Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End

Published for the first time in English, this is the last substantial work by the late French author Edmund Jabès, presented here with the subtle digital images of Ed Epping. In a series of short aphorisms, Jabès continues his lifelong interrogation of "The Book" both within the Jewish cultural tradition and twentieth-century modernism. Jabès' life work is driven in part by Mallarmé's concept of the limit, of the space beyond limits, and the space defined by such a limit. His work is pervaded by a sense of melancholy and loss, and never so much as in Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End, as its title would suggest. Even in his last work, Jabès continues to struggle admirably with questions of being and not-being, of life and art, displaying the intelligence and passion of a great writer.