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

Abstract

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.