Edmond Jabès - biography, career, poetry
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Edmond Jabès |
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Edmond Jabès (Cairo, 1912 – Paris, January 2, 1991) was a Jewish writer and poet, and one of the best known literary figures to write in French after World War II.
The son of a Jewish Italian family, he was raised in Egypt, where he received a classical French colonial education. He began publishing in French at an early age, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1952 for his literary accomplishments.
When Egypt expelled its Jewish population in 1956 (Suez Crisis), Jabès fled to Paris, which he had first visited in the 1930s. There he rekindled friendships with the surrealists although he was never formally a member of that group. He became a French citizen in 1967, the same year that he received the honor of being one of four French writers (alongside Sartre, Camus, and Levi-Strauss) to present his works at the World Exposition in Montreal. Further accolades followed -- the Prix des Critiques in 1972 and a commission as an officer in the Legion of Honor in 1986. In 1987, he received France’s National Guard Prize for Poetry (Grand Prix national de la poésie). Jabès’s cremation ceremony took place a few days after his death – at age 78 – at the cemetery of Père Lachaise.
Jabès is best remembered for his books of poetry, often published in multi-volume cycles, at least fourteen volumes translated by Rosmarie Waldrop – Jabès’s primary English translator. They often featured references to Jewish mysticism and kabbalah.
In English (Trans. Rosmarie Waldrop):
The Book of Questions, Wesleyan University Press, 1976-1984
I. The Book of Questions, 1976
II / III. The Book of Yukel / Return to the Book, 1977
IV / V / VI. Yaël, Elya, Aely, 1983
VII. El, or the Last Book, 1984
The Book of Dialogue, Wesleyan University Press, 1987
The Book of Shares, Chicago UP, 1989
The Book of Resemblances, Wesleyan University Press, 1990
I. The Book of Resemblances, 1990
II. Intimations The Desert, 1991
III. The Ineffaceable The Unperceived, 1992
From the Book to the Book [A Jabès Reader], Wesleyan UP, 1991
A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Book, Wesleyan UP, 1993
The Book of Margins, Chicago UP, 1993
The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion, Stanford University Press, 1996
Desire for a Beginning Dread of One Single End, Granary Books, 2001
In English (By other translators):
A Share of Ink, [Selected Short Poems] trans. Anthony Rudolf, Menard Press, 1979
If There Were Anywhere But Desert; Selected Poems, trans. Keith Waldrop; "Introduction" by Paul Auster, "Afterword" by Robert Duncan, Station Hill Press, 1988
From the Desert to the Book: Dialogues with Marcel Cohen, trans. Pierre Joris, Station Hill, 1990
Selected works on Jabès (In English):
Paul Auster, "Interview with Edmond Jabès," Montemora, #6 (1979), reprinted in The Sin of the Book
Paul Auster, "Book of the Dead," (1976), essay, published in Auster, Paul: "The Art of Hunger."
Eric Gould, ed., The Sin of the Book: Edmond Jabès, University of Nebraska Press, 1985
—; Studies in 20th Century Literature, 12, No.1: Edmond Jabès Issue (Fall 1987)
Warren Motte Jr., Questioning Edmond Jabès, University of Nebraska Press, 1990
Jason Weiss, Writing at Risk: Interviews in Paris with Uncommon Writers, University of Iowa Press, 1991
Rosmarie Waldrop, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès, Wesleyan University Press, 2002
About the author:
http://www.wikipedia.org
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