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Isaak emmanuilovich babel biography by date. "Odessa Tales" by Babel

Isaak emmanuilovich babel biography by date. "Odessa Tales" by Babel

05.04.2019

Together with his parents he returned to Odessa.

At the insistence of his father, he studied the Hebrew language and Jewish holy books, took violin lessons from famous musician Peter Stolyarsky, participated in amateur theatrical performances.

To the same period, researchers of the writer's work attribute the appearance of the first non-preserved student stories of Babel, which he wrote on French.

In 1911 he graduated from the Odessa Commercial School.

In 1915, in St. Petersburg, he immediately entered the fourth year Faculty of Law Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute, where he did not finish his studies.

In 1916 he graduated with honors from the economic department of the Kyiv Commercial Institute.

The literary debut of the writer took place in February 1913 in the Kiev magazine "Lights", where the story "Old Shloyme" was published.

In 1916, Babel's stories in Russian "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna" and "Mother, Rimma and Alla" were published in Maxim Gorky's journal "Chronicle". Notes "My sheets" appeared in the Petrograd Journal of Journals.

In 1954, Isaac Babel was posthumously rehabilitated.

With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, he was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, a collection of carefully censored works of the writer was published. From 1967 until the mid-1980s, Babel's works were not reprinted.

The work of Isaac Babel had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, Yuri Olesha, Eduard Bagritsky, Valentin Kataev, Konstantin Paustovsky, Mikhail Svetlov), his books have been translated into many foreign languages.

On September 4, 2011, a monument to the writer was unveiled at the corner of Richelieu and Zhukovsky streets in Odessa.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

original surname Bobel; birth name - Isaak Manyevich Bobel

Russian Soviet writer, translator, screenwriter and playwright, journalist, war correspondent

Isaac Babel

short biography

Babel's biography has a number of gaps and inaccuracies due to the fact that the corresponding notes left by the writer himself are largely embellished, altered, or even "pure fiction" in accordance with the artistic intent or the political dictates of the time.

Date of Birth

There is a discrepancy in various sources about the exact date of birth of the future writer. In Brief literary encyclopedia Babel's date of birth is July 1 according to the old style, and July 13 according to the new one. However, in the Metric Book of the office of the Odessa city rabbi, the date of birth according to the old style is June 30. The same birthday, June 30, Babel indicated in his own autobiography of 1915, preserved in the documents of the Kyiv Commercial Institute. “A Brief Chronicle of the Life and Work of Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel”, compiled by Usher Moiseevich Spektor (see: Babel I. Awakening. Tbilisi, 1989. P. 491), contains an error in translating the old style into the new one: here June 30, Art. Art. corresponds to July 13 A.D. Art., and should be July 12. It must be assumed that such a mistake has become widespread in the reference literature.

Childhood

Born in Odessa on Moldavanka, the third child in the family of a merchant Many Itskovich Bobel ( Emmanuil (Manus, Manet) Isaakovich Babel, 1864-1924), originally from Skvira, Kyiv province, and Feiga ( Fani) Aronovna Bobel (nee Schwekhvel). The family lived in a house on the corner of Dalnitskaya and Balkovskaya streets. In the reference book "All Russia" for 1911, Emmanuil Isaakovich Babel is listed as the owner of an agricultural equipment store located at No. 17 on Richelievskaya Street.

Not late autumn In 1895, the family moved to Nikolaev, Kherson province, where I. E. Babel lived until the age of 11. In November 1903, he entered the first set of the preparatory class of the Nikolaev Commercial School named after S. Yu. Witte, which opened on December 9 of the same year, but after passing three oral exams (on the Law of God, the Russian language and arithmetic) for five, he was not accepted “for lack of vacancies. After a petition filed by his father on April 20, 1904, retest, Isaac Babel re-passed the exams in August and, according to the test results, was enrolled in the first class, and on May 3, 1905 he was transferred to the second. According to the autobiography of I. E. Babel, in addition to traditional disciplines, he privately studied the Hebrew language, the Bible and the Talmud.

Youth and early work

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not survived.

In 1911, having received a certificate of graduation from the Odessa Commercial School, he became a student at the Kyiv Commercial Institute, where he studied at the economic department under his original name. Bobel; received his diploma in 1917. During the period of study, he first published his work - the story "Old Shloyme" - in the Kiev weekly illustrated magazine "Lights" (1913, signed "I. Babel"). In Kyiv, student Babel met Evgenia Borisovna Gronfain, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, who in 1919 married him legally.

In 1916, he went to Petrograd, without having, according to his own recollections, the right to do so, since it was forbidden for Jews to settle in the capitals (researchers discovered a document issued by the Petrograd police, which allowed Babel to live in the city only while studying at a higher educational institution). He managed to enroll immediately in the fourth year of the Faculty of Law of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute.

In the same year, Babel met M. Gorky, who published the stories "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna" and "Mother, Rimma and Alla" in the Chronicle magazine. They attracted attention, and Babel was going to be tried for pornography (1001st article), as well as for two more articles - "blasphemy and an attempt to overthrow the existing system", which was prevented by the events of 1917. On the advice of M. Gorky, Babel "went into the people" and changed several professions. The publication in the Chronicle was followed by publications in the Journal of Journals (1916) and Novaya Zhizn (1918).

In the fall of 1917, Babel, having served for several months as a private on the Romanian front, deserted and made his way to Petrograd, where at the beginning of 1918 he went to work as an interpreter in the foreign department of the Cheka, and then in the People's Commissariat for Education and food expeditions. Published in the newspaper New life". In the spring of 1920, on the recommendation of Mikhail Koltsov, under the name Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov was sent to the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Budyonny as a war correspondent for Yug-ROST, was a fighter and political worker there. In the ranks of the 1st Cavalry, he became a member of the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. The writer kept notes (“Cavalry Diary”, 1920), which served as the basis for the future collection of short stories Cavalry. Published in the newspaper of the Political Department of the 1st Cavalry "Red Cavalryman".

Later he worked in the Odessa provincial committee, was the editor-in-chief of the 7th Soviet printing house (Pushkinskaya street, 18), a reporter in Tiflis and Odessa, in the State Publishing House of Ukraine. According to the myth voiced by him in his autobiography, he did not write during these years, although it was then that he began to create the cycle of Odessa Tales. In 1922, Babel contributed to the Tiflis newspaper Zarya Vostoka and, as a correspondent, made trips to Adzharia and Abkhazia.

