Konstantin Paustoysky
REMINISCENCES OF BABEL'
I Can Guarantee You Maupassants
An issue of
The Seaman
carried a short story entitled "The
King."
It
was signed:
I.
Babel.
The story was about the chieftain of the Odessa bandits, Ben–
zion Krik (better known as Benya Krik), forcibly marrying off
his
faded sister Dvoirah to a puny, whimpery thief. The thief was only
marrying Dvoirah out of intolerable fear of Benya.
This was one of Babel's first Moldavanka
2
stories.... The
piece was written tersely and precisely. It hit you in the face like
seltzer. Ever since I was a boy, I have felt that certain literary
works were a form of witchcraft. After I had read "The King," I
knew that a new sorcerer had entered Russian literature and that
whatever this man was to write it would never be feeble or color–
less....
Babel was brought into the editorial offices of
The Seaman
by
Izya Lifshits and I don't believe I had ever met a man who looked
1.
In Paustovsky's reminiscences, published last year
in
Moscow, the
novelist tells of his early life in Kiev, where he was born
in 1892,
and
of the small but vivid literary world of Odessa in the fint yean after
the revolution. This excerpt about his friend, Isaac Babel, is noteworthy
for its warm sympathy for Jews. Although Paustovsky himself il of
mixed Polish and Cossack origin, he is one of those Soviet intellectuals
who have recently gone out of their way to try and counter anti-Semitic
trends
in
the Soviet Union. In
1956,
Paustovsky courageously defended
Dudintsev's
Not by Bread Alone
at a stormy meeting of the Union
of Writers. In this connection, he spoke out against the philistinism and
anti-Semitism of the kind of bureaucrat depicted
in
Dudintsev'1 novel.
In recent yean, Paustovsky has been one of the most forthright cham–
pions of a more reasonable and liberal approach
to
literature..
2. The Moldavanka was the bandits' and thieves' district of Odessa.
