Edmond Jabès: Answer

You ask me many questions. As I cannot answer them all directly

God is born of his immortal desire to die. You ask me many questions. As I cannot answer them all directly I will approach at least some in a roundabout way. This questioning will take me over certain obscure routes which I had followed alone and which abandoned me at dawn at the parting of my ways. As if departure came after the journey. As if we forever prepared to leave, knowing we could only reach the torturous point of departure. Any advance is terror and trial of the first step. So with each letter in the word, with each word in the sentence, the Book begins. Intimate ways, therefore, which I could not exhaust except inside myself. Ways leading me to the brink of being where all presence is surrendered to thirst: a quest of poverty, I would say, in a labyrinth like the glass ones at fairs, which draw crowds who gather around you, watching you, pointing their fingers at you. A labyrinth where one is seen but does not see. After much groping, the exit, to be sure, will be found. But it has given us only the measure of the labyrinth. How many are there that we never leave? I find it very difficult ...

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