Isaac Babel / Gapa Guzhva By Val Vinokur

Isaac Babel

 

Gapa Guzhva

By Val Vinokur -

 

February 16, 2018

Val Vinokur has just published “The Essential Fictions,” a newly translated collection of the works of Odessan Jewish writer Isaac Babel. This story was originally published with the following subtitle: “First chapter from the book Velikaya Krinitsa.” The stories “Gapa Guzhva” and “Kolyvushka” are the only extant sections of Babel’s projected book about the collectivization of agriculture. This story begins during Maslenitsa (also known as Butter Week and, here, Maslenaya, which is taking place now across the Slavic world). The holiday takes place before the start of Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Lent and has roots in a Slavic pagan folk tradition that originally marked the end of winter and the beginning  of spring. Much like Mardi Gras, it involves feasting and revelry before the Lenten fast, with blini (crepes fried in butter) as the food of choice.. This story was written in the spring of 1930 and published in 1931. Additional explanatory notes to the story are included under the text.

Vinokur previously published Babel’s seminal Odes to Odessa with The Odessa Review and has also written for the journal about the history of Babel translation in English.

The Story of My Dovecote by Isaac Babel

 'The Story of My Dovecote' by Isaac Babel

For Maxim Gorky

When I was a kid I longed for a dovecot.  Never in all my life have I wanted a thing more.  But not till I was nine did father promise the wherewithal to buy the wood to make one and three pairs of pigeons to stock it with.  It was then 1904, and I was studying for the entrance exam to the preparatory class of the secondary school at Nikolayev in the Province of Kherson, where my people were at that time living.  This province of course no longer exists, and our town has been incorporated in the Odessa Region.

The Sin of Jesus by Isaac Babel

The Sin of Jesus

by Isaac Babel

(“Иисусов грех”)

Translated by U.R. Bowie 

Juanita Blitch, she was a chambermaid, working in the Nathan Bedford Forrest Hotel, Waycross, Georgia. Yet one more associate at that there establishment was the handyman, Herschel Jones. And between them two there was shame. On Palm Sunday Juanita didst bear Herschel a pair of twins. Water floweth, stars shineth, man ruts. Juanita, then, she once more come to be in the family way, her sixth month was rolling on—them months of a woman, they sure do roll. Now, Herschel, just then he gets hisself drafted. What a sorry rigamarole.  

Dante Street by Isaac Babel

 

Dante Street 

by Isaac Babel

Isaak Bábel / La calle de Dante

The Hotel Danton, where I was staying, was rattled to its foundations by moans of love from five until seven in the evening. Experts were at work in the rooms. Having arrived in France with the conviction that its people had lost their spark, I was somewhat taken aback by their vigor. In our country, we do not bring women to such a boiling pitch. Nowhere near it.

“Mon vieux” Monsieur Bienalle, my neighbor, once told me, “in our thousand years of history we have created woman, food, and literature. No one can deny this.”

Guy de Maupassant by Isaac Babel

Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant

by Isaac Babel

Translated from the Russian by Val Vinokur

Isaac Bábel / Guy de Maupassant

In the winter of 1916 I found myself in Petersburg with a forged passport and not a penny to my name. I found shelter with a teacher of Russian literature — Alexey Kazantsev.

He lived in Peski on a yellow, frozen, foul-smelling street. He supplemented his meager salary by doing translations from the Spanish; at the time, Blasco Ibáñez was just becoming famous.

Crossing the Zbrucz by Isaac Babel

Crossing the Zbrucz

by Isaac Babel

Isaak Bábel / El Paso de Zbruch

THE SIXTH DIVISION commander reported that Novograd-Volynsk was taken today at dawn. The staff has moved out of Krapivno and our transport sprawls in a noisy rearguard along the highway that runs from Brest to Warsaw and was built on the bones of peasant men by Nicholas the First.

Salt by Isaac Babel

Babel

Salt by Isaac Babel

Isaak Bábel / Sal

Dear Comrade Editor, I want to tell you of some ignorant women who are harmful to us. I set my hopes on you, that you who travel around our nation's fronts, have not overlooked the far-flung station of Fastov, lying afar beyond the mountains grand, in a distant province of a distant land, where many a jug of home-brewed beer we drank with merriment and cheer. About this aforementioned station, there is much you can write about, but as we say back home: you can shovel til the cows come home, but the master's dung heap never gets no smaller. So I will only describe what my eyes have seen in person.

Awakening by Isaac Babel

 

Ilstration by J. Roybal

Awakening 

by Isaac Babel

Translated from the Russian by Maxim D. Shrayer.

Isaak Bábel / El despertar

All the people in our circle—brokers, shopkeepers, bank clerks, and steamship office workers—taught their children music. Our fathers, seeing no future for themselves, came up with a lottery. They played it out on the bones of little people. More than any other city, Odessa was possessed with this madness. And it’s true—for decades our city supplied the concert halls of the entire world with wunderkinds. Mischa Elman, Zimbalist, Gabrilowitsch came from Odessa, and Jascha Heifetz started out in our city.

My First Goosen by Isaac Babel

My First Goosen 

by Isaac Babel

Translated by Peter Constantine

Isaak Bábel / Mi primer ganso

Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose — his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to the side, his medals pinned to his chest — splitting the hut in two like a banner splitting the sky. He smelled of perfume and the nauseating coolness of soap. His long legs looked like two girls wedged to their shoulders in riding boots.