contributor(s): Jabes, Edmond (Author), Waldrop, Rosmarie (Translator) |
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ISBN: 081956107X ISBN-13: 9780819561077 Publisher: Wesleyan OUR PRICE: $9.86 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 1984 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French - Philosophy - Poetry |
Dewey: 848.914 |
LCCN: 8327369 |
Physical Information: 165 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - French - Religious Orientation - Jewish - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The Book of Questions, of which volumes IV, V, VI are together published here, is a meditative narrative of Jewish Experience, and, more generally, man's relation to the world. In these volumes the word is personified in the woman Yael, silence in her still-born child Elya. Even though words imply ambiguity and lies, they are the home of the exile. A book becomes the Book, fragments of the law that are in some way unified, where past and present, the visionary, and the common place, encounter each other. For Jabes every word is a question in the book of being. Man defines himself in the world against all that threatens his existence- death, the infinite, silence, that is, God, his primal opponent. How can one speak what cannot be spoken? |