Period of literary activity

The cycle "On the Field of Honor" was published in the January issue of the Odessa magazine "Lava" for 1920. In June 1921, Babel's story "The King" was first published in the popular Odessa newspaper "Sailor", which became evidence of creative maturity writer. In 1923-1924, the magazines Lef, Krasnaya Nov and other publications published a number of his stories, which later formed the Cavalry and Cavalry cycles. Odessa stories". Babel was immediately widely recognized as a brilliant master of the word. His first book, Stories, was published in 1925 by the Ogonyok publishing house. In 1926, the first edition of the Cavalry collection was published, which was reprinted many times in subsequent years.

Soviet criticism of those years, paying tribute to the talent and significance of Babel's work, pointed to "antipathy to the cause of the working class" and reproached him for "naturalism and apology for the elemental principle and the romanticization of banditry."

"Under the thunder of cannons, under the sound of sabers, Babel was born from Zoshchenko"
(epigram, quoted by V. Kataev)

In the stories of the Cavalry cycle, the intelligent narrator Kirill Lyutov describes the violence and cruelty of the Red Army soldiers with mixed feelings of horror and admiration. In "Odessa Tales" Babel depicts in a romantic way the life of Jewish criminals of the early 20th century, finding exotic features and strong characters. The most memorable hero of these stories is the Jewish raider Benya Krik (his prototype is the legendary Mishka Yaponchik), according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the embodiment of Babel's dream of a Jew who can take care of himself.

A master of short stories, Babel strives for conciseness and accuracy, combining in the images of his characters, plot collisions and descriptions a huge temperament with outward dispassion. His flowery, metaphorical language early stories in the future is replaced by a strict and restrained narrative manner.

In the spring of 1924, Babel was in Odessa, where his father died on March 2 of the same year, after which he finally settled in Moscow with his mother and sister.

In 1926, he edited a two-volume collection of works by Sholom Aleichem in Russian translations, and the following year he adapted Sholom Aleichem's novel Wandering Stars for film production.

In 1927 he took part in the collective novel "Big Fires", published in the magazine "Spark".

In 1928, Babel published the play Sunset. The basis for the play was the unpublished story "Sunset", which he began in 1923-1924. In 1927, "Sunset" was staged by two theaters in Odessa - Russian and Ukrainian, but the 1928 production at the Moscow Art Theater was unsuccessful, and the performance was closed after 12 performances. The play was criticized for "idealizing hooliganism" and "drawing towards the petty-bourgeois underground".

In 1935 he published the play "Maria". Babel's Peru also owns several scripts; he collaborated with Sergei Eisenstein.

With the tightening of censorship and the advent of the era of the Great Terror, Babel was printed less and less. Engaged in translations from the Yiddish language. Despite his doubts about what was happening, he did not emigrate, although he had such an opportunity. From September 1927 to October 1928 and from September 1932 to August 1933 he lived abroad (France, Belgium, Italy). In 1935 - the last trip abroad to the anti-fascist writers' congress.

Delegate of the I Congress of Writers of the USSR (1934).

Discussion about Cavalry

The very first publications of the stories of the Cavalry cycle turned out to be in clear contrast with the revolutionary propaganda of that time, which created heroic myths about the Red Army. Babel had ill-wishers: for example, Semyon Budyonny was furious at how Babel described the life and life of the cavalrymen, and in his article "Babel's Babisism in Krasnaya Nov" (1924) called him "a degenerate from literature." Kliment Voroshilov in the same 1924 complained to Dmitry Manuilsky, a member of the Central Committee, and later the head of the Comintern, that the style of the work about the Cavalry was "unacceptable." Stalin believed that Babel wrote about "things that he did not understand." Viktor Shklovsky put it in a peculiar way: "Babel saw Russia the way a French writer seconded to Napoleon's army could see it." But Babel was under the auspices of Maxim Gorky, which guaranteed the publication of the book Cavalry. In response to Budyonny’s attacks, Gorky declared: “Attentive reader, I don’t find anything ‘caricature-libelous’ in Babel’s book, on the contrary: his book aroused in me both love and respect for the Cavalry soldiers, showing them really heroes, - fearless, they deeply feel the greatness of their struggle. The discussion continued until 1928.

Collectivization in Ukraine

It is known that Babel collected material for a novel about collectivization. However, only one story "Gapa Guzhva" was published (with the subtitle "The first chapter from the book `Velikaya Krinitsa`") and announced, but not published, another one (the second story from the planned book "Velikaya Krinitsa" - "Kolyvushka" , written in 1930 - was published posthumously); working materials for the novel were confiscated during the arrest of the writer.

V. I. Druzhbinsky: “In December 1929, Babel writes criticism to Vyacheslav Polonsky:“ Dear V.P. I am looking for an excuse to go to Kiev, and from there to the regions complete collectivization to describe this event...“Leaving Kyiv for Boryspil on February 16, 1930, he wrote to his relatives: “ ... Now, in essence, a complete transformation of the village and rural life is underway ... an event that, in interest and importance, goes beyond everything that we have seen in our time“. Another letter: "I. Livshits. Borispol. 02/20/30. I spend the night in the Borispol region of continuous collectivization. Hochst interessant. Tomorrow I'm going to go down to live in one of the most remote villages ... I. B.“ From Boryspil, Babel moved to the village of Velika Staritsa, where he lived in the house of his teacher Cyril Menzhegi for almost two months. Staying in this village left the writer, as he informed his relatives, one of the sharpest memories of my entire life - to this moment I wake up in a sticky sweat"". And further: “A year later, Isaac Emmanuilovich wrote to his future wife Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova:“ ... I saw a lot of humiliation, trampling and destruction of a person as such during the Civil Brawl, but all this was physical humiliation, trampling and destruction. Here, near Kiev, a good, wise and strong person is turned into a homeless, mangy and foul dog, which everyone shuns like a plague. Not even a dog, but something not a mammal...“».

According to S. I. Lipkin, having returned to Moscow in April 1930, Babel told his friend E. G. Bagritsky: “Would you believe, Eduard Georgievich, now I have learned to calmly look at how people are being shot.” According to V. V. Kozhinov, collectivization delighted him. At the beginning of 1931, Babel again went to those places, and in December 1933 of the hungry year he wrote in a letter from the village of Prishibskaya to his sister in Brussels: “The transition to collective farms occurred with friction, there was a need, but now everything is developing with extraordinary brilliance. In a year or two we will have prosperity that will eclipse everything that these villages have seen in the past, and they lived comfortably. The collective-farm movement has made decisive progress this year, and now truly boundless prospects are opening up, the earth is being transformed. How long I'll be here, I don't know. To be a witness of new relationships and economic forms is interesting and necessary”.

