The Urbanites and the New Existentialism

The Gorozhane (The Urbanites) was the first independent literary association to seek official recognition since the early 1930s. As such, the group represents the emergence of a transitional social sphere in the Soviet Union. While insisting on their autonomy and non-engagement with Soviet cultural and political life, the Urbanites nevertheless were not content to remain underground and sought recognition from official Soviet institutions. The group is also an example of the simultaneous adaptation and depoliticization of early revolutionary culture in the 1960s. Actively modeling themselves on the literary collectives of the early post-revolutionary period and drawing on the arsenal of literary tools developed by Russian and Soviet modernists (Andrey Platonov, Isaac Babel, Yuri Olesha, and others), the Urbanites nevertheless viewed literature as a radically autonomous sphere, existing outside of politics, history, and ideology, and adopted modernist literary devices without regard for the historical circumstances and ideological conflicts that shaped them.

3. The age of anxiety

“The age of anxiety” surveys Jewish thought and literature from the end of the nineteenth century to the Second World War, starting with Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. The works of Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and Bruno Schulz are worthy of examination. In particular, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is an invaluable prism through which to understand diaspora Jewish life in the first third of the twentieth century, illustrating the perception of alienation and monstrosity. The works of these writers manifest the anxiety experienced by Jews as they realized how vulnerable their status was in secular European culture. Such anxiety was prescient, foreshadowing the Holocaust.

Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction explores modern Jewish literature from 1492 to the early twenty-first century, rotating around the concept of aterritoriality to appreciate the diasporic journey Jews have embarked on across geographic and linguistic spheres to the present day. At the center are canonical figures like Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, Bruno Schulz, Anne Frank, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Jacobo Timerman, Moacyr Scliar, and Susan Sontag. Unlike the output of other national literatures, Jewish literature does not have a fixed address. As a result, its practitioners are at once insiders and outsiders.

THE HUMANE ASPIRATIONS IN ISAAC BABEL’S RED CAVALRY

Isaac Babel is an exceptional Russian-Jewish writer of Russian literature. The writer himself and his best work Red Cavalry have truly become a remarkable phenomenon in Russian and world literature. Through Red Cavalry, Babel not only helps readers understand more about the life, the fighting process as well as the virtues and the ideal of the Red Army Cossack soldiers, but also allows them to see the human values, human nature, simple wishes and noble aspirations of people, especially the Jewish intellectuals in violent war situations. His readers, therefore, pay even more respect for this talented and brave writer, and at the same time, earn a more comprehensive view of a highly turbulent period of the Russian-Soviet literature. With an uncommon psychological view used in approaching the works written about war, this article hopes to highlight the issues mentioned above.

Literary rhythm of the cycle by Isaac Babel “Red Cavalry”

This article examines the cycle by Isaac Babel “Red Cavalry in the context of literary trends of the 1920s. I. Babel avoided various literary organizations and loud manifestos; therefore, his role within the post-revolutionary literary system remains somewhat isolated: he had a reputation of a realist writer (although with some reservations) mostly due to specifically historical backstory of his military cycle. In this regard, his literary style is rarely viewed as a phenomenon of modernist literature – metareflective, intertextual, centered on the experiments with literary form. However, the works of I. Babel can be viewed as a characteristic to modernism phenomenon of “synthesis of arts” – not only painting and cinematography, but music as well. His musicality is traced both on the semantic level and particular recurring images, an on the level of rhythmic structure of the text. The article demonstrates “pretexts” (genre and stylistic models) that underlie the cycle “Red Cavalry”: folk songs, revolutionary marches, poetry of French symbolism (namely A. Rimbaud), which targeted to substitute versification with a rhythmic prose. Thus, some elements of I. Babel's prose are interpreted as variations of a free verse, which corresponds to the draft genre definitions given by the author to his stories, as well as to his writing style testified by some of his contemporaries.

Простір одеського дворику в романі Ганни Костенко „Цурки-Гілкиˮ

The article analyzes Anna Kostenko’s novel Tsurky-Gylky, the main attention in research is focused on the space of the Odessa courtyard, masterfully depicted by the author. The Odessa courtyard is an essential component of the Odessa myth. The body of texts depicting the “Odessa myth” in fiction is quite large, since the poems written by Alexander Pushkin the city has become a part of many works of literature. Today, the most viable myth is the Odessa myth created by Isaac Babel. The components of the myth are known: the romanticized image of criminal life, subtle humor, often on the verge of sarcasm; unprecedented generosity and hospitality. To analyze the novel, we suggest establishing a conceptual system. The most complete concept of “myth” in the context of the semiotics of the city is analyzed in the studies of the Moscow-Tartu school, which, in particular, researched such aspects as space, the structure of myth – V. Toporov; the definition of myth, myth and name – A. Piatyhorskiy, B. Uspenskiy, Y. Lotman and others. In conclusion, the restriction of space for the events that take place within one courtyard, thickens the text of the novel, respectively, the semiotic systems and hierarchies are superimposed on each other. The concepts of good and evil lose their “classic” connotative meanings. This is a kind of purgatory through which strangers passthus subsequently affecting the life of those living there.

A figura do mundo na dispersão dos seus fragmentos: o exército de cavalaria, de Isaac Bábel

O presente artigo desenvolve uma leitura de O exército de cavalaria (1926), de Isaac Bábel, focalizando, especialmente, a linguagem do autor, a estrutura narrativa e o papel desempenhado pelo narrador protagonista e por sua trajetória de formação. Por meio da análise de três contos (“A travessia do Zbrutch”, “O filho do rabino” e “Berestiechko”), são tratadas questões concernentes à representação da matéria épica, ao efeito geral de paradoxo, conflito e choque observável na obra e, finalmente, à possibilidade de caracterizar o livro de Bábel como um romance modernista.