Babel, Isaac Emmanuelovich

Babel, Isaac Emmanuelovich ē´säk əmäno͞oā´ləvĭch bä´bəl [key], 1894–1940, Russian writer, b. Odessa. Babel was quick to embrace the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, but in the end it was the regime born of that revolution that destroyed him. He won fame withOdessa Tales(1921–23), written in Russian-Jewish dialect, andRed Cavalry(1926, tr. 1929), dramatic stories based on his life in the army (he had concealed his Jewish identity) and employing the racy slang of the Kuban Cossacks with whom he rode. The original journal from which this book was written,1920 Journal,was published in Russia as the Soviet Union disintegrated and translated into English in 1995. A brilliant litarary stylist, he wrote a uniquely terse and forceful prose, combining astringent Jewish irony with Russian caricature, lyricism with brutality, and comedy with bleakly grave subject matter. He also wrote the novelBenia Krik(1927) about an Odessan Jewish gangster, and turned to drama withSunset(1928) andMaria(1935). Babel was criticized by the Communist party during the 1930s, arrested in 1939, and executed in 1940 after a 20-minute trial. After Stalin's death, some of his works were republished in censored form in the Soviet Union. Translations of his best stories appear inCollected Stories(1955) andYou Must Know Everything(1969). TheComplete Works of Isaac Babel,edited by his daughter Nathalie, was published in English translation in 2001.

See memoir by his companion, Antonina Pirozhkova (tr. 1996); biography by J. Charyn (2005); studies by P. Carden (1972), R. W. Hallett (1972), J. E. Falen (1974), D. Mendelson (1982), M. Ehre (1986), and R. Mann (1994).

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