ABSTRACT
Many texts in The Peacock Emperor Moth thereby resemble satirical cartoons in which one overarching idea must be grasped. This inherent logicality, which defines both the challenge and the interpretative limits of such writing, is in itself worth pondering. Marcel Cohen puts his finger on a hundred-odd situations in which a terrifying Necessitas is at work. In an especially effective piece, a man walking in a forest at nightfall has "too many doubts about his itinerary not to look for landmarks in his thoughts themselves". Yet images come haphazardly to his consciousness, ranging from a "stuffed elephant foot seen at an antique shop" to recollections of "his mother stroking his head". Only an overall "absence in the shape of a wreck" connects his random fleeting visions. It is this absence that is ever-present, an ontological predicament linking Cohen's prose to Jabes's stark interrogative poetry.
