Odessa stories. Odessa flavor in "Odessa stories" by I. E. Babel Isaac Babel king analysis

I. E. Babel liked to repeat the saying: “Power is thirsty, and only sadness quenches the heart.” This fascination with power, which led the writer to an early death, manifested itself in his works as an all-encompassing interest in the liberated, free, primordial forces of life. The Odessa Tales became the apotheosis of the liberated forces of life. I. E. Babel always romanticized Odessa. He saw it not like other cities, inhabited by people who "foreshadowed the future": in Odessa there was joy, "ardor, lightness and charming - sometimes sad, sometimes touching - a sense of life." Life could be both good and bad, but in any case "extraordinarily interesting." It was this attitude to life that the writer wanted to instill in a person who had survived the revolution and entered a world full of new and unforeseen difficulties. Therefore, Odessa in "Odessa Tales" is an image of a world where a person is thrown open to meet life.

In Babel Odessa, this world is turned upside down. The outskirts of the city have been turned into a stage, into a theater where dramas and passions are played out. Everything is taken out into the street: weddings, and family quarrels, and deaths, and funerals. Everyone participates in the action, laughing, fighting, eating, cooking, changing places. If this is a wedding, then the tables are placed "in the whole street of the yard", and there are so many of them that they "stick their tail out of the gate on the hospital street" ("King"). If this is a funeral, then such a funeral, which “Odessa has not yet seen, but the world will not see” (“How It Was Done in Odessa”).

In this world, the "sovereign emperor" is placed below the street "king" Benny Krik, and official life, its norms, its dry escheat laws are ridiculed, lowered, destroyed by laughter. This world is inhabited, in essence, by fantastic figures.

Such, for example, is Benya Krik, the son of the old binduzhnik Mendel Krik. In reality, he belonged to that Jewish population, which bowed three deaths before the city and district overseer, was limited in rights and choice of occupation. But Benya Krik is Odessa's Robin Hood, a noble knight, although this chivalry is more than peculiarly mixed with philistine ideas and actions. He and his henchmen brandish their weapons, but are in no hurry to use them. They have "friendly Brownings" in their hands.

The robbery, which is described in the story "How it was done in Odessa", is presented not at all as a criminal offense, but as a game, a kind of theater for oneself, where everyone played roles: some were robbers, others were victims, but at the same time they did not cease to be kind acquaintances. Odessa in the stories of I. Babel is a city with its own language, bright and original. It is free, full of deep meaning, expressive. The aphorisms of Babel’s heroes have become proverbs and sayings, they have gained an independent life, and more than one generation repeats: “it’s not evening yet”, “cold-blooded, Me, you are not at work”, “you have autumn in your soul”.

Rereading I. Babel again and again, one cannot but grieve about his fate, not sympathize with his inner torments, but admire his creative gift.

it is easy not to grieve about his fate, not to sympathize with his inner torments, not to admire his creative gift. His prose has not faded with time, his characters have not faded, and the style of his works is still enigmatic.

And now I will speak, as the Lord spoke on Mount Sinai from a burning bush. Put my words into your ears.

I. Babel. How it was done in Odessa

Written in the early 20s by I. Babel, the stories “The King”, “How It Was Done in Odessa”, “Father”, “Lyubka Cossack” and others form a single cycle, known as “Odessa Stories”. The craving for exoticism, paradoxes of life, for romantic extremeness prompted the writer to turn to the picturesque Moldavanka, its inhabitants, and everyday life. Criminals, Jewish clerks, merchants appear before us in an unusual light, since Babel's generous humor makes us forget about the harsh time and historical events when these stories were created. The protagonist of the Benya Krik cycle is the king of bean-duzhniks and raiders, the leader of the Odessa bandits. He is young and handsome, witty and quick-witted, generous and even honest in his own way. This is, in essence, a fantastic and far from its real prototype figure, because, joking and ironic, Babel set out to poeticize gangster courage, nobility, luck and smartness, chivalrous justice of Beni Krik and his friends - people of "gangster honor ". Acting as the Odessa Robin Hood, Benya and his guards rob the "heavy wallets" of the rich in order to save the poor people from unnecessary troubles and sorrows, because "the lining of a heavy wallet is sewn from tears."

