The Book of Questions, of which volumes IV, V, VI are together published here, is a meditative narrative of Jewish Experience, and, more generally, man's relation to the world. In these volumes the word is personified in the woman Yael, silence in her still-born child Elya. Even though words imply ambiguity and lies, they are the home of the exile. A book becomes the Book, fragments of the law that are in some way unified, where past and present, the visionary, and the common place, encounter each other. For Jabes every word is a question in the book of being. Man defines himself in the world against all that threatens his existence- death, the infinite, silence, that is, God, his primal opponent. How can one speak what cannot be spoken?
- ISBN10 081956107X
- ISBN13 9780819561077
- Publish Date October 1984 (first published 1 July 1976)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 May 1994
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Wesleyan
- Format Paperback
- Pages 112
- Language English