Review
"I turn to Babel for reassurance that literature is capable of showing the real and terrifying mayhem that results when national systems collapse, while still preserving some modicum of love for human beings. If I ever need my ear tuned, this is where I go. Babel is a particular master of that unnamed space between sentences; the place where, in my view, a piece's real sensibility gets made: What does the writer omit, and how does he link his observations?"-- George Saunders, vulture.com"Thankfully, the entirety of Red Calvary is included in Val Vinokur's rich new translation of the "essential fictions," as well as a healthy serving of ten Odessa stories, plus numerous early works and extras. The result is a satisfying journey through the great Judaic author's work, beginning in relative lightness and playfulness, moving through a bulky middle inflected with the realism of reportage, and ending on a note of late enigma... The language here is absolutely rich, although also lapidary; an intricately latticed spiderweb that could support the weight of a tank. Let us hope that its strength is tested by many a reader this year."-- Veronica Scott Esposito, The Brooklyn Rail"Translation is the theme of Babel's story 'Guy de Maupassant.' A woman loves Maupassant passionately, but her renditions remain 'tediously correct, lifeless and loud...' The narrator helps: 'I spent all night hacking a path through someone else's translation,' he explains (Vinokur). 'A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a barely discernible twist. The lever should rest in your hand, getting warm. You must turn it once, but not twice.' Too often, Morison turns it twice, and Dralyuk not at all. Vinokur gets the right effect most often."
--Gary Saul Morson, The New York Review of Books
"Vinokur's lucid translation brilliantly conveys the vivid precision and the emotional edge of Isaac Babel's prose to the English-language reader."
--Anya Ulinich, author of Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel and Petropolis
"Vinokur inspires confidence in his ability to produce an edition of Babel's stories...more faithful to the original, both literally and stylistically, than any other available in English."
--Carol J. Avins, editor of Isaac Babel, 1920 Diary and author of Border Crossings: The West and Russian Identity in Soviet Literature, 1917-1934
'To translate Babel is to attempt to invent, or reinvent, a language--a Jewish language--particularly given Babel's predilection for marrying the argot of the underworld with highly sophisticated narration. What would its English equivalent be? Saul Bellow's high-low American English? Jackie Mason's tonalities? Mickey Katz's lyrics? Yeshiva talk? None of these seem quite right, but it is clear that Vinokur is willing to experiment. There is an iconic scene in "The King": A nameless young man interrupts Dvoira Krik's wedding celebration. He gets Benya's attention with a phrase that betrays a Yiddishism lurking behind it, with two twisted conjugations and a well-misused word. There isn't a trace of this in Peter Constantine's fine 2002 translation, but Vinokur takes a chance with "I got a couple things to tell you." The dropped preposition may not create a sense of an invented language, but it hints at something lurking underneath, as does, for example, "Benya, you know what kind of notion I got? I got a notion our chimney's on fire," which, too, is smoothed over in Constantine's work.'
--Jake Marmer, Jewish Review of Books
"Isaac Babel wrote amazingly powerful, stinging sentences of almost brutal, always poetic compactness. It is a gift to have these sentences in this collection of Babel's stories and short essays, translated by the talented Val Vinokur."
--Richard Bernstein, former book critic for the The New York Times and columnist for The International Herald Tribune
[Vinokur's] translations were done with attention, knowledge, and deference to the works of Isaac Babel - but most importantly, the personal inspiration and energy which he lent this great writer in the English language... Vinokur...has created a single volume that would, as the title suggests, encompass what he sees as all of Babel's essential fictions - including [Red Cavalry and the Odessa Tales] along with over twenty other stories, creating a perspective on the author's life and work. This perspective is evident in his notes, which offer a running commentary on stylistic and thematic issues present in Babel's work, and also provide a window into the translation process. Vinokur's project travels across a broad linguistic spectrum, covering a wider set of texts...[and] features illustrations originally created for Babel's Red Cavalry by the Soviet-Jewish painter Yefim Ladyzhensky (1911-1982), which embody an adaptation, or kind of visual translation, of Babel's work. -- David Stromberg, Public Seminar
About the Author
ISAAC BABEL (1894–1940) is best known for his short fiction, especially his tales about the Jewish gangsters of Odessa and the Cossacks of the Red Cavalry. A contemporary, Viktor Shklovsky, once described Babel as writing “in the same tone about the stars and gonorrhea.” Babel was executed on Stalin’s orders in 1940 in the wake of the Great Purge.
YEFIM LADYZHENSKY (1911–1982) began his career as a set designer, but devoted his life to painting after encountering Babel’s fiction, which he described as having played for him “the same role that the Bible and myths did for a multitude of artists—a reason and a stimulus for expressing my feelings and experiences.” When he emigrated from Odessa to Jerusalem in 1979, the Soviet government impounded his Babel-inspired paintings. To make up for their loss, he quickly completed the eighteen richly detailed drawings for Red Cavalry that are included in this volume.
VAL VINOKUR is an associate professor of literary studies, chair of liberal arts, and director of Jewish culture at The New School, where he also leads workshops in literary translation. He is the author of The Trace of Judaism: Dostoevsky, Babel, Mandelstam, Levinas (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and has translated several novels from the French with Rose-Myriam Réjouis.