Laughing and joking, Babel raises his heroes above the everydayness and dullness of bourgeois life, as if challenging the dull and stuffy world of everyday life. But this does not make the Odessa bandits less ignorant and limited than they really are. This contrast, along with the exotic setting, "savory" speech, picturesque costumes of Odessa raiders, dressed up "like hummingbirds", the brightness of events, make the heroes of "Odessa Tales" unforgettable.

The life of bandits, the events unfolding before us are more like the actions of some kind of comic performance than reality. It seems that Benya Krik and his victims are playing some kind of common game, perfectly finding a common language and agreeing amicably, if the need arises, without the help of the authorities and the police (“The police end where Benya begins”) . That is why the Odessa bandits brandish their weapons more and, in extreme cases, shoot into the air, because among them the murder of a “living person” is considered a great sin, for which you can pay with your life at the hands of your own comrades (“I took good fashion to kill living people). material from the site

I. A. Smirin very well defined the style of Babel's "Odessa Tales" as "ironic pathos", because behind the bandit "activities" of the knights of Moldavanka one sees not only a protest against the rich Tartakovsky, gentlemen bailiffs, fat grocers and their arrogant wives, but also the search for the truth of life. The contrast of the image, a peculiar combination of everyday life and bright grotesque, lyricism and cynicism, pathos and irony not only created the unique flavor of this cycle, but also led to the nationwide popularity of Odessa Tales.

"Laughing word" as the most urgent problem in the study of I. Babel's short prose. Characteristics of the novel "King". Death in the artistic world of I. Babel as the starting point of a farce scene. Analysis of the main characters of the short story "How it was done in Odessa".

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One of the most urgent problems in the study of short prose by I.E. Babel can be called the use of the "laughing word" by the writer. Understanding the category of poetics by M.M. Bakhtin, which is “realized in “ritual-spectacular forms”, “verbal and laughter works”, in “forms and genres of familiar-street speech”, it can be noted that “Odessa Stories” is more than a productive narrative field where the “laughter word” is manifested through carnival "laughter images", which constitute an essential part of the general poetics of the novelistic cycle.

The title image of the first short story in the "King" cycle is quite traditional for comic folk culture. The king and the jester, disguised as a king, are indispensable participants in any carnival, at the end of which the impostor is debunked. At the beginning of the story, the false king is the new bailiff, who represents state power. He is convinced that "where there is a sovereign emperor, there is no king", so he decides to raid Benya Krik (King of Thieves) during his sister's wedding. At the end of the story, according to the law of the carnival, Benya Krik, the real King of the Moldavian woman, debunks his opponent: “The policemen, shaking their backs, ran along the smoky stairs. The firemen were zealous, but there was no water in the nearest faucet. The bailiff, that same broom that cleanly sweeps, stood on the opposite sidewalk and nibbled on the mustache that climbed into his mouth. The cleansing fire of the burning area serves as a talisman of the wedding action, which the bailiff wanted to destroy, for which he was punished.

Carnival time is wedding time. In "Odessa Stories" the wedding is one of the main events in the life of a Moldavanka. Two weddings are described by Babel in the short story "The King": the marriage of Beni with Tsilya and Benya's sister Dvoira Krik "with a feeble boy bought with Eichbaum's money".

The marriage to Tsilya, Eichbaum's daughter, is accompanied by motives of abundance and fertility: "The newlyweds lived for three months in fat Bessarabia, among grapes, plentiful food and sweat of love." We can agree with the opinion of M.B. Yampolsky, for whom the love that struck the heart of the King was a new victory for Crick, and not a "defeat", as Babel wrote ironically, "his initiation by maturity."

The second wedding organized by the King is a buffoonery. A cry for Eichbaum's money buys a fiancé for her sister Dvoira: "Forty-year-old Dvoira, disfigured by illness, with an overgrown goiter and protruding eyes, sat on a mountain of pillows next to a frail boy bought with Eichbaum's money."

