Sicher, Efraim. Babel' in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 545 literary parallels between Polevoi’s and London’s works. MacKay points out what is common knowledge: that the year 1949 was at the height of Stalin’s antisemitic campaign to arrest Jews. Thus, explains MacKay, Etkind may have been writing the preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin when he was literally scared for his life. When MacKay discusses censorship, he does not settle for a simplistic approach. He points out that the first translations of Stowe’s novel into Russian were based on French and German translations, which were also subject to censorship. He admits, therefore, that he cannot determine whether it was the Russians, French or Germans who censored the material. He notes that the novel was also censored in the United States. In Russia, Gone with the Wind has surpassed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in popularity. MacKay argues for the continued relevance of the novel, though. He cites the issues of migration and labour, in Russia and in the rest of the world, as he states that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the first books to explore that topic. In sum, True Songs is an excellent book. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Ellen Chances Princeton University Sicher, Efraim. Babel´ in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity. Borderlines: Russian and East European Jewish Studies. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 309 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes. Index. $80.00. Writing about Isaak Babel´ is no easy matter. The subtlety and complexity of his prose style, his tendency to mythologize his own biography and his slippery relationship with Soviet power all require the deftest and most delicate of treatments, despite — or perhaps because of — the often shocking frankness of his subject matter. Few scholars have done as much to illuminate Babel´’s life and works as Efraim Sicher. The introduction and seven chapters — parts of which have been published before — that make up Babel´ in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity examine him from a variety of distinct, yet complementary perspectives, producing something more akin to a fragmented modernist portrait than a full psychological study in the realist mode. A substantial first chapter explores the deceptive autobiographical elements in his works, juxtaposing these with other sources that shed somewhat different light on the circumstances of his life itself. The next three chapters — forming a particularly coherent thematic and structural core to the book — explore Babel´’s place in Soviet Jewish letters. Sicher is particularly adroit when it comes to uncovering a layer of Hebrew and Yiddish collocations that hide under the surface of his fastidious literary Russian; as many of Babel´’s readers will lack SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 546 fluency in these languages, Sicher’s approach here is particularly welcome. Sicher also examines Babel´’s writing in the context of the cosmopolitan and multilingual city of Odessa, as well as his interest in and attraction to myth. A subsequent chapter turns to the well-attested influence of Maupassant, and the sixth contains a sustained consideration of Konarmiia through the prism of the semiotics of cultural identity. The book closes with a chapter detailing Babel´’s late attempt to write about collectivization. Throughout, quotations are given in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish and English translation, helpfully conveying the hybrid flavour of much of Babel´’s writings — something that has always posed a particular problem for translators, who often smooth out the variegated texture of his language. As well as Sicher’s own multifarious insights, the book will be of interest for its substantial bibliography of primary sources. Alongside Sicher’s recurrent focus on Babel´’s place in Soviet Jewish literature, there is a further theme running through this collection, boldly stated towards the end of the book, but always present throughout its particular arguments: ‘There can be little doubt as to Babel´’s sympathies when writing his 1920 Diary, nor should we mistake the moral position of the author in Red Cavalry’ (p. 208). For Sicher, Babel´’s empathy is as important as his fascination with what Frank O’Connor dubbed ‘the romanticism of violence’. Sicher’s ethically inflected interpretation, borne out of his interest above all in issues of identity, rather than the almost Nietzschean aestheticism...