On the contrary, according to the memoirs of M. Ya. Makotinsky (in whose Kyiv apartment the writer lived during these trips), in 1930 Babel returned from the Kyiv region excited: “You can’t imagine! It is inexpressible - what I observed in the village! And not in one village! This is impossible to describe! I do not understand anything!" “It turns out,” writes M. Makotinsky, “Babel faced excesses in collectivization, which later received the name “dizziness from success.” Writes the researcher of I. Babel's work, Stanford University professor G. M. Freidin: “According to Babel's friend Ilya Lvovich Slonim, who shared his memories with the author of this article in the 1960s, Babel, returning from another trip to collectivization areas, said him that what is happening in the village is much scarier than that that he had seen during the civil war. Babel's stories about collectivization, "Gapa Guzhva" and "Kolyvushka", which have come down to us, can serve as an indirect confirmation of this evidence.

The name of the village of Velikaya Staritsa, where the writer lived, was changed to Velikaya Krinitsa in preparation for the publication of the story "Gapa Guzhva". Sending V. Polonsky in October 1931 the corrected manuscript of "Gapa Guzhva", anticipating a possible reaction to the publication, Babel wrote: "I had to change the name of the village - to avoid supernumerary vilification."

In an attempt to break the creative silence, in the early 1930s, I. E. Babel also traveled to Kabardino-Balkaria, Molodenovo near Moscow, the Donbass and Dneprostroy.

Arrest and execution

In the summer of 1938, the Presidium of the USSR Writers' Union approved Babel as a member of the editorial board of the State Publishing House. fiction(GIHL).

On May 15, 1939, Babel was arrested at a dacha in Peredelkino on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity" and espionage (case No. 419). During his arrest, several manuscripts were confiscated from him, which turned out to be forever lost (15 folders, 11 notebooks, 7 notebooks with notes). The fate of his novel about the Cheka remains unknown. In 1939, Aram Vanetsian began to paint a portrait of Babel, which turned out to be the writer's last lifetime portrait.

During interrogations, Babel was tortured. He was forced to admit his connection with the Trotskyists, as well as their pernicious influence on his work and the fact that, allegedly guided by their instructions, he deliberately distorted reality and belittled the role of the party. The writer also "confirmed" that he was conducting "anti-Soviet conversations" among other writers, artists and film directors (Yu. Olesha, V. Kataev, S. Mikhoels, G. Aleksandrov, S. Eisenstein), "spying" in favor of France. From the protocol:

Babel testified that in 1933, through Ilya Ehrenburg, he established spy connections with French writer Andre Malraux, to whom he transmitted information about the state of the Air Force.

The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to capital punishment and was shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was signed by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I. V. Stalin. The ashes of the writer are buried in the Common Grave No. 1 of the Donskoy Cemetery.

From 1939 to 1955, Babel's name was removed from Soviet literature. In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated. With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, who knew Babel well and left warm memories of him, after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, the collection "Selected" was published with a preface by Ilya Ehrenburg, who called Isaac Babel one of prominent writers XX century, a brilliant stylist and master of the short story.

Family

The writer's father died in 1924, after which Babel's mother and his sister Maria and her husband emigrated and lived in Belgium.

His wife, the artist Evgenia Borisovna Gronfain, left for France in 1925.
- Daughter Natalia (1929-2005, married - American literary critic Natalie Brown, under whose editorship was published on English language complete collection writings of Isaac Babel).
The second (civilian) wife of Babel, with whom he became close after breaking up with Evgenia, is the actress Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina (later Ivanova, wife of the writer Vsevolod Ivanov);
- Their son, named Emmanuel (1926-2000, was known in the Khrushchev era as the artist Mikhail Ivanov, a member of the Group of Nine), was brought up in the family of his stepfather V.V. Ivanov, considering himself his son. After parting with Kashirina, Babel, who traveled abroad, reunited for some time with his legal wife, who gave birth to a daughter, Natalya.

Babel's last wife, Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, bore him a daughter, Lydia:
- Daughter Lydia (1937), lived in the USA since 1996. She passed away in September 2010.
  - The son of Lydia Isaakovna and the grandson of Babel - Andrey Malaev-Babel, director and theater teacher, professor at Florida State University (Sarasota, USA).

Literary influence

Babel's work had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilf, Petrov, Olesha, Kataev, Paustovsky, Svetlov, Bagritsky) and received wide recognition in the Soviet Union, his books were translated into many foreign languages.

The legacy of the repressed Babel somewhat shared his fate. It was only after his "posthumous rehabilitation" in the 1950s that he began to be printed again, and his writings were heavily censored. The writer's daughter, an American citizen Natalie Babel Brown (1929-2005), managed to collect inaccessible and unpublished works and publish them with comments ("The Complete Works of Isaac Babel", 2002).

Babel's works aroused interest all over the world. So, Jorge Luis Borges wrote about the Cavalry in his youth:

The music of his style contrasts with the almost unspeakable brutality of some of the scenes.

The study of life and creativity

One of the first researchers of the work of I. E. Babel was I. A. Smirin and the Kharkov literary critic and theater critic L. Ya. Livshits.
After the posthumous rehabilitation of the writer, an essay on his work was prepared by the Moscow literary critic and critic F. M. Levin.
Late Soviet and early post-Soviet times life path and the literary heritage of the writer was most actively studied by the Moscow engineer, collector of miniature books Usher Moiseevich Spektor (died in 1993).
Literary critic Elena Iosifovna Pogorelskaya, employee of the State literary museum(Moscow) is the author of many articles and publications devoted to the life, work and epistolary legacy of Babel.
The creative biography of Babel and the circumstances of his tragic death long time Literary critic S. N. Povartsov (Omsk) is researching.
Local historian A. Yu. Rozenboim (Rostislav Alexandrov) devoted a number of publications to the Odessa pages of Babel's life, and the historian M. B. Kalnitsky devoted a number of publications to the Kyiv pages.
In April 1989, the "First Babel Readings" took place in Odessa.

Memory

Back in 1968, a group of Odessa climbers, having conquered an unnamed peak 6007 m high in the Pamirs, called it Babel Peak (the name was approved two years later).
In 1989, one of the streets of Moldavanka was named after Babel.