If the regenerating power of Beni Krik's wedding on Tsilya is conveyed through the obesity of Bessarabia, then in the second we observe the "protrusion" of the carnival world through an overgrown goiter and Dvoira's eyes popping out of their sockets. If the first wedding is a celebration of love, then the second is a travesty, and the “newlyweds” the forty-year-old sister Krika and the “puny boy” are a clown couple who will play their circus reprise at the end of the story: “Only Dvoira was not going to sleep. With both hands, she pushed her timid husband to the door of their marriage chamber and looked at him carnivorously, like a cat that, holding a mouse in its mouth, gently tastes it with its teeth.

Researcher M. B. Yampolsky draws a parallel between The King and the short story from Babel's Cavalry, Pan Apolek. According to him, Crick's courtship is a parody of the gospel story: Beni's orange suit and Christ's orange kuntush, Eichbaum's instantly healed blow, which immediately "rose" and the second miracle of Christ in Galilee. The literary critic compares Deborah from the parable of Apolek with her carnival image Dvoira. Correspondence is established on the basis of "symmetric inversion:" the elephant quality of Deborah's husband corresponds to the "mouse" in Dvoira, Deborah's vomit is savoring Dvoira's unfortunate mouse, clamped in his mouth ".

Referring to the well-known statement by V.N. Turbine: "And the Gospel Carnival", one cannot deny the presence in the Babel cycle of comic allusions to the "Gospel text". Despite this, one must be careful when comparing the images of Benya and Christ, Dvoira and Deborah, since M.B. Yampolsky draws a parallel between the stories published two years apart (The King, 1921; Pan Apolek, 1923).

Babel refers to the image of the wedding in the story “Father”, when he describes the raiders going to the brothel of Ioska Samuelson: “Their eyes were bulging, one leg was set aside, in each carriage there was one person with a bouquet, and the coachmen, sticking out on high seats, were decorated bows, like best man at weddings. The episode parodies and hyperbolizes the “wedding train” motif, which creates a grotesque image of the triumphant, protruding world of the Moldavian woman and compensates for the lack of a description of another wedding of Baska Grach and Benya Krik.

The marriage of the daughter of Froim Grach and the King of Thieves is not depicted by Babel, but, knowing that the word of Beni Krik does not differ from the deed, there is no doubt that the wedding took place. Most likely, her description did not fit into the artistic world created by Babel in Odessa Tales. The masculine Baska and the handsome Benchik would have been a comical couple, while the wedding itself, built on a monetary contract between Crick and Froim Grach, would have looked buffoonish, which made the appearance of the king noticeably faded in the eyes of readers.

Despite the absence of a description of a marriage of convenience, I.A. Esaulov notes that “in essence, the carnivalism of Babel’s artistic world is only external, since it hides a very rational approach to “dominion”, when everything is decided by money, not passion. In part, one can agree with the logic of the researcher's thoughts, but the material background of the events does not correspond to the romanticized artistic world of Moldavanka, in which, according to Babel, "passion rules."

If we turn to the original origins of the wedding, then in itself it goes back to the ritual meal, "producing" the genus. Therefore, when analyzing the wedding of Dwyra Creek, banquet images deserve special attention.

On the creative power of food and drink M.M. Bakhtin wrote: “Eating and drinking is one of the most important manifestations of the life of the grotesque body. The features of this body are its openness, incompleteness, its interaction with the world. The body goes beyond its boundaries here.

At the beginning of the story "The King" the preparations for the dinner arranged in honor of Dwyra's wedding are described: sang in loud voices.

The apartments have been turned into kitchens, where a “fat”, “drunken and plump flame” blazes; the symbolic expansion of the image of the hearth pushes the boundaries of the space of the artistic text. Hyperbolicity in the description creates a feeling of a universal feast, which is confirmed by the implicit likening of curly, “like snakes”, tables, which, not fitting in the yard, “poked their tail out of the gate”. The traditional image of the tiny eighty-year-old Reizel, the hostess of the wedding kitchen, is both a comic contrast between the tiny Reizel and the giant kitchen in which she "reigns", and a symbol of fertility (the Reizel is a hunchback, and the hump in the "laugh culture" is endowed with productive power). Fertility is conveyed through the description of feasting abundance: “At this wedding, turkeys, fried chickens, geese, stuffed fish and fish soup, foreign wine and oranges from the environs of Jerusalem were served for dinner.”

