The Paradox ofRed Cavalry

Abstract

In Red Cavalry the first story sets the tone: horrific violence thrust upon the unsuspecting narrator and reader, accompanied by a question at the end for which there is, and can be, no response. And now should wish to know... should wish to know where in the whole world you could find another father like my father? asks the daughter whose father has been butchered before her eyes.1 The question itself, we are told, is delivered sudden and terrible violence. In Babel's cycle of stories, violence that is sudden and terrible appears generic to the world he describes. That disturbing feature generates an equally compelling need to understand; these two aspects of the tales are inextricably united in the minds of both teller and reader. The focus of this essay will be on this fearful, human union, bom of that need for understanding linked to mindless brutality. Like questions pervade the cycle. While Liutov, the most prominent consciousness of the work, is clearly and most consistently seeking to understand, throughout the tales there are numerous other seekers posing their own questions to which there are no answers. Old Gedali wants to know how he is to say Yes to the Revolution, when it sends out in front nought but shooting... In frustration the old man articulates in querying paraphrase what it is that he does not understand: I cannot do without shooting, because am the Revolution. In response to his implicit question (How can that be? How can the idea of universal brotherhood be squared with universal shooting?), the old man hears only his own paraphrase directed back at him, with added ironic overtones: She cannot do without shooting, Gedali... because she is the Revolution. Pointing out that both sides are principally occupied with shooting, Gedali asks: Then how is Gedali to tell which is Revolution and which is Counter-Revolution?... Woe unto us, where is the joy-giving Revolution? (70-71). He gets no answer; both urgent questioner and author of ironic rejoinders fall into silence. As a further, deeper irony, not only does the old man receive no response, but Liutov as well must do without answers. Finally, since Liutov, as the principal voice, can provide little understanding, the reader is also left essentially on his own to unravel the terrible enigma of human being that Babel repeatedly and variously poses within the collection as a whole.