From the Desert to the Book: Dialogues with Marcel Cohen

An Egyptian Jew born in 1912, Jabes, who was educated at the Sorbonne and has always written in French, settled in Paris in 1957. Although he has been awarded prizes for his poetry and for his two major works, The Book of Questions (seven volumes) and The Book of Resemblances , his writing has been widely criticized as difficult and obscure. These dialogues, too, conducted with novelist-poet-journalist Cohen will appeal to a limited audience. Discussed are Jabes's friendships and influences, the mystery of Creation, the use of language (``to write accurately''), his fascination with words and with spelling, the difference between being a Jewish writer (which he considers himself not to be) and a Jew who is a writer. Photos. (Aug.)