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

• Superior document: Borderlines : Russian and East European-Jewish studies
• Author: Sicher, Efraim.
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Borderlines (Boston, Mass.)
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (308 pages) :; illustrations; digital, PDF files.
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Isaak Babel' (1894-1940) is arguably one of the greatest modern short story writers of the early twentieth century. Yet his life and work are shrouded in the mystery of who Babel' was-an Odessa Jew who wrote in Russian, who came from one of the most vibrant centers of east European Jewish culture, and who all his life loved Yiddish and the stories of Sholom Aleichem This is the first book in English to study the intertextuality of Babel''s work. It looks at Babel''s cultural identity as a case study in the contradictions and tensions of literary influence, personal loyalties, and ideological constraint. The complex and often ambivalent relations between the two cultures inevitably raise controversial issues that touch on the reception of Babel' and other Jewish intellectuals in Russian literature, as well as the "Jewishness" of their work.

Table of Contents

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Note on References and Translations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 / Isaak Babelʹ: A Brief Life -- 2 / Reference and Interference -- 3 / Babelʹ, Bialik, and Others -- 4 / Midrash and History: A Key to the Babelesque Imagination -- 5 / A Russian Maupassant -- 6 / Babelʹ's Civil War -- 7 / A Voyeur on a Collective Farm -- Bibliography of Works by Babelʹ and Recommended Reading -- Notes -- Index