Babel' in context : a study in cultural identity / Efraim Sicher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sicher, Efraim.

Contributor:

Edith E. Clark Endowment Fund.

Series:

Borderlines (Boston, Mass.)

Borderlines : Russian and East European Jewish studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Babelʹ, I. (Isaak), 1894-1940--Criticism and interpretation.

Babelʹ, I.

Babelʹ, I. (Isaak), 1894-1940.

Russian literature--Jewish authors--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Russian literature--Jewish authors.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

308 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2012.

Summary:

A book for academic specialists on fiction writer Isaak Babel', this study by Efraim Sicher (comparative literature, Ben-Gurion U., IL) works to deconstruct Babel''s cultural context, layer by layer. As a Russian Jew from Odessa, Babel' lived in a multicultural, polyglot city that mixed Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, and Jewish influences. As a reader of both Yiddish and Hebrew who wrote in and translated Russian, Babel' crossed four traditions that led toward separate ends: liberal European intellectualism, Zionist emigration, historic Russian anti-Semitism, and anti-intellectual communist revolution. Like his native city, he was trapped in this clash of realities. Caught between the implacable cruelties of Stalin and Hitler, he did not survive. Sicher argues that Babel''s detached reportage of the grotesque works on multiple levels: to allow veiled critique to slide past Stalinist censorship; to both reveal and shield Jewish, Odessan, Russian, and communist allegiances that were often defined as mutually exclusive; to voyeuristically report a concealed world the author knew could not last; and to accurately reflect a universe in which one is an outsider everywhere, a potential enemy never at home. Since much of Babel''s work was censored or lost, he has become an iconic figure for who and what he might have been as well as who and what he was. The clearly written study will be suitable for specialist scholars of Babel', Eastern European-Jewish Studies, and early post-Revolutionary Russian literature. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Isaak Babel' : a brief life

Reference and interference

Babel', Bialik, and others

Midrash and history : a key to the Babelesque imagination

A Russian Maupassant

Babel's Civil War

A voyeur on a collective farm.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-[288]) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edith E. Clark Endowment Fund.

ISBN:

1936235951

9781936235957

OCLC:

744287183

Publisher Number:

99951780466