Edmond Jabès

...this insignificant interval between death and dying. One cannot accept or refuse, O death, emptiness, air, sun. The "I" is the miracle of the "You." "This follows from a certain logic," he said: "the 'I' to designate the 'You,' the 'You' to justify the 'I,' and 'He' for disappearing." There is no present. There is a past haunted by the future and a future tormented by the past. The present is the time of writing, both obsessed with and cut off from an out-of-time brimming with life. (Now that all is silent within me, will I, who have hardly known how to talk to myself, still be able to speak? I almost cannot hear myself any more. On this 'almost' I shall rest my words or, rather, what stub- bornly still wants to be words—though they be deaf to the call of the world—an take entire charge of them. Expressing nothing, they will express me all the better.)

"We will gather images and images of images up till the last, which is blank. This one we will agree on." - Reb Carasso Mardohai Simhon claimed the silk scarf he wore around his neck was a mirror. "Look," he said, "my head is separated from my body by a scarf. Who dares give me the life if I say I walk with a knotted mirror under my chin? "The scarf reflects a face, and you think it is of flesh. "Night is the mirror. Day the scarf. Moon and sun reflected features. But my true face, brothers, where did I lose it?" At his death, a large scar was discovered on his neck. The meaning of this anecdote was discussed by the rabbis. Reb Alphandery, in his authority as the oldest, spoke first. "A double mirror," he said, "separates us from the Lord so that God sees Himself when trying to see us, and we, when trying to see Him, see only our own face." "Is appearance no more than the reflections thrown back and forth by a set of mirrors?" asked Reb Ephraim. "You are no doubt alluding to the soul, Reb Alphandery, in which we see ourselves mirrored. But the body is the place of the soul, just as the mountain is the bed of the brook. The body has broken the mirror." "The brook," continued Reb Alphandery, "sleeps on the summit. The brook's dream is of water, as is the brook. It flows for us. Our dreams extend us. "Do you not remember this phrase of Reb Alsem's: 'We live out the dream of creation, which is God's dream. In the evening our own dreams snuggle down into it like sparrows in their nests.' "And did not Reb Hames write: 'Birds of night, my dreams explore the immense dream of the sleeping universe.'" "Are dreams the limpid discourse between the facets of a crystal block?" continued Reb Ephraim. "The world is of glass. You know it by its brilliance, night or day." "The earth turns in a mirror. The earth turns in a scarf," replied Reb Alphandery. "The scarf of a dandy with a nasty scar," said Reb Ephraim. ("Words are inside breath, as the earth is inside time." - Reb Mares) And Yukel said: "The bundle of the Wandering Jew contains the earth and more than one star." "Whatever contains is itself contained," said Reb Mawas. The story I told you, as well as the commentaries it inspired, will be recorded in the book of the eye. The ladder urges us beyond ourselves. Hence its importance. But in a void, where do we place it? ("God is sculpted." - Reb Moyal)

"Dullness of words where God speaks. A dark which feels good. Drawn curtains. On the dark page lines continue the crease and the dream, the space between." -Reb Rissel 1 "Hope: the following page. Do not close the book." "I have turned all the pages of the book without finding hope." "Perhaps hope is the book." 2 "In my dialogues there are no answers. But sometimes a question is the flash of an answer. "My route riddled with crystals." -Reb Librad And Yukel said: "If an answer were possible death would not travel alongside life, life would not have a shadow. The universe would be light. "Contradiction is the scream of a soul drawn and quartered by the moment. Did not Reb Sedra write: 'Here is grain for your field: a grain of life, a grain of death. The grain of life will nourish your death, the grain of death feed your life.'" ("Death will get the better of me. God can only help me in the void."

Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible. - Reb Alcé "What is going on behind this door?" "A book is shedding its leaves." "What is the story of the book?" "Becoming aware of a scream." "I saw rabbis go in." "They are privileged readers. They come in small groups to give us their comments." "Have they read the book?" "They are reading it." "Did they happen by for the fun of it?" "They foresaw the book. They are prepared to encounter it." "Do they know the characters?" "They know our martyrs." "Where is the book set?" "In the book." "Who are you?" "I am the keeper of the house." "Where do you come from?" "I have wandered." "Is Yukel your friend?" "I am like Yukel." "What is your lot?" "To open the book." "Are you in the book?" "My place is at the threshold." "What have you tried to learn?" "I sometimes stop on the road to the sources and question the signs, the world of my ancestors." "You examine recaptured words." "The nights and mornings of the syllables which are mine, yes." "Your mind is wandering." "I have been wandering for two thousand years." "I have trouble following you." "I, too, have often tried to give up." "Do we have a tale here?" "My story has been told so many times." "What is your story?" "Ours, insofar as it is absent." "I do not understand." "Speaking tortures me." "Where are you?" "In what I say." "What is your truth?" "What lacerates me." "And your salvation?" "Forgetting what I said." "May I come in? It is getting dark." "In each word there burns a wick." "May I come in? It is getting dark around my soul." "It is dark around me, too." "What can you do for me?" "Your share of luck is in yourself." "Writing for the sake of writing does nothing but show contempt." "Man is a written bond and place." "I hate what is said in place I have left behind." "You trade in the future, which is immediately translated. What you have left is you without you." "You oppose me to myself. How could I ever win this fight?" "Defeat is the price agreed on." "You are a Jew, and you talk like one." "The four letters JUIF which designate my origin are your four fingers. You can use your thumb to crush me." "You are a Jew, and you talk like one. But I am cold. It is dark. Let me come into the house." "There is a lamp on my table. And the house is in the book." "So I will live in the house after all." "You will follow the book, whose every page is an abyss where the wing shines with the name."