- Grand opening monument to the writer in Odessa was held on September 4, 2011. The author of the monument folk artist RF Georgy Frangulyan. The monument is installed at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Rishlevskaya streets, opposite the house where he once lived. sculptural composition represents the figure of a writer sitting on the steps, and a rolling wheel on which "Isaac Babel" is inscribed. The territory near the monument is paved with traditional Odessa paving stones. The monument was built on the initiative of the World Club of Odessa Citizens at the expense of sponsors from all over the world.
- In the city of Odessa, on a house located at st. Rishelievskaya 17, where the writer lived, a memorial plaque was installed. The house itself is an architectural monument, built at the beginning of the 20th century according to the project of Samuil Galperson. The building originally belonged to the engineer S. Reich and was tenement house. The Babel family settled here after returning from Nikolaev in 1905. Their apartment No. 10 was on the fourth floor, the balcony overlooked Rishelevskaya Street. The writer's father Emmanuil Babel, an entrepreneur who had an office selling agricultural machines, owned the apartment. Until her death in 1913, the grandmother of the writer Mindlya Aronovna lived there, who became the heroine of one of early works writer "Childhood. By Grandma". In 2015, the major reconstruction of this building was completed. The courtyard is decorated with images of the sights of Odessa and scenes from its history.
- In honor of I. E. Babel, the asteroid (5808) Babel, discovered by astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on August 27, 1987, is named.

literary heritage

In total, Babel wrote about 80 stories, combined into collections, two plays and five screenplays.

A series of articles "Diary" (1918) about work in the Cheka and Narkompros.
A series of essays "On the field of honor" (1920) based on the front-line notes of French officers.
"Konarmey diary of 1920"
Collection "Cavalry" (1926), reprinted. 1933.
Jewish Stories (1927).
"Odessa stories" (1931).
The play "Sunset" (1928).
The play "Maria" (1935).
The unfinished novel Velyka Krinitsa, of which only the first chapter, Gapa Guzhva, was published. New world", No. 10, 1931).
fragment of the story "Jew" (published in 1968).
Cavalry diary of 1920.

Editions of essays

Lyubka Kozak. - M., Ogonyok, 1925
Stories. - M., Ogonyok, 1925. - 32 p.
Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1925. - 112 p.
Benya Creek. - M., Krug, 1926
Libretto of the film "Benya Kpik". Virob Odeska factory VUFKU 1926 year. Kyiv, 1926. - 8 p. - 5000 copies.
Wandering stars. - M., Film printing, 1926
The story of my dovecote. - M.-L., ZIF, 1926. - 80 p.
Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1926
Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1926
The story of my dovecote. - Paris, 1927
The story of my dovecote. - M.-L., ZIF, 1927
Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927
Cavalry. - M., FOSP, 1927
End of St. Hypatia. - M.-L., ZIF, 1927
Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927 - 64 p.
Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927. - 128 p.
Sunset. - M., "Circle", 1928. - 96 p., 5,000 copies.
Cavalry.- M.-L., GIZ, 1928
The story of my dovecote. - M., GIZ, 1930
Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1930
Odessa stories. - M., OGIZ-GIKhL, 1931. - 144 p., 10,000 copies.
Cavalry. - M., OGIZ-GIKHL, 1931
Stories. - M., Federation, 1932
Cavalry. - M., GIHL, 1933
Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1934
Maria. - M., Goslitizdat, 1935. - 66 p., 3,000 copies.
Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1935
Selected stories. - M., 1936, 2008. - 40 p., 40,000 copies. (Library "Spark").
Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1936
Selected / Foreword I. Ehrenburg. - M., Goslitizdat, 1957.
Favorites / Intro. Art. L. Polyak. - M., Fiction, 1966.
Selected / Foreword I. Ehrenburg. - Kemerovo, 1966
Cavalry. Selected works / Afterword. V. Zvinyatskovsky; ill. G. Garmidera. - K.: Dnipro, 1989. - 350 p.
Awakening: Essays. Stories. Film story. Play / Comp., prep. texts, intro. article, notes, chronological W.M. Spector index. - Tbilisi: Merani, 1989. - 432 p.
Selected / Comp., foreword. and comment. V. Ya. Vakulenko. - Frunze: Adabiyat, 1990. - 672 p.
Cavalry /Comp. A.N. Pirozhkova-Babel /. Entered: Cavalry. Cavalry diary of 1920. Odessa stories. Publicism. stories different years. Memoirs, portraits, articles. - M., Pravda (Library of the magazine "Znamya"), 1990. 480 pages. Circulation 400 thousand copies.
Works: In 2 vols. - M.: IHL, 1990 / comp. A. Pirozhkova, entry. Art. G. Belaya, approx. S. Povartsova, reprint vol. 1 - 1991, vol. 2 - 1992
Odessa Stories. - Odessa: Voluntary Society of Book Lovers. 1991, p. 221, format 93×67 mm, circulation 20,000 copies, hardcover.
Works in two volumes. M., Terra, 1996., 15,000 copies.
Diary 1920 (cavalry). - M.: MIK, 2000.
Cavalry I.E. Babel. - Moscow: Children's Literature, 2001.
Collected works: In 2 volumes - M., 2002.
Collected works: In 4 volumes / Comp., approx., Intro. Art. I. N. Sukhikh. Moscow: Time, 2006.
Collected works: In 3 volumes / Comp., approx. intro. Art. I. N. Sukhikh. St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2012. - 2,000 copies.
Stories / Comp., prep. texts, afterword, commentary. E. I. Pogorelskaya. St. Petersburg: Vita Nova, 2014. - 1000 copies.
Letters to a friend: From the archive of I. L. Livshits / Compiled, edited. texts and comments. E. Pogorelskaya. M .: Three squares, 2007. - 3000 copies.

Performances

The play "Sunset", which was shown on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater 2nd during the author's lifetime (1928), was again staged by many theaters in perestroika and post-Soviet times, including:

in 1987, directed by Andrei Goncharov at the Moscow Mayakovsky Theater;
in 1998, directed by Semyon Spivak at the Youth Theater on the Fontanka (play "Screams from Odessa");
in 2001 directed by Marina Glukhovskaya at the Omsk Academic Drama Theater.

A number of theaters - Theatre. E. Vakhtangov in Moscow, the Riga Theater of Russian Drama, etc. - staged the musical "The Binduzhnik and the King" (music by Alexander Zhurbin, libretto by Asar Eppel), based on the same play; in several productions it was called "Sunset".

Starting from the 1960s, in professional and amateur theaters in different cities of the USSR, performances based on Cavalry and Odessa Tales were staged. In 1968, in Leningrad, director Efim Davidovich Tabachnikov staged a performance based on I. Babel’s play “Maria” in folk theater at the Palace of Culture of the Leningrad City Council. The most famous performance is "Five Tales of Babel", staged by Yefim Kucher at the Taganka Theater (1980).

Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel(real name Bobel) (July 1 (13), 1894 - January 27, 1940) - Russian writer.

Babel Isaak Immanuilovich (1894–1940), Russian writer.