The energy condensed during the wedding feast gets an outlet: the Jewish beggars, “having sucked like treif pigs” of Jamaican rum, knock with crutches, and the raiders begin to rage: “Leva Katsap broke a bottle of vodka on the head of his beloved. Monya the Artilleryman fired into the air. Drunkenness and beatings are an integral part of both the wedding action and the carnival-laughter culture in general.

If the wedding of Benny Krik with Baska is a “carnival hoax”, then for “wedding cuffs” you can take the beating of a drunken man by Lyubka Schneiweis in the short story “Father”. She beat "with a clenched fist in the face, like a tambourine, and with the other hand supported the peasant so that he would not fall off," after which "he fell on the stones and fell asleep." The scene looks comical, thanks to the comparison of the man's face with a tambourine and the author's commentary on the actions of the boy-woman. The top of comedy is an unexpected ending. Beatings ending in sleep, or a bandit raid, the result of which is a magnificent funeral, organically fit into the Moldavanka carnival.

In the short story How It Was Done in Odessa, the funeral of clerk Muginshtein, who was accidentally shot by a drunken raider, becomes a holiday that does not differ in solemnity from a wedding: “Odessa has not yet seen such a funeral, and the world will not see it. The policemen wore cotton gloves that day. Sixty chanters walked ahead of the procession. The elders of the synagogue of kosher poultry traders led Aunt Pesya by the arms. Behind the elders were members of the society of Jewish clerks, and behind the Jewish clerks were sworn attorneys, doctors of medicine and midwives of the paramedics ... ".

Death in the artistic world of Babel is the starting point of a farcical scene, for example, the rich man Tartakovsky meets a funeral procession that buries him, Tartakovsky, but there is a machine gun in the coffin, and the procession itself turns into raiders who attack the suburban thugs.

The Moldavian accepts death as a holiday, as a travesty, and even as a mockery.

The story "Father" tells about a stop in Odessa by Russian Muslims returning from holy places. One of the pilgrims is near death, but refuses medical assistance, because “he who ends on the way from God Muhammad to his home is considered the first lucky and rich man among them ...” The watchman Evzel mocks the patient: “Khalvash, Yevzel shouted to the dying man and laughed, here comes the doctor to treat you ... ".

As suggested by I.A. Yesaulov, such laughter is possible only over the “suffering and dying “stranger”, which is not part of the people's grotesque body, in this case over a non-believer. Within the framework of the opposition “one's own stranger”, the comical context becomes clear, where the episode with the death of the mullah is interspersed: drunkards lying around “like broken furniture” in Lyubkin’s yard, and Benya Krik having fun with the public woman Katyusha. Such a neighborhood, reducing the pathos of death, affirms the immortality of the life of the Moldavanka, which Baska from Tulchin saw, with "sucking babies and wedding nights full of suburban chic and soldier's indefatigability" .

Death in the carnival culture of laughter is also the other side of the emerging life. Davidka from the final cycle of the story "Lyubka Cossack" symbolizes the fruit of love of the weddings of the Moldavian described above. Babel deprives the genetic mother of Davidka not only of maternal traits (Lubka Kazak drinks vodka while standing, beats a peasant, swears, bears a male nickname), but also the ability to feed her child. When Lyubka runs out of milk, Tsudechkis puts "a thin and dirty elbow" into her mouth.

This gesture of Tsudechkis can be seen as a kind of familiarity that is established between the participants during the carnival. This also includes the abusive appeals of the heroes (Lyubka "prisoner", "shameless", "foul mother", Tsudechkis "murlo", "old rogue"). The original point of view of M.B. Yampolsky, who believed that "the cubit is the obvious "male" equivalent of the chest, but also of the barren phallus" . Perhaps this is due to the fact that Davidka's mother, according to Tsudechkis, is "mean" and "greedy", that is, in the carnival world she is "barren" and cannot have children. Then it becomes clear why Babel introduces the scene of weaning the child from the mother's breast. Now the hospitable, loving Moldavian woman will take care of the baby, whose carnival laws the wise Tsudechkis will teach Davidka.

