Edmond Jabès

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Edmond Jabès (born April 16, 1912 in Cairo , † January 2, 1991 in Paris ) was a French writer and poet .

Edmond Jabès

Life

Jabès was born in 1912 into wealthy, francophone and Jewish parents in Cairo. In the thirties he studied in Paris and then returned to his homeland. Although neither he nor his parents were practicing Jews, Jabès had to emigrate to France in 1956, when the living conditions for Jews in Egypt became worse and worse during the Suez Crisis . In 1967 he took French citizenship.

Jabès published several volumes of poetry in the 1940s and 1950s. During this time, his style was very much influenced by his friend and role model Max Jacob , with whom he exchanged lively letters between 1935 and 1940. While still in Egypt, he also wrote plays. However, there was no major success, in France it was hardly noticed at all.

The loss of his home meant a profound change in his work. He began to look for himself and his situation in the old Jewish scriptures and to find them again. Subsequently he studied the Talmud , the Kabbalah and Torah commentaries .

Jabès initially remained unknown in the Parisian literary scene, although his previously published volumes of poetry were collected under the title “Je bâtis ma demeure” (Paris 1959). It was not until his book “Le livre des questions” (1963), which he wrote mostly in the Métro on the way to and from work and which is the fruit of his preoccupation with religious scriptures, that he became known.

The “Book of Questions”, which grew into a heptalogy , was a novelty in the way of writing. It is not a coherent text, there is no storyline and no storyline. Jabès himself called this form of literature "récit éclaté", a story made up of fragments.

The basic structure is the story of a Jewish couple, Yukel and Sarah, who are deported during the Holocaust . However, the content is not reproduced as a narrative, but takes the form of fragments from Yukel's and Sarah's diaries, discussions between rabbis, dead and living, poem-like passages, etc., so that an increasingly complex collage of fragments is formed over time. Jabès added another dimension to this complexity by again creating books in his book.

While Jabès was close to members of the Surrealists (who scorned his former friend Jacob for the importance he attached to religion) during his time in Paris , he refused to join this or any other group. In his view, the dangers a writer accepts should be borne by him alone, otherwise an important aspect of writing - the risk - will be lost.

In 1987 the Italian composer Luigi Nono dedicated the composition “Découvrir la subversion” to Jabès. "Nono did not put the work into writing, so that no further performances are possible" ( Jürg Stenzl ). The publication “Migranten” documents the relationship between Nono, Jabès and the philosopher Massimo Cacciari .

Jabès received the Prix ​​des Critiques in 1970 or 1972 for his work Elya from 1969 and was awarded the Grand prix national de la poésie in 1987 .

Writings in German

literature

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Matz: Approaches to Edmond Jabes, one of the most important poets of the French language. With a strange look . In: The time . No. 49/1994 ( online ).
  2. ^ Translator Nils Röller, Merve, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-88396-126-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Jabès, Edmond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jabes, Edmond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Cairo
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1991
Place of death Paris