Table Of ContentTsivia 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
