Isaak Babel´'s early story “Odessa” seems, at first glance, to be a modest piece of reportage about his home town. But, as is so often the case with Babel', the text soon becomes a metaliterary meditation on art itself:
And now my thoughts move on from my Odessan discourse to higher matters. If you think about it, doesn't it strike you that in Russian literature there haven't been so far any real clear, cheerful descriptions of the sun?
According to Babel', Ivan Turgenev “poeticized the dewy morning, the calm night”, whereas “with Fedor Dostoevskii you f…
Please log in to
consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing
institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on
campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we
offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If
you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal
subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.
2291 words
Citation: Bullock, Philip Ross. "Isaak Babel". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 September 2006 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=204, accessed 24 November 2024.]
