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Articles by Isaac Babel
Chroniques de l'an 18 de Isaac Babel
Les Chroniques de l'an 18 rassemblent de courts textes qui tous évoquent la situation de Pétrograd pendant les quelques mois d'état d'urgence de l'an 18, alors que la guerre civile faisait rage.Babel, observateur attentif et chroniqueur minutieux, rend compte, sans transformation aucune et sans avoir recours à la fiction, d'une réalité terrifiante.
All Is Good... In the Glow of the Moonlight
We climb the very steep stairs up to the Explosives Factory playing space. A big man in a bowler hat and snakeskin shoes greets us – in Spanish. (A mystery never solved.) He’s jolly but so big he’s a little intimidating. He directs us to a table where we can have some soup and black bread. If he likes the look of you, you may get a tiny nip of vodka... La Traviata blasts out, filling the space.
"Guy de Maupassant"
So, last week, I “passed out” Isaac Babel’s story “Guy de Maupassant,” in the McDuff translation. Here it is again, just in case you missed it: Maupassantbabel 3.65MB ∙ PDF file I’d like to try an exercise we’ve done here before, that mimics an approach I use in class. The idea is simply that, in teaching, a good first move is to first see where the class is. What appealed to them, what confused them, how are they inclined to approach the piece? What impressions were they left with?
"Guy de Maupassant"
This week, I want to give all of our free subscribers a taste of what we do, on (some) Sundays, behind the paywall: work on classic short stories to try and understand how they work and, in the process, become better writers, readers, and thinkers. Here’s how the process works. I provide a pdf of the story (below). What I recommend is that we read the story once, just for fun. Then, live with it a bit, without any particular agenda. In this phase, I’m just lightly turning my mind to the story.
El Rey - Socompa
Un casamiento a todo trapo de judíos en la vieja Odessa. Pero no de cualquier clase de judíos, judíos de mala vida, muy mala. Un ambiente de grasas, tetas y sudores, lujos de contrabando y borrachera. Y un suspenso llevado con entera parsimonia. Terminada la bendición nupcial el rabí se dejó caer en un sillón; después salió de la habitación y observó las mesas a todo lo largo del patio. Eran tantas, que la cola asomaba por el portón a la calle Gospitálnaya.
Isaac Babel, autor en Socompa
Los cuentos de Socompa Un casamiento a todo trapo de judíos en la vieja Odessa. Pero no de cualquier clase de judíos, judíos de mala vida, muy mala. Un ambiente de grasas, tetas y sudores, lujos de contrabando y borrachera. Y un suspenso llevado con total parsimonia.
On the Richness of Isaac Babel’s Odessa
This summer Pushkin Press has brought an essential selection from my two previous volumes of Isaac Babel’s stories. Of Sunshine and Bedbugs weaves together three strands that, at first blush, make for a motley braid.
The King
Translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk The wedding ceremony was over and the rabbi lowered himself into an armchair, then he stepped outside and saw the tables set up all along the courtyard. There were so many of them that they stuck their tail right through the gate onto Gospitalnaya Street. The velvet-draped tables wound through the yard like snakes with patches of every color on their bellies, and they sang in rich voices, these patches of orange and red velvet.
371362: Translation I
Student Conduct Students are subject to disciplinary action for several types of misconduct or attempted misconduct, including but not limited to dishonesty, such as cheating, multiple submission, plagiarism, or knowingly furnishing false information to the University; or theft or misuse of the intellectual property of others or violation of others' copyrights.
THE ESSENTIAL FICTIONS
Does the world need another translation of Isaac Babel? The Russian short story writer, executed in 1940 during one of Stalin’s purges, is correctly regarded as one of the masters of the form, but English versions of his writing are not hard to find.
Jewish Fiction .net :: Article Browser
Odessa Stories (A sketch and two stories from the book) By Isaac Babel Translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk Odessa Odessa is a nasty place. Everybody knows that. Instead of saying “a big difference” Odessans say “two big differences”—and things like “dis-a-way, dat-a-way”. But it seems to me this significant and most charming of cities in the Russian Empire has a lot going for it. Just think of it—here’s a town where the living is light and easy.
Book review of Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories
The gangster Benya the King wanted to shake down a stubborn burgher named Eichbaum, whose wealth extended to a full sixty milk cows. The man wouldn’t pay up. So Benya invaded: Into the midst of this chaos ran the beautiful daughter of the house, in her nightshirt.
Saunders on Babel, Prose Poet of the Grotesque
Excerpt: 'The Story of My Dovecote' As a child I wanted a dovecote very badly. In all my life I have never desired anything more intensely. I was nine years old when my father promised to give me the money to buy some planks and three pairs of doves. The year was 1904. I was getting ready for the examinations for the preparatory class of the Nikolayev Lycée. My family lived in Nikolayev, in the province of Kherson. This province no longer exists; our town was absorbed into the district of Odessa.
The Best Books on Revolutionary Russia
In this discussion about Revolutionary Russia, your first book choice is A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes. Can you tell me about this one? Well, I’ve chosen this because, from what I remember, it’s the book I most admired while I was writing about Russia because it gives the tremendous overall sweep of the entire catastrophe up to the end of the civil war in 1922 and the famine.
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