REMINISCENCES OF BABEL
403
when I can't manage a sentence. And how often they don't work
out, those wretched sentences!"
"But your prose is so smooth," I said. "How do you manage
it?"
"Only because of style. It's style that does it," Babel said and
let out an old man's guffaw, imitating someone, apparently Mosk–
vin. "He-he, young man, it's style that does it, it's style that does
it. I can write a short story about washing underwear and it will
read like Julius Caesar's prose. It's all a matter of language and
style. But then, you know as well as I do that this isn't the essence
of art, but simply high-quality-perhaps even valuable-building
material for it.
"'Just give me a couple of ideas,' as one of our Odessa
journalists used to say, 'and I'll try to make a masterpiece out of
them.' Come along and I'll show you how I do it. I'm tightfisted
and cagy, but dammit, I'll show you."
It
was already dark at the
dacha.
...
He took a fat typescript from his desk which was easily
two hundred pages long.
"You know what this is?"
I was puzzled. Surely Babel hadn't at last written a long work
and kept it secret from everybody? I couldn't believe it. We all
know the almost telegraphic conciseness of his stories; he regarded
any story longer than ten pages to he overblown and padded.
Surely there couldn't be two hundred pages of concentrated
Babel prose in this work. It was impossible. I looked at the first
page and saw the title-"Lyubka the Cossack"-and was even
moce astonished.
"For heaven's sake," I said, "I've read that "Lyubka the Cos–
sack" is a short story you haven't yet published. Have you made
a novel out of it?"
Babel put his hand on the typescript and looked at me glee–
fully. Tiny wrlnkles gathered at the corners of his eyes. "Yes," he
said, and blushed in embarrassment, "this is my short story, 'Lyubka
the Cossack.' It's only fifteen pages long, but here I have twenty–
two versions, including the last one, which makes two hundred
pages in all."
"Twenty-two versions!" I muttered, quite at a loss.
"Listen!" said Babel, who was angry now. "Literature is not