Born on July 1 (13), 1894 in Odessa on Moldavanka, in the family of a Jewish merchant. In his Autobiography (1924), Babel wrote: “At the insistence of his father, he studied the Hebrew language, the Bible, and the Talmud until the age of sixteen. It was difficult to live at home, because from morning till night they were forced to study many sciences. I rested at school. The program of the Odessa Commercial School, where the future writer studied, was very intense. Chemistry, political economy, jurisprudence, accounting, commodity science, three foreign languages and other items. Speaking of "rest", Babel had in mind the feeling of freedom: according to his recollections, during breaks or after classes, students went to the port, to Greek coffee houses or to Moldavanka "to drink cheap Bessarabian wine in the cellars." All these impressions formed the basis early prose Babel and his Odessa stories.

Babel began writing at the age of fifteen. For two years he wrote in French - under the influence of G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant and his French teacher Vadon. The element of French speech sharpened the sensation literary language and style. Already in his first stories, Babel strove for stylistic elegance and the highest degree artistic expressiveness. “I take a trifle - an anecdote, a bazaar story, and make it a thing that I myself can’t tear myself away from ... They will laugh at him not at all because he is cheerful, but because you always want to laugh with human luck,” - he later explained his creative aspirations. The main property of his prose was revealed early: the combination of heterogeneous layers - both the language and the way of life depicted. For his early creativity Characteristic is the story Into the Hole (1915), in which the hero buys from the owner of the apartment for five rubles the right to spy on the life of prostitutes renting the next room.

After graduating from the Kiev Commercial Institute, in 1915 Babel came to St. Petersburg, although he did not have the right to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. After his first stories (Stariy Shloyme, 1913, etc.), published in Odessa and Kiev, went unnoticed, the young writer became convinced that only the capital could bring him fame. However, the editors of St. Petersburg literary magazines advised Babel to quit writing and engage in trade. This went on for more than a year - until he came to Gorky in the Chronicle magazine, where the stories Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna and Mama, Rimma and Alla were published (1916, No. 11). The stories aroused the interest of the reading public and the judiciary. Babel was going to be prosecuted for pornography. February Revolution saved him from trial, which had already been scheduled for March 1917.

Babel served in the Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" was in the First Cavalry Army, participated in food expeditions, worked in the People's Commissariat for Education, in the Odessa Provincial Committee, fought on the Romanian, northern, Polish fronts, was a reporter for Tiflis and Petrograd newspapers.

TO artistic creativity returned in 1923: the magazine Lef (1924, No. 4) published the stories Salt, Letter, Death of Dolgushov, King, etc. Literary critic A. Voronsky wrote about them: “Babel is not in front of the reader, but somewhere aside a big one has already passed from him artistic way study and therefore captivates the reader not only with the “gut” and the unusualness of life material, but also ... with culture, intelligence and mature firmness of talent ... ".

With time fiction the writer took shape in cycles that gave the names to the collections Cavalry (1926), Jewish stories (1927) and Odessa stories (1931). The basis for the collection of stories Cavalry were diary entries. The first Cavalry, shown by Babel, differed from the beautiful legend that official propaganda composed about the Budyonnovites. Unjustified cruelty, the animal instincts of people overshadowed the weak sprouts of humanity, which Babel at first saw in the revolution and in the "cleansing" civil war. The Red commanders did not forgive him for "slandering". The persecution of the writer began, at the origins of which stood S.M. Budyonny. Gorky, defending Babel, wrote that he showed the fighters of the First Cavalry "better, more truthful than Gogol of the Cossacks." Budyonny also called the Cavalry "super-arrogant Babel slander." Contrary to the opinion of Budyonny, Babel's work was already considered one of the most significant phenomena in contemporary literature. “Babel was not like any of his contemporaries. But a short time has passed - contemporaries begin to gradually resemble Babel. His influence on literature is becoming more and more obvious,” wrote literary critic A. Lezhnev in 1927.

Attempts to discern passion and romance in the revolution turned out to be spiritual anguish for the writer. “Why do I have an unending longing? Because (...) I am at a big, ongoing memorial service,” he wrote in his diary. A kind of salvation for Babel was the fantastic, exaggerated world of the Odessa stories. The action of the stories in this cycle - The King, How It Was Done in Odessa, Father, Lyubka Kazak - takes place in an almost mythological city. Babel's Odessa is populated by characters who, according to the writer, have "ardor, lightness and a charming - sometimes sad, sometimes touching - feeling of life" (Odessa). The real Odessa criminals Mishka Yaponchik, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka and others, in the writer's imagination, turned into artistically authentic images of Beni Krik, Lyubka Kazak, Froim Grach. Babel portrayed the "King" of the Odessa underworld Benya Krik as a protector of the weak, a kind of Robin Hood. The style of the Odessa stories is distinguished by brevity, conciseness of the language and at the same time vivid imagery and metaphor. Babel's demands on himself were extraordinary. Only the story of Lyubka Kazak had about thirty serious editings, over each of which the writer worked for several months. Paustovsky in his memoirs cites the words of Babel: “We take it with style, with style. I'm ready to write a story about washing clothes, and maybe it will sound like the prose of Julius Caesar.

IN literary heritage Babel, there are about eighty stories, two plays - Sunset (1927, first staged in 1927 by director V. Fedorov on the stage of the Baku Workers' Theater) and Maria (1935, first staged in 1994 by director M. Levitin on the stage of the Moscow Hermitage Theater), five screenplays, including Wandering Stars (1926, based on the novel of the same name by Sholom Aleichem), journalism.

“It is very difficult to write on topics that interest me, very difficult, if you want to be honest,” he wrote from Paris in 1928. Trying to protect himself, Babel wrote an article Lies, betrayal and smerdyakovism (1937), glorifying the show trials of “enemies of the people ". Shortly thereafter, he admitted in a private letter: "Life is very bad: both mentally and physically - there is nothing to show to good people." The tragedy of the heroes of the Odessa stories was embodied in the short story Froim Grach (1933, published in 1963 in the USA): the title character tries to conclude a "pact of honor" with Soviet power and dies at the hands of Chekists.

IN last years life, the writer turned to the topic of creativity, which he interpreted as the best that a person is capable of. One of his last stories was written about this - a parable about magic power art by Di Grasso (1937).

On May 15, 1939, Babel was arrested at his dacha in Peredelkino on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity" and espionage (case No. 419). During his arrest, several manuscripts were confiscated from him, which turned out to be forever lost (15 folders, 11 notebooks, 7 notebooks with notes). The fate of his written novel about the Cheka remains unknown.