Davidka, Lyubka Kazak, Tsudechkis and other heroes of Babel's "Odessa Tales" are flesh and blood "Moldavian, our generous mother". Using the definition of M.M. Bakhtin, we can say that Babel depicted in the cycle "the folk-festive concept of a born, feeding, growing and reviving popular body" . Davidka, adopted by a Moldavian woman, will take the place of King Beni Krik in the future, as evidenced by the royal name of the baby (cf. the Jewish king David). But the fate of the "new" King is hidden in the stories of Tsudechkis, which the author is going to tell about in the next short stories. Thus, Babel denotes the incompleteness of the Moldavanka carnival, which has stepped over the boundaries of the Odessa Tales cycle, splashed out beyond the temporal, spatial and official boundaries in order to gain immortality.

Thus, the analysis of the "laughing word" in the "laughing images" of Babel's short stories suggests that his role in the narrative fabric of the text is significant.

funny word novella

Literature

1.Babel I.E. How it was done in Odessa. M., 2005. S. 111 145.

2. Bakhtin M.M. Creativity Francois Rabelais and folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance M., 1990.

3. Esaulov I.A. "Odessa stories" by Isaac Babel: the logic of the cycle // Moscow. 2004. No. 1. S. 204 216.

4.Turbin V.N. About Bakhtin // Turbin V.N. Shortly before Aquarius: Collection of articles. M., 1994. S. 446 464.

5. Yampolsky M.B. Structures of vision and physicality // Zholkovsky A.K. Babel / BaBe1 / A.K. Zholkovsky, M.B. Yampolsky. M., 1994.

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When, having thoroughly admired the fire, Benya returned home, “the lanterns were already out in the courtyard, and dawn was breaking in the sky. The guests dispersed. The musicians dozed, their heads on the handles of their double basses. like a cat holding a mouse in its mouth and gently tasting it with its teeth." Using the terminology of cinema, we can say that it was a panorama shot from one point, including seemingly equivalent details: fading lanterns, a brightening sky, an empty yard, slumbering musicians, Dvoira and her husband. But it was precisely this couple that Babel needed to draw the reader's attention to, and he combines the phrases about the guests and the musicians, enters a new one after them, and modifies the final one: "The guests dispersed and the musicians dozed, lowering their heads on the handles of their double basses. Only Dvoira was not going to sleep With both hands, she pushed the timid husband to the doors of their marriage room ... "This, seemingly insignificant, editing allowed him to show in a "close-up" against the backdrop of the courtyard Dvoira, who had waited for the longed-for moment, and her newly-made husband, timid from the realization that it had come time to work off Sender Eichbaum's money.

The edition of this episode, in which it was published in the collections of 1925 and 1927, became the final one, which cannot be said about the story as a whole, because, as in that old joke, "you will already be laughing", but later Babel added to the text a dozen changes.

When the police officers, fearing sad consequences, tried to reason with the bailiff who started the raid, he, fearing "to lose face", categorically stated that "self-love" was dearer to him. Only, after all, the bailiff is not a police officer, and, moreover, not a policeman, who, to reinforce his own budget, did not hesitate to go to the apartments of wealthy citizens on holidays, where, in response to congratulations on duty, they brought him a shot of vodka on a silver platter and handed him a silver "rupee". And, unlike the city policemen, there were only eight bailiffs in Odessa - according to the number of police stations, they reported directly to the chief of police, were in an officer rank or in a class rank according to the Russian table of ranks and, one must think, they knew how to pronounce this far from a rare word, like self-love, with which Babel replaced the illiterate "self-love".

"Ennobled" was the letter by which Benya Krik asked Eichbaum to put money under the gate, frankly warning that "if you don't do this, something awaits you that is unheard of and all of Odessa will speak from you." Having once again re-read this phrase, Babel decides to confine himself to the colorful turnover "such that it is not heard", which is quite enough to convey the specific jargon of the King, and in subsequent editions, instead of the deliberate Odessaism "to speak from you", there appears an uncut ear "to talk about you ".

