This collection of short stories is split into three. The first includes Babel’s early stories which appear autobiographical (but the excellent introduction by the translator, David Mcduff, assures us are not), telling tales of life in the Jewish quarter of Odessa in his youth. The second series deals, famously, with the Bolshevik war against the counter-revolutionary forces on its Western front. The third series returns to Odessa, telling tales of Jewish gangsters and other colourful characters. The first and last sections are clearly complementary and tie in to a Yiddish tradition that links to Bashevis Singer, among others, writers whose identity is constructed in large part by their Jewish roots. In the early stories, a progrom is described with a brutal intensity from a child’s perspective which we take to be the author’s, although as Mcduff notes, it is in reality a reflection of the stories the Babel would have grown up with. The capacity of the writer to be on a bleeding front line between fiction and reality, war and peace, is evident again in the Red Cavalry series. The authenticity of the vision feels undeniable, the cruelty of this conflict where there are no obvious good guys. The struggle is desperate and existential, a supposedly philosophical conflict which in actuality boils down to men’s capacity for violence. Much of the conflict Babel describes takes place in what is modern day Ukraine and the echoes with today’s war are everywhere. This has been a land that has been fought over, on the hinge of East and West, for centuries, and that battle continues to be waged today, suggesting a more fundamental schism than whatever might be the ostensible reasons for war. Babel’s Jewish perspective, which places him both on the outside and the inside, allows him to view the war more dispassionately, and more honestly, in all its savagery, no matter the cause.
No comments:
Post a Comment