During interrogations, Babel was subjected to severe torture. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was personally signed by Joseph Stalin. Among possible causes Stalin's dislike for Babel is called the fact that he was a close friend of Y. Okhotnikov, I. Yakir, B. Kalmykov, D. Schmidt, E. Yezhova and other "enemies of the people."

In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated. With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, who loved Babel very much and left warm memories of him, after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, the collection "Selected" was published with a preface by Ilya Ehrenburg, who called Isaac Babel one of the outstanding writers of the 20th century, a brilliant stylist and master of the short story.

Currently, in Odessa, citizens are raising funds for the monument to Isaac Babel. Already obtained permission from the city council; The monument will stand at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Richelieu streets, opposite the house where he once lived. The grand opening is planned for early July 2011, on the occasion of the writer's birthday.

Bibliography

In total, Babel wrote about 80 stories, combined into collections, two plays and five screenplays.

A series of articles "Diary" (1918) about work in the Cheka and Narkompros
A series of essays "On the field of honor" (1920) based on front-line notes of French officers
Collection "Cavalry" (1926)
Jewish Stories (1927)
"Odessa stories" (1931)
The play "Sunset" (1927)
The play "Mary" (1935)
The unfinished novel Velyka Krinitsa, of which only the first chapter, Gapa Guzhva, was published (Noviy Mir, No. 10, 1931)
fragment of the story "Jew" (published in 1968)

Babel Isaak Immanuilovich was born in Odessa in the family of a Jewish merchant. The beginning of the century was a time of social unrest and a mass exodus of Jews from Russian Empire. Babel himself survived the 1905 pogrom (he was hidden by a Christian family), and his grandfather Shoyl was one of the 300 murdered Jews.

In order to enter the preparatory class of the Odessa commercial school of Nicholas I, Babel had to exceed the quota for Jewish students (10% in the Pale of Settlement, 5% outside it and 3% for both capitals), but despite the positive marks that gave the right to study , the place was given to another young man, whose parents gave a bribe to the leadership of the school. For a year of education at home, Babel completed a two-class program. In addition to traditional disciplines, he studied the Talmud and studied music. After one more failed attempt to enter Odessa University (again because of quotas), he ended up at the Kiev Institute of Finance and Entrepreneurship. There he met his future wife Evgeny Gronfein.

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not reached us. Babel published the first stories in Russian in the Chronicle magazine. Then, on the advice of M. Gorky, he "went into the people" and changed several professions.

In 1920 he was a soldier and political worker of the Cavalry Army. In 1924 he published a number of stories, which later formed the Cavalry and Odessa Stories cycles. Babel was able to masterfully convey in Russian the style of literature created in Yiddish (this is especially noticeable in Odessa Tales, where in places the direct speech of his characters is an interlinear translation from Yiddish).

In 1928 Babel published the play "Sunset" (staged at the 2nd Moscow Art Theater), in 1935 - the play "Maria". Babel's Peru also owns several scripts. A master of short stories, Babel strives for conciseness and accuracy, combining in the images of his characters, plot collisions and descriptions a huge temperament with outward dispassion. The flowery, metaphor-laden language of his early stories is later replaced by a strict and restrained narrative manner.

In May 1939, Babel was arrested on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity" and shot on January 27, 1940. In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated.

BABEL'S MIGHTY FUN

Fazil Iskander

At the age of thirty, already a member of the Writers' Union, I read Babel for the first time. He was just released after rehabilitation. Of course, I knew that there was such a writer from Odessa, but I did not read a single line.

As I remember now, I sat down with his book on the porch of our Sukhum house, opened it and was blinded by its stylistic brilliance. After that, for several more months, I not only read and reread his stories myself, but also tried to present them to all my acquaintances, most often in my own performance. This frightened some, some of my friends, as soon as I took up a book, tried to sneak away, but I put them in their place, and then they were grateful to me or were forced to pretend that they were grateful, because I tried my best.

I felt that it was beautiful literature, but I did not understand why and how prose becomes high-class poetry. At that time I wrote only poetry and I took the advice of some of my literary friends to try their hand at prose as a secret insult. Of course, I understood intellectually that any good literature poetic. In any case, it should be. But Babel's poetry was evident in more literally this word. In which? Constriction - immediately a bull by the horns. Self-sufficiency of the phrase, unprecedented diversity human condition per unit of literary area. Babel's phrases can be quoted endlessly, like the lines of a poet. Now I think that the spring of his inspirational rhythms is tightened too tight, he immediately takes on too high a tone, which makes it difficult for the effect of increasing tension, but then I did not notice this. In a word, I was captivated by its full-blooded Black Sea fun in an almost invariable combination with biblical sadness.

Cavalry shocked me with the original authenticity of revolutionary pathos, combined with the incredible accuracy and paradoxical thinking of every Red Army soldier. But thinking is, as in " Quiet Don”, is transmitted only through a gesture, a word, an action. By the way, these things are close to each other and some general epic melody of a swift narrative.

Reading Cavalry, you understand that the element of revolution is not imposed on anyone. It matured within the people as a dream of retribution and renewal of the entire Russian life. But that furious determination with which the heroes of Cavalry go to death, but also, without hesitation, are ready to chop from the shoulder of everyone who is an enemy or in this moment seems like that, suddenly reveals through the author's irony and bitterness the possibility of future tragic mistakes.

Is the beautiful, sweeping Don Quixote of the revolution, after its victory, capable of transforming into a wise creator, and will it not seem to him, so trusting and ingenuous, in new conditions, in the struggle with new difficulties, the familiar order: “Chop!”?

And this anxiety, how distant musical theme, no, no, yes, and it will stir up in the Cavalry.

One smart critic once expressed doubts in a conversation with me about Odessa stories Babel: is it possible to sing bandits?

The question is, of course, not an easy one. Nevertheless literary victory these stories is obvious. It's all about the conditions of the game that the artist sets before us. In the beam of light with which Babel illuminated the pre-revolutionary life of Odessa, we have no choice: either Benya Krik - or a policeman, or the rich man Tartakovsky - or Benya Krik. Here, it seems to me, the same principle as in folk songs, glorifying the robbers: the idealization of the instrument of retribution for the injustice of life.

There is so much humor in these stories, so many subtle and accurate observations that the profession of the protagonist recedes into the background, we are picked up by a powerful stream of liberation of a person from ugly complexes of fear, musty habits, wretched and deceitful integrity.

I think that Babel understood art as a celebration of life, and the wise sadness that occasionally opens up at this celebration not only does not spoil it, but also gives it spiritual authenticity. Sadness is a constant companion of the knowledge of life. He who honestly knows sorrow is worthy of honest joy. And this joy is brought to people by the creative gift of our wonderful writer Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel.

