From Husserl to Artaud 1963–1964 135
no resemblance to a traditional commentary. Quoting Jabès at
length, slipping in between his sentences so as to draw them out,
the text rests on a form of empathy. This was the fi rst time that
Derrida had tackled the theme of Judaism; the closeness of Jabès’s
preoccupations to his own seemed evident:
For Jabès, who acknowledges a very late discovery of a certain
way of being part of Judaism, the Jew is but the suff ering alle-
gory: ‘You are all Jews, even the anti-Semites, for you have all
been designated for martyrdom’ (Livre des questions, p. 180). He
must justify himself to his blood brothers and to rabbis who
are no longer imaginary. They will all reproach him for this
universalism, this essentialism, this skeletal allegorism, this
neutralization of the event in the realms of the symbolic and
the imaginary.‘Addressing themselves to me, my blood
brothers said:
“You are not Jewish. You do not come to the
Synagogue.. .” ’^25But Derrida was equally fascinated by the link, constantly sug-
gested by Jabès, between writing and Judaism: the ‘diffi culty of
being a Jew, which coincides with the diffi culty of writing; for
Judaism and writing are but the same waiting, the same hope, the
same depletion’.^26
The text would not be published until February 1964. But Jabès
got wind of it through friends and wrote to Derrida for the fi rst
time on 4 October 1963. Straight after reading the manuscript, he
communicated his enthusiasm to Derrida: ‘It’s excellent stuff , and
I must tell you as much straightaway. [.. .] The paths you open up
are those onto which I ventured without knowing in advance where
they would leave me. Reading you, I fi nd them traced out so clearly
that I have the feeling I have always known them.’^27 A few months
later, he again thanked Derrida for his lucid study: ‘I am indebted to
you for this great joy. From now on, those who have read you will
be able to read me in depth.’^28 This was the start of a close friendship
with Jabès and his wife Arlette; the couple lived in the rue de l’Épée-
de-Bois, near Normale Sup, and this made it easy for them to meet.
As well as this close relationship with Jabès, Derrida formed
another and even more essential friendship with Gabriel Bounoure,
a fi gure who was of some importance in those days, though he is
now pretty much forgotten. Born in 1886, and therefore already
very old by the time Derrida came into contact with him, Bounoure
had published only a single book, Hopscotch on the Square, in the
series ‘Cheminement’ edited by Cioran. But his regular columns in