Northwestern University Press, 2017 Paper: 978-0-8101-3595-6 Library of Congress Classification PG3476.B2A2 2017 Dewey Decimal Classification 891.7342
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The Essential Fictions offers contemporary readers seventy-two short stories by one of twentieth-century Russia’s premier storytellers, Isaac Babel. This unique volume, which includes Babel’s famous Red Cavalry series and his Odessa Stories, is translated, edited, introduced, and annotated by Val Vinokur, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in Translation, and features illustrations by Yefim Ladyzhensky, a painter known for his depictions of everyday life under Soviet rule in Babel’s native Odessa.
Babel was born in 1894 into multicultural Odessa’s thriving Jewish community. Working as a journalist, he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War, and accompanied the Cossack horsemen of the Red Cavalry during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War, distilling these experiences into his fiction. Vinokur highlights Babel’s “horrified hopefulness” and “doleful and bespectacled Jewish comedy” in the face of the bloody conflicts that plagued his generation.
On the centenary of the revolution that toppled the Romanov tsars, Babel’s fictions continue to absorb and fascinate contemporary readers interested in eastern European and Jewish literature as well as the history and politics of the twentieth century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ISAAC BABEL (1894–1940) is best known for his short fiction, especially his tales about the Jewish gangsters of Odessa and the Cossacks of the Red Cavalry. A contemporary, Viktor Shklovsky, once described Babel as writing “in the same tone about the stars and gonorrhea.” Babel was executed on Stalin’s orders in 1940 in the wake of the Great Purge. YEFIM LADYZHENSKY (1911–1982) began his career as a set designer, but devoted his life to painting after encountering Babel’s fiction, which he described as having played for him “the same role that the Bible and myths did for a multitude of artists—a reason and a stimulus for expressing my feelings and experiences.” When he emigrated from Odessa to Jerusalem in 1979, the Soviet government impounded his Babel-inspired paintings. To make up for their loss, he quickly completed the eighteen richly detailed drawings for Red Cavalry that are included in this volume. VAL VINOKUR is an associate professor of literary studies, chair of liberal arts, and director of Jewish culture at The New School, where he also leads workshops in literary translation. He is the author of The Trace of Judaism: Dostoevsky, Babel, Mandelstam, Levinas (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and has translated several novels from the French with Rose-Myriam Réjouis.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Translators: Forward! (and Backwards)
OPENINGS Odessa Shabbos Nahamu Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofyevna Mama, Rimma, and Alla Through a Crack The Sin of Jesus Line and Color Bagrat-Ogly and the Eyes of His Bull My First Advance Guy de Maupassant The Road
THE STORY OF MY DOVECOT (CHILDHOOD CYCLE) Childhood. At Grandmothers The Story of My Dovecot First Love Awakening In the Basement Di Grasso
ODESSA STORIES The King How It Was Done in Odessa The Father Justice in Brackets Lyubka the Cossack Sunset Froim the Rook The End of the Poorhouse You Missed the Boat, Captain! Karl-Yankel
RED CAVALRY The Crossing of the Zbruch The Church at Novograd A Letter Chief of theRemount Service Pan Apolek The Sun of Italy Gedali My First Goose The Rebbe The Road to Brody A Teaching on the Tachanka Dolgushov’s Death Brigcom Two Sashka Christ The Life Story of Pavlichenko, Matvei Rodionych The Cemetery in Kozin Prishchepa The Story of a Horse Konkin Berestechko Salt Evening Afonka Bida At Saint Valentine’s Squadron Commander Trunov The Ivans The Story of a Horse, Continued The Widow Zamoste Treason Chesniki After the Battle The Song The Rebbe’s Son RED CAVALRY: ADDITIONS Argamak The Kiss
CLOSINGS Our Batko Makhno The End of St. Hypatius Dante Street The Trial (from a notebook) The Ivan & Marya Crude Sulak Gapa Guzhva: The First Chapter from the “Velikaya Krinitsa” Book Kolyvushka (from the “Velikaya Staritsa”book)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Northwestern University Press, 2017 Paper: 978-0-8101-3595-6
The Essential Fictions offers contemporary readers seventy-two short stories by one of twentieth-century Russia’s premier storytellers, Isaac Babel. This unique volume, which includes Babel’s famous Red Cavalry series and his Odessa Stories, is translated, edited, introduced, and annotated by Val Vinokur, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in Translation, and features illustrations by Yefim Ladyzhensky, a painter known for his depictions of everyday life under Soviet rule in Babel’s native Odessa.
