- Person
- Isaac Babel
- Lived
- 1894–1940
- Field
- Short fiction
- From
- Russian (Soviet)
The story
For decades after Isaac Babel's execution in 1940, readers had only fragments of his work. In the Soviet Union his name was erased from literary dictionaries and school syllabuses, and many of his manuscripts were seized by the secret police and never returned. Even after he was cleared in 1954, Soviet editions were selective and some passages remained censored until the late 1980s.
Much of the work of recovery fell to his daughter Nathalie, born in 1929 to his wife Yevgenia, who had emigrated to France. Nathalie was too young to have many memories of her father, but she became one of the world's foremost scholars of his life and work. In the 1960s she edited and published two English collections, The Lonely Years: 1925–1939 (1964), with unpublished stories and private letters, and You Must Know Everything (1969), which added speeches and reminiscences by Ilya Ehrenburg, Konstantin Paustovsky and others.
In 2002 W. W. Norton published The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, which Nathalie edited and introduced with a foreword. It was translated by Peter Constantine, who called Babel's execution one of the great tragedies of twentieth-century literature, and introduced by the novelist Cynthia Ozick. Ozick wrote of Babel's grounding in Yiddish, Hebrew and traditional Jewish texts, of his lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert, and of his ability to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children and artists. For the first time English readers had his writings gathered in a single volume.
The same year, the first collection of Babel's complete works appeared in Russia, followed by another in 2006, marking the end of the long effort to restore him to his own language. Nathalie Babel Brown died in Washington in 2005.
Interest has only grown since. New translations include Boris Dralyuk's Odessa Stories (2016) and Of Sunshine and Bedbugs (2022), and Val Vinokur's The Essential Fictions (2017), while writers and playwrights continue to retell Babel's life, including Rajiv Joseph's Obie Award-winning play Describe the Night.
Why it matters
The Complete Works made Babel's whole achievement available to English readers, securing his place in world literature.
About Isaac Babel
Odessa-born master of the short story whose Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories transformed Russian prose, before Stalin’s secret police arrested and shot him in 1940.
More about Isaac Babel
- Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories created the gangster Benya KrikIsaac Babel's Odessa Stories, published in 1921–1924 and collected in 1931, brought Odessa's Jewish Moldavanka district to life through the gangster Benya Krik.
- Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry told the truth about warIsaac Babel's Red Cavalry stories, drawn from the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, showed readers the brutal realities of war, far from the propaganda of the time.
- Isaac Babel's play Sunset reached the Moscow Art TheatreIsaac Babel's play Sunset, set in Odessa's Jewish Moldavanka, premiered in Baku in 1927 and was staged at the Moscow Art Theatre; Boris Pasternak called it remarkable.
- Isaac Babel's 1920 Diary documented the horrors of warIsaac Babel's 1920 Diary, kept during the Polish-Soviet War, recorded the horrors he witnessed; it was finally published in 1990.
- Isaac Babel brought Sholem Aleichem to Russian filmIsaac Babel translated Sholem Aleichem from Yiddish into Russian and wrote for early Soviet Yiddish-themed films, including Jewish Luck (1925) and Wandering Stars.
Sources
- Isaac Babel Wikipedia
- Isaac Babel Jewish Virtual Library
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