And thank God that fans of this wonderful gift can now get acquainted with the living testimonies of contemporaries who knew the writer closely during his lifetime.

Youth

Writer's career

Cavalry

Creation

Arrest and execution

Babel family

Creativity Explorers

Literature

Bibliography

Editions of essays

Screen adaptations

(original surname Bobel; July 1 (13), 1894, Odessa - January 27, 1940, Moscow) - Russian Soviet writer, journalist and playwright of Jewish origin, known for his "Odessa stories" and the collection "Cavalry" about the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny.

Biography

The biography of Babel, known in many details, still has some gaps due to the fact that the autobiographical notes left by the writer himself are largely embellished, altered, or even “pure fiction” with a specific purpose that corresponded to the political moment of that time. However, the established version of the writer's biography is as follows:

Childhood

Born in Odessa on Moldavanka in the family of a poor merchant Manya Itskovich Bobel ( Emmanuil (Manus, Manet) Isaakovich Babel), originally from Belaya Tserkov, and Feigi ( Fani) Aronovna Bobel. The beginning of the century was a time of social unrest and a mass exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire. Babel himself survived the 1905 pogrom (he was hidden by a Christian family), and his grandfather Shoil became one of the three hundred Jews killed then.

In order to enter the preparatory class of the Odessa commercial school of Nicholas I, Babel had to exceed the quota for Jewish students (10% in the Pale of Settlement, 5% outside it and 3% for both capitals), but despite the positive marks that gave the right to study , the place was given to another young man, whose parents gave a bribe to the leadership of the school. For a year of education at home, Babel went through a two-class program. In addition to traditional disciplines, he studied the Talmud and studied music.

Youth

After another unsuccessful attempt to enter Odessa University (again due to quotas), he ended up at the Kiev Institute of Finance and Entrepreneurship, which he graduated under his original name Bobel. There he met his future wife Evgenia Gronfein, the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv industrialist, who fled with him to Odessa.

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not reached us. Then he went to Petersburg, without having, according to his own recollections, the right, since the city was outside the Pale of Settlement. (Recently, a document was discovered, issued by the Petrograd police in 1916, which allowed Babel to live in the city while studying at the Psycho-Neurological Institute, which confirms the inaccuracy of the writer in his romanticized autobiography). In the capital, he managed to enter immediately into the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute.

Babel published the first stories in Russian in the journal Chronicle in 1915. “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna” and “Mother, Rimma and Alla” attracted attention, and Babel was about to be tried for pornography (article 1001), which was prevented by the revolution. On the advice of M. Gorky, Babel "went into the people" and changed several professions.

In the autumn of 1917, Babel, after serving as a private for several months, deserted and made his way to Petrograd, where in December 1917 he went to work in the Cheka, and then in the People's Commissariat of Education and on food expeditions. In the spring of 1920, on the recommendation of M. Koltsov, under the name Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov was sent to the 1st Cavalry Army as a war correspondent for Yug-ROST, was a fighter and political worker there. He fought with her on the Romanian, northern and Polish fronts. Then he worked in the Odessa Provincial Committee, was the editor-in-chief of the 7th Soviet printing house, a reporter in Tiflis and Odessa, in the State Publishing House of Ukraine. According to the myth voiced by him in his autobiography, he did not write during these years, although it was then that he began to create the cycle of Odessa Tales.

Writer's career

Cavalry

In 1920, Babel was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Army, under the command of Semyon Budyonny, and became a member of the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. Throughout the campaign, Babel kept a diary (The Cavalry Diary of 1920), which served as the basis for the collection of stories Cavalry, in which the violence and cruelty of Russian Red Army soldiers contrasts strongly with the intelligence of Babel himself.

Several stories, which were later included in the Cavalry collection, were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's journal Lef in 1924. Descriptions of the brutality of the war were far removed from the revolutionary propaganda of the time. Babel has ill-wishers, so Semyon Budyonny was furious at how Babel described the life and life of the Red Army and demanded the execution of the writer. But Babel was under the auspices of Maxim Gorky, which guaranteed the publication of the book, which was subsequently translated into many languages of the world. Kliment Voroshilov complained in 1924 to Dmitry Manuilsky, a member of the Central Committee and later head of the Comintern, that the style of the work on the Cavalry was "unacceptable." Stalin believed that Babel wrote about "things that he did not understand." Gorky, on the other hand, expressed the opinion that the writer, on the contrary, “decorated the inside” of the Cossacks “better, more truthfully than Gogol of the Cossacks.”

The famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Cavalry:

Creation

In 1924, in the journals Lef and Krasnaya Nov, he published a number of stories, which later formed the cycles Cavalry and Odessa Stories. Babel was able to masterfully convey in Russian the style of literature created in Yiddish (this is especially noticeable in Odessa Tales, where in places the direct speech of his characters is an interlinear translation from Yiddish).

In "Odessa Tales" Babel portrays in a romantic way the life of Jewish criminals of the early 20th century, finding exotic features and strong characters in everyday life of thieves, raiders, as well as artisans and petty merchants. The most memorable hero of these stories is the Jewish raider Benya Krik (his prototype is the legendary Mishka Yaponchik), according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the embodiment of Babel's dream of a Jew who can take care of himself.

In 1926, he acted as the editor of the first Soviet collected works of Sholom Aleichem, and the following year he adapted Sholom Aleichem's novel Wandering Stars for film production.

In 1927 he took part in the collective novel "Big Fires", published in the magazine "Spark".

In the subsequent period, with the tightening of censorship and the advent of the era great terror Babel was printed less and less. Despite his doubts about what was happening, he did not emigrate, although he had such an opportunity, visiting in 1927, 1932 and 1935 his wife, who lived in France, and a daughter born after one of these visits.

Arrest and execution

During interrogations, Babel was subjected to severe torture. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was personally signed by Joseph Stalin. Among the possible reasons for Stalin's dislike for Babel is the fact that he was a close friend of Y. Okhotnikov, I. Yakir, B. Kalmykov, D. Schmidt, E. Yezhova and other "enemies of the people."

Babel family

Evgenia Borisovna Gronfein, with whom he was legally married, emigrated to France in 1925. His other (civilian) wife, with whom he entered into a relationship after breaking up with Evgenia, was Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina (Tatyana Ivanova), their son, named Emmanuel (1926), later became known in the Khrushchev era as the artist Mikhail Ivanov (member of the Group of Nine ”), and was brought up in the family of his stepfather, Vsevolod Ivanov, considering himself his son. After parting with Kashirina, Babel, who traveled abroad, for some time reunited with his legal wife, who gave birth to his daughter Natalya (1929), married to the American literary critic Natalie Brown (under whose editorship the complete works of Isaac Babel were published in English).

Babel's last (civil-law) wife, Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, bore him a daughter, Lydia (1937), and has lived in the United States since 1996. In 2010, at the age of 101, she came to Odessa and looked at the layout of her husband's monument. She passed away in September 2010.

Influence

The legacy of the repressed Babel somewhat shared his fate. It was only after his "posthumous rehabilitation" in the 1960s that he began to be printed again, however, his works were subjected to heavy censorship. The writer's daughter, American citizen Natalie Babel (Brown, Eng. NatalieBabelBrown, 1929-2005) was able to collect inaccessible or unpublished works and publish them with commentaries ("The Complete Works of Isaac Babel", 2002).

Creativity Explorers

One of the first researchers of the work of I.E. Babel was the Kharkov literary critic and theater critic L.Ya. Lifshits

Literature

Cossack V. Lexicon of Russian literature of the XX century = Lexikon der russischen Literatur ab 1917. - M .: RIK "Culture", 1996. - 492 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-8334-0019-8
Voronsky A., I. Babel, in his book: Literary portraits. vol. 1. - M. 1928.
I. Babel. Articles and materials. M. 1928.
Russian Soviet prose writers. Bio-bibliographic index. vol. 1. - L. 1959.
Belaya G.A., Dobrenko E.A., Esaulov I.A. Cavalry by Isaac Babel. M., 1993.
Zholkovsky A.K., Yampolsky M. B. Babel/Babel. - M.: Carte blanche. 1994. - 444 p.
Esaulov I. The logic of the cycle: "Odessa stories" by Isaac Babel // Moscow. 2004. No. 1.
Krumm R. Creating a biography of Babel is the task of a journalist.
Mogultai. Babel // Lot of Mogultai. - September 17, 2005.
The enigma of Isaac Babel: biography, history, context / edited by Gregory Freidin. - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009. - 288 p.

Memory

Currently, in Odessa, citizens are raising funds for the monument to Isaac Babel. Already obtained permission from the city council; The monument will stand at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Richelieu streets, opposite the house where he once lived. The grand opening is planned for early July 2011, on the occasion of the writer's birthday.

Bibliography

In total, Babel wrote about 80 stories, combined into collections, two plays and five screenplays.

A series of articles "Diary" (1918) about work in the Cheka and Narkompros
A series of essays "On the field of honor" (1920) based on front-line notes of French officers
Collection "Cavalry" (1926)
Jewish Stories (1927)
"Odessa stories" (1931)
The play "Sunset" (1927)
The play "Mary" (1935)
The unfinished novel Velyka Krinitsa, of which only the first chapter, Gapa Guzhva, was published (Noviy Mir, No. 10, 1931)
fragment of the story "Jew" (published in 1968)

Editions of essays

Favorites. (Foreword by I. Ehrenburg). - M. 1957.
Favorites. (Introductory article L. Polyak). - M. 1966.
Selected: for youth / Comp., foreword. and comment. V. Ya. Vakulenko. - F.: Adabiyat, 1990. - 672 p.
Diary 1920 (cavalry). M.: MIK, 2000.
Cavalry I.E. Babel. - Moscow: Children's Literature, 2001.
Collected works: In 2 volumes - M., 2002.
Selected stories. Ogonyok Library, M., 1936, 2008.
Collected works: in 4 volumes / Comp., approx., Intro. Art. Sukhikh I. N. - M .: Time, 2006.

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was born July 1 (13), 1894 in Odessa on Moldavanka. The son of a Jewish merchant. Shortly after the birth of Isaac Babel, his family moved to Nikolaev, a port city located 111 kilometers from Odessa. There, his father worked for a foreign manufacturer of agricultural equipment.

Babel, when he grew up, entered the commercial school named after S.Yu. Witte. His family returned to Odessa in 1905, and Babel continued his studies with private teachers until he entered the Odessa Commercial School named after Nicholas I, from which he graduated in 1911. In 1916 Graduated from the Kyiv Commercial Institute.

He wrote his first stories (not preserved) in French. In 1916. with the assistance of M. Gorky, he published two stories in the Chronicle magazine. In 1917 interrupted his studies in literature, changed many professions: he was a reporter, head of the editorial and publishing department of the State Publishing House of Ukraine, an employee of the People's Commissariat for Education, a translator in the Petrograd Cheka; served as a soldier of the 1st Cavalry Army.

In 1919 Isaac Babel married Evgenia Gronfein, the daughter of a wealthy farm equipment supplier whom he had previously met in Kyiv. After serving in the army, he wrote for newspapers and also devoted more time to writing short stories. In 1925 he published the book "The Story of My Dovecote", which included works written based on stories from his childhood.

Babel became famous for the publication of several stories in the LEF magazine ( 1924 ). Babel is a recognized master of short stories, an outstanding stylist. Striving for conciseness, density of writing, he considered the prose of G. de Maupassant and G. Flaubert to be a model. In Babel's stories, brilliance is combined with the external impassivity of the narration; their speech structure is based on the interpenetration of style and language layers: literary speech coexists with the colloquial, Russian common folk tale - with the Jewish shtetl dialect, Ukrainian and Polish languages.

Most of Babel's stories included the Cavalry cycles (a separate edition - 1926 ) and "Odessa Stories" (separate edition - 1931 ). In Cavalry, the lack of a single plot is made up for by a system of leitmotifs, the core of which is the opposing themes of cruelty and mercy. The cycle caused a sharp controversy: Babel was accused of slander (S.M. Budyonny), of predilection for naturalistic details, of a subjective depiction of the Civil War. "Odessa Stories" recreate the atmosphere of Moldavanka - the center of the thieves' world in Odessa; the cycle is dominated by the carnival beginning, original Odessa humor. Based on urban folklore, Babel painted colorful images of thieves and raiders - charming rogues and " noble robbers". Babel also created 2 plays: "Sunset" ( 1928 ) and "Maria" ( 1935 , allowed to be staged in 1988); 5 scenarios (including "Wandering Stars", 1926 ; based on the novel of the same name by Sholom Aleichem).

During the 1930s activities and works of I. Babel fell under close attention critics and censors who were looking for even the slightest mention of his disloyalty to the Soviet government. Periodically, Babel visited France, where his wife lived with her daughter Natalie. He wrote less and less and spent three years in seclusion.

In 1939 Isaac Babel was arrested by the NKVD and accused of membership in anti-Soviet political organizations and terrorist groups, as well as spying for France and Austria.

January 27, 1940 Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was shot. Rehabilitated - in 1954.