Babel was born in 1894 into multicultural Odessa’s thriving Jewish community. Working as a journalist, he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War, and accompanied the Cossack horsemen of the Red Cavalry during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War, distilling these experiences into his fiction. Vinokur highlights Babel’s “horrified hopefulness” and “doleful and bespectacled Jewish comedy” in the face of the bloody conflicts that plagued his generation.
On the centenary of the revolution that toppled the Romanov tsars, Babel’s fictions continue to absorb and fascinate contemporary readers interested in eastern European and Jewish literature as well as the history and politics of the twentieth century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ISAAC BABEL (1894–1940) is best known for his short fiction, especially his tales about the Jewish gangsters of Odessa and the Cossacks of the Red Cavalry. A contemporary, Viktor Shklovsky, once described Babel as writing “in the same tone about the stars and gonorrhea.” Babel was executed on Stalin’s orders in 1940 in the wake of the Great Purge. YEFIM LADYZHENSKY (1911–1982) began his career as a set designer, but devoted his life to painting after encountering Babel’s fiction, which he described as having played for him “the same role that the Bible and myths did for a multitude of artists—a reason and a stimulus for expressing my feelings and experiences.” When he emigrated from Odessa to Jerusalem in 1979, the Soviet government impounded his Babel-inspired paintings. To make up for their loss, he quickly completed the eighteen richly detailed drawings for Red Cavalry that are included in this volume. VAL VINOKUR is an associate professor of literary studies, chair of liberal arts, and director of Jewish culture at The New School, where he also leads workshops in literary translation. He is the author of The Trace of Judaism: Dostoevsky, Babel, Mandelstam, Levinas (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and has translated several novels from the French with Rose-Myriam Réjouis.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Translators: Forward! (and Backwards)
OPENINGS Odessa Shabbos Nahamu Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofyevna Mama, Rimma, and Alla Through a Crack The Sin of Jesus Line and Color Bagrat-Ogly and the Eyes of His Bull My First Advance Guy de Maupassant The Road
THE STORY OF MY DOVECOT (CHILDHOOD CYCLE) Childhood. At Grandmothers The Story of My Dovecot First Love Awakening In the Basement Di Grasso
ODESSA STORIES The King How It Was Done in Odessa The Father Justice in Brackets Lyubka the Cossack Sunset Froim the Rook The End of the Poorhouse You Missed the Boat, Captain! Karl-Yankel
RED CAVALRY The Crossing of the Zbruch The Church at Novograd A Letter Chief of theRemount Service Pan Apolek The Sun of Italy Gedali My First Goose The Rebbe The Road to Brody A Teaching on the Tachanka Dolgushov’s Death Brigcom Two Sashka Christ The Life Story of Pavlichenko, Matvei Rodionych The Cemetery in Kozin Prishchepa The Story of a Horse Konkin Berestechko Salt Evening Afonka Bida At Saint Valentine’s Squadron Commander Trunov The Ivans The Story of a Horse, Continued The Widow Zamoste Treason Chesniki After the Battle The Song The Rebbe’s Son RED CAVALRY: ADDITIONS Argamak The Kiss
CLOSINGS Our Batko Makhno The End of St. Hypatius Dante Street The Trial (from a notebook) The Ivan & Marya Crude Sulak Gapa Guzhva: The First Chapter from the “Velikaya Krinitsa” Book Kolyvushka (from the “Velikaya Staritsa”book)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE