My First Goose (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

After his first publications in Maxim Gorky’s Petrograd – based journal Letopis, Babel next wrote as a war correspondent. Following the Red Army, he wrote the stories and reports that were collected as Red Cavalry, published to an enthusiastic Russian audience in 1926. The first English edition came out in 1929. His next collection, The Odessa Tales, was published in 1931, but the English edition in which these appear, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, did not come out until 1955, after Babel’s death. Babel’s work has received a complicated critical reception. Considered exemplary from a literary standpoint, his work was not strictly propa – gandistic. As a war correspondent, or “propaganda officer,” Babel was expected to use literature to spread socialist views. While full of political and moral motifs, the stories remain ambiguous as to any final opinion. Instead, they are atmospheric, intense and confusing; their narrators present an amalgam of seemingly contradictory ideas and emotions. Some have interpreted this as a cagey way for Babel to avoid speaking his true feelings as an unconventional Jew. The evasiveness strikes a peculiar emotional chord, as well. In his ambiguity, Babel seems to take the advice of one of his own characters in a very early sketch, a grandmother, who advises a young boy, “Don’t give them your heart.” In a later story, “In the Basement,” he describes himself as “untruthful . . . inflamed.”

Because of a failure to pursue the “straight line” of socialist ideology in his writing, Babel became unpopular with the Russian government and faced criticism and pressure from above. Rather than bend to restrictions on his work, Babel instead censored himself and ceased to produce for long periods of time. He had his defenders: Gorky championed Babel’s complexity from the beginning of his beleaguered career. In an early letter responding to a harsh newspaper critique by Cavalry commander Semyon Budyonny, Gorky wrote, “It is impossible under these conditions to make very strict demands of ideological consistency” upon writers such as Babel, that is, writers bearing witness to the vast and violent. He also was referring to the “condition” of Babel’s acute sensitivity. Other critics have marveled at Babel’s strange ability to convey the dark passion of war without romanticizing it, and his ability to take an ironic stance without seeming unsympathetic. Revered literary critic Irving Howe, in an essay for The New Republic, recognized in 1955 that Babel was “the master of his genre.”

After the publication of his second collection, Babel entered a self – imposed silence, choosing to remain unpublished though he continued to write plays, sketches, and stories, and to keep a personal diary. Continued refusal on his part to comply with government demands on his writing, and accusations of espionage which have never been confirmed as true, led to Babel’s arrest. Though conflicting stories of his death still circulate, ranging from suicide to pneumonia, it is now known that he was executed after a short trial.

While his small literary output is in part the result of his resistance to spouting political dogma, it also reflects Babel’s fragile nature. In late interviews and speeches he explained his silence by claiming that he had little to say, adding that he did not want to punish his readers with bad writing. Critics noted that while giving these speeches, he appeared weak and resigned. Yet many contemporary writers continue to lament his fate and consider his writing some of the most important and haunting Russian literature. He continues to influence writers today. As facts about his life and eventual arrest continue to unfold and as new works are discovered and translated, Babel remains of serious interest to literary scholars worldwide.