Edmond Jabès and the Archaeology of the Book : Text, Pre-Texts, Contexts PDF
Preview Edmond Jabès and the Archaeology of the Book : Text, Pre-Texts, Contexts
Tsivia Frank Wygoda Edmond Jabès and the Archaeology of the Book Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts Edited by Vivian Liska Editorial Board Robert Alter, Steven E. Aschheim, Leora Batnitzky, Richard I. Cohen, Mark H. Gelber, Moshe Halbertal, Christine Hayes, Moshe Idel, Samuel Moyn, Ilana Pardes, Alvin Rosenfeld, David Ruderman, Bernd Witte Volume 11 Tsivia Frank Wygoda Edmond Jabès and the Archaeology of the Book Text, Pre-Texts, Contexts Facsimiles of Edmond Jabès' manuscripts: ©Viviane Jabès Crasson, Nimet Frascaria and the Bibliothèque nationale de France ISBN 978-3-11-062955-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-064302-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-064078-6 ISSN 2199-6962 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021940959 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: ©Françoise Alvarez-Pereyre Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Acknowledgements The writing of a book might be a lonely enterprise. Yet I have been lucky, over the years, to receive advice and support from a great number of scholars, friends, and relatives. It is a delight to acknowledge my debt to them. My PhD advisor, Cyril Aslanov, wonderfully managed the delicate task of su- pervising my doctoral research while granting me total freedom. His close read- ings of my chapters were a model of both exigence and encouragement. I am much appreciative of the time and energy he has put in guiding me through the first stages of my academic career. I am immensely grateful to Vivian Liska, who has encouraged and counseled me numerous times through the process of turning my dissertation into a book, for her precious support. Her brilliant scholarship and generosity are compelling. Gary-David Mole and Warren F. Motte provided expert judgment on my PhD dissertation and enthusiastic encouragement thereafter. My work on The Book of Questions remains indebted to their research on Edmond Jabès’ writing. During my studies, I learned to read, explore, and research literature through the teaching of Betty Rojtman, Manuela Consonni, Ilana Pardes and many beloved professors. Haviva Pedaya, an enthusiastic reader of Jabès, has been an inspired and inspiring interlocutor; Liran Razinsky, a mentor and friend. My own research of and approach to literature owe much to them. I am most grateful to my host at the Department of French at Yale University, Thomas C. Connolly, for a wonderful and fruitful year as a Fulbright scholar. My deep gratitude goes to David Stern for inviting me to the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University as a visiting scholar, and for sharing his reflections on a fascinating polemics, in which he was a protagonist, related to The Book of Ques- tions. I have presented parts of this research in seminar lectures at Bar-Ilan Uni- versity, Yale University and in Jonathan Boyarin's class at Cornell University. I am thankful for these opportunities to work through some of the ideas. Friends have been the most valuable interlocutors; discussing my work with them has enriched and deepened my reflection. Frank Alvarez-Pereyre has acted as an informal advisor through my MA and PhD. The sharpness of his responses to my work-in-progress testified, time after time, to his ability to dissect, organize, and stimulate my own thoughts. I am deeply grateful to Françoise Alvarez-P ereyre, who passed away in October 2019, for granting permission to r eproduce her paint- ing for the cover of this book; there is a sense of meaningfulness in associating her artistic project with my archaeological reading of The Book of Questions. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110643022-202 VI Acknowledgements Edmond Jabès’ daughters and granddaughter, Viviane Jabès Crasson, Nimet Frascaria Jabès, and Aurèle Crasson, respectively, responded to my project with the utmost kindness and trust. Without their generous authorization to repro- duce and reprint documents from Jabès’ archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, there is no doubt that the present book could not have been born. I am grateful to Anne Mary, archivist at the Department of Modern Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, for facilitating this archaeological adventure. The wonderful team at De Gruyter – Katja Lehming and Ulrike Krauss – made the process of publishing my first book as smooth and peaceful as it could possi- bly be. I am thankful to S.C. Kaplan for her help in proofreading this manuscript. Over the years, my research has been enabled by a number of fellowships, scholarships, research prizes, and grants, including the Fulbright Scholar Pro- gram, the Minerva Franz Rosenzweig Research Center Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Honors Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Hans Wiener Prize in the Humanities. Needless to say, their financial and academic support was crucial to this project. Last and certainly not least: I have been blessed with the love, support, comfort – and so much more – of my beloved parents, Laurence and Jean-Didier Frank. Nahliel, from you I have learned all I know about love, companionship, and friendship. You have lovingly supported, comforted, and mocked me through the many phases of this project, enabling me to continue sailing through. Without you, this book would not have been written. As for our children, beautiful and full of light – you have not made the writing of this book any faster, but you make my life bliss, day after day. Contents Acknowledgements V Abbreviations IX Introduction: Enigmas, Beneath and Beyond 1 Part I: Before the Book 1 Jews in Egypt. First Pre-texts 23 2 The Tale of Jacques. The Hidden Narrative of the Book 37 3 On Being Jewish. Writing and Rewriting 57 4 Rabbis, Poets, Commentators. The Addition of Text 65 5 From Bible to Book. Local and Metatextual Translations 73 6 Becoming Book. Archaeology of a Preface 77 Part II: The Paths Toward Metaphor Chapter 1 Jewishness Deconstructed 97 The Jew and the Metaphor 97 The Exile of the Real 106 Rewriting Wanderings 112 Questions, Metaphors, and the Archive of the Book 114 The Jew of Writing The Book of Questions 118 Chapter 2 Un-Writing the Holocaust 123 The Book of Questions and the Writing of the Shoah 123 The “Absent Center” and “Unnarrated Tale” of The Book of Questions 130 Textual Ghosts: The Shoah and the Palimpsest 137 Storytellers and Witnesses 140 Silence(s): from Theme to Textuality 143 Negotiating Writing 150 VIII Contents Part III: The Book and Its Pre-Texts. Theoretical Questions Chapter 3 Manuscripts, Intertextuality, Hermeneutics 155 Intertextuality and The Book of Questions 155 Pre-Texts and the Missing Intertext 162 Weaving the Intertextual Fabric 170 Pre-Texts and the Poetics of Commentary 174 Beyond Textual Archaeology: Reflections on The Book of Questions and Its Intertextuality 176 Chapter 4 The Book, the Palimpsest, and the Graffiti. Archaeological Reflections on the Open Text 179 The Book of Questions and the Hermeneutics of the Open Text 179 Opera aperta: Theory and Openness of Meaning 183 Openness and the Work-in-Progress 188 Openness, Hermeticity, and Hermeneutical Aporia 193 The Poetics of the Graffiti 198 Bibliography 201 Abbreviations A Aely AE Aely (English) BQ The Book of Questions BY The Book of Yukel LQ Le Livre des Questions LQP, I, II, III, IV Pre-texts of Le Livre des Questions LY Le Livre de Yukel LYP, I, II, III, IV, V Pre-texts of Le Livre de Yukel RL Le Retour au livre RB Return to the Book The seven volumes of Jabès’ Le Livre des Questions are cited from the two- volume 1988–1989 edition (coll. L’imaginaire, Gallimard). Rosmarie Waldrop’s trans- lations of Jabès’ books are cited from the two-volume 1991 edition (Wesleyan University Press). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110643022-204
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