WIDE, the margin between carte blanche and the white page. Nevertheless it is not in the margin that you can find me, but in the yet whiter one that separates the word-strewn sheet from the transparent, the written page from the one to be written in the infinite space where the eye turns back to the eye, and the hand to the pen, where all we write is erased, even as you write it. For the book imperceptibly takes shape within the book we will never finish. There is my desert.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities and existential nature of writing, creativity, and the never-ending process of creation.
Edmond Jabes explores the intricate relationship between creation and oblivion in writing. He illustrates how the spaces within and around written words symbolize the ongoing journey of expression that is never truly complete. The 'white page' signifies infinite potential and the struggle of bringing thoughts to life, while recognizing that every written word is both a creation and a gesture towards what remains unwritten. This dual existence in writing echoes the transient nature of creativity, where every sentence contributes to an everlasting narrative that can never be fully realized.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a writer's workshop to inspire creative freedom.
THE WRITER can get free of his writing only by using it, that is, by reading oneself. As if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as a launching pad for reading the writing to come. Moreover, what he has written is read in the process, hence constantly modified by his reading. The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.
It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to loses it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.
How characteristic of your perverse heart that longs only for what happens to be out of reach.
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.
It was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the Forest was full of gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, 'Don't listen to Rabbit, listen to me.' So he got in a comfortable position for not listening to Rabbit.
The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'
Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.
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