The Complete Works of Isaac Babel - Hardcover

Babel, Isaac; Babel, Nathalie; Constantine, Peter; Ozick, Cynthia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048462 ISBN 13: 9780393048469

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

Synopsis

A literary event of extraordinary dimensions―the first single-volume edition of all of Isaac Babel's work.

Considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century―and the most revered short-story writer since Chekhov―Isaac Babel (1894-1940) left an extraordinary literary legacy that continues to grow, remarkably, more than sixty years after his death in Lubyanka Prison at the hands of Stalin's secret police. Despite Babel's celebrated stature―which had already been achieved during his lifetime―the whole of his work, owing to his arrest and the state of affairs in the Soviet Union, was never assembled in one place.

This magnificent edition of Babel's collected work fulfills a lifelong ambition of Babel's daughter, Nathalie, who has authorized and edited the entire collection, and has collaborated with award-winning translator Peter Constantine in readying the work for publication. Every story or selection included in this volume (147 in total) has been newly edited and translated, beginning with Babel's first published story, "Old Shloyme," originally published in 1913, and concluding with two scenes from a screenplay that Babel did not live to see made into a film. Included in The Complete Works are stories that will be familiar to Babel enthusiasts, like the "Red Cavalry" cycle and his diaries, as well as untranslated stories and other works that appear in English for the first time.

To read Babel is to relive the wild and often terrifying swings of twentieth-century Russian history. No writer has conveyed with such emotion and convulsive energy the tragic story of a modern nation that remained a prisoner of its brutal and repressive past. Combining the compassion of Dostoevsky with the mordant wit of Chekhov, Babel injected a daring social criticism and a palpable sexual tension into the literary climate of post-tsarist Russia. In the process, he created a style so vivid, so lacerating, and so utterly hypnotic that his stories have come to define the sanguinary landscape of the Soviet Union in the years between the two world wars.

As these stories illustrate, and as Cynthia Ozick insightfully observes in her passionate introduction, Babel was a man of acute contradictions. Born in the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa during the long reign of Alexander II, Babel was quite competent in both Hebrew and Yiddish but, influenced by both Flaubert and Maupassant, wrote his first stories in fluent French. His often comic portrayal of characters―such as the ruthless Jewish mobsters depicted in his Benya Krik stories―resulted from observing them firsthand as a boy in the Moldavanka neighborhood of Odessa. As Ozick notes, the "breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. . . . He was at once a poet of the city ('the glass sun of Petersburg') and a lyricist of the countryside ('the walls of sunset collapsing into the sky')."

Arranged sequentially in fourteen sections, The Complete Works traces the entire arc of Babel's literary career, beginning with early stories, which are followed by The Odessa Stories and The Red Cavalry Stories. Also included are his Reports from St. Petersburg (1918), the remarkable 1920 Diary, and reports from Soviet Georgia and France, where his wife, Evgenia, and his daughter, Nathalie, lived. Many of his later stories (1925-38) reflect a compelling literary quality and abrupt change in style that have challenged translators for years. An accomplished playwright and screenwriter, Babel, at the height of his popularity, began writing for the Soviet cinema as early as the 1920s, and many of these works have never been translated before. This edition also includes a foreword and a biographical afterword by Nathalie Babel, a translator's preface and annotations throughout by Peter Constantine, and a chronology by Gregory Freidin, regarded as one of the foremost Babel scholars in the world.

Unprecedented for both its literary and its scholarly achievement, The Complete Works of Isaac Babel will stand as Babel's final, most enduring legacy.

About this title

About the Authors

Isaac Babel was a journalist, playwright, and short story writer, whose works include the Russian masterpieces Red Cavalry and The Odessa Tales. He was arrested and executed in a Soviet prison in 1940.

Nathalie Babel, his daughter, edited two other books of Babel's writing and is the author of Hugo and Dostoevsky.

Peter Constantine is the director of the Program in Literary Translation at the University of Connecticut, the publisher of World Poetry Books, and editor-in-chief of the magazine New Poetry in Translation. A prolific translator from several modern and classical languages, Constantine was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of The Bird Is a Raven by Benjamin Lebert, and the Koret Jewish Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation for The Complete Works of Isaac Babel.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Born in Odessa, Russia, in 1894, Babel had a great appetite for life and a profound aptitude for expression. He wrote vivid, ironic stories about his hometown's rascally Jewish underworld; then, after courageously joining the notorious Red Calvary on the Polish front, he wrote scorchingly candid stories about the atrocities committed by this outlaw force and the horrific suffering of his fellow Jews. Astonishing in their bloody yet lyrical intensity, these tales of man's madness and brutality made Babel famous and cost him his life when Stalin ordered his execution in 1940. A crucial voice of the Soviet debacle and the war against the Jews, and an enigmatic, compelling man, Babel will finally reach the international readership he deserves thanks to this revelatory and comprehensive collection. Incisively introduced by Cynthia Ozick, thoughtfully edited by Babel's daughter, Nathalie, and newly translated by Peter Constantine, this volume chronicles Babel's life and presents his complete stories, including his final works, iridescent and wrenching fiction rooted in his childhood; the unforgettable diary of his time with the Cossacks; plays; screenplays; and other writings. Here is Babel whole, a compassionate and uncompromising artist who grappled with good and evil, and from terror distilled beauty. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

One of the great Russian writers of the 20th century, Babel (1894-1941) was arrested in 1939 and later executed by Stalin's regime. In 1954, his work was largely republished, but much of his correspondence, drafts, and manuscripts was confiscated when he was arrested and has never resurfaced. Now, for the first time, all of Babel's surviving work has been assembled into one volume. Readers new to Babel will discover his "Red Cavalry" stories, plays, diaries, screenplays, and short stories. In addition to an introduction by Cynthia Ozick, the book is graced with an excellent preface and afterword by Babel's daughter, who also edited the volume. She provides recently uncovered information about her father's arrest and execution as well as personal remembrances. With the publication of this volume of Babel's work, it is hoped that a full-scale biography will follow. Essential for literature collections.
- Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393048462
• ISBN 13: 9780393048469
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1076