And at Dvoira's wedding, Eichbaum, who financed this action, at first looked at him with a "squinted eye", which smacked of a tautology, because in this case the eye always seems smaller. And in the final version of the story, the pacified and gorged father-in-law of the King, who was sitting at the table, is already condescendingly looking at everyone with a “squinted eye”. Back in 1921, Babel wrote that the raiders threw their gifts there on silver trays "indescribably by a careless movement of the hand," and now the word "indescribably" is crossed out, because, if you think about it, everything is quite communicable, understandable and explainable. Generous, but not devoid of posturing friends of the King, in defiance of the rest of the guests, emphatically casually throw on the tray not some banal silver spoons, but real jewelry, showing with their whole appearance that this does not amount to anything for them and, in general, "know ours!"

And in other episodes, a lot is taken "behind the scenes", where an attentive reader, as in a good movie or real life, can think of something, be convinced of something, guess something. That is why, reading about how Benya forbade the guests to go watch the fire, and the musicians dozed off, but did not dare to leave the yard after the last guests until his return, it becomes clear who "played the first violin" there. In the same way, Babel does not write directly about why Eichbaum at first did not agree to marry his daughter to Benya, despite all sorts of promises, such as a dacha at the 16th station and a future pink marble monument at the first Jewish cemetery at the very gates. But it is easy to understand that his main argument was something like Ostap Bender, beloved by his companions, "Who are you?". And then, outraged by such injustice and offended in his best feelings, the raider Ben Krik had to delicately remind the owner of sixty dairy cows without one about the long-standing source of his wealth: “And remember, Eichbaum, you weren’t a rabbi in your youth either. talk about it loudly? .." With this "you, too," the King pacifies the ambition of the obstinate milkman, equalizes him with himself or even puts him one or two steps lower, because, according to him, probably, breaking the will of the deceased by forging a will is a dirty business, unlike the "honest raid" ... More or less clearly emerges "behind the scenes" and barely mentioned in the story of Aunt Khan. She could be an old gunner or a buyer of stolen goods revered in her circle, like the famous Sosya Bernstein, who also lived on the famous Kostecka, and in the same house with her two male colleagues. This public often maintained a grocer, buffet or pate shop for the blaziru, where, for the benefit and safety of the case, they fed a small police fry, from which Aunt Hana could well have learned "in advance" "for a raid." Unlike Manka from Peresyp, she was not among the wedding guests and, it seems, was not in the "retinue" of the King, but she considered it her corporate duty to warn him of the impending danger.

Aunt Khana sent a young man to Bena Krik, who, no one knows how soon, arrived with Kostetskaya at the neighboring Hospital, only expounding his thoughts at such a pace that while he was getting to the point, papa Krik could well have had time to drink, eat and repeat this cycle. But Benya, being in worries about the wedding, did not have time to listen to his lengthy tirades, answer rhetorical questions and impatiently hurried: "I knew about it the day before yesterday. Next?", "He wants a raid. Next?", "I know Aunt Khana . Farther?". In Babel's "concentrated" phrase, even punctuation marks carry the ultimate semantic load and often become the object of editing. This time, the author after each word "next" puts a dot instead of a question mark, as a result of which Benya no longer asks, but orders, because he is the King, and his interlocutor is just Aunt Hana's "six". And it was flattering for him, communicating with the King himself, to rise above his lowered level, just as a soldier often dreams of becoming a marshal or a child stands on tiptoe in order to appear taller. Therefore, having fulfilled Aunt Hana's order, he, most likely, by his own understanding, monitors the situation near the police station and, with the start of the fire, reappears at the wedding, where he enthusiastically tells Ben Krik about it, "giggling like a schoolgirl." But Babel, looking around with the eyes of a diligent gardener, seemingly carefully "weeded" story, removes this comparison, since such a manifestation of emotions is by no means the prerogative of schoolgirls, as well as schoolgirls, students, students and other young representatives of the fair sex.

Finally, Babel once again "touches" and finally finishes off the first phrases of the story, because they are able to enchant, attract, intrigue, alert, disappoint or, God forbid, repel readers. Initially, in the newspaper "Sailor" the story began with the words "The wedding is over. The rabbi - magnificently beard and broad-shouldered - wearily sank into a blue chair. Tables were placed along the entire length of the yard." Two years later, when the story was published in the Izvestia newspaper, the rabbi, who in this case does not personify a specific person, appears before the readers devoid of individual features and they are given the full opportunity to complete his appearance according to their knowledge, imagination and understanding. And he no longer sits in a blue one, but simply in an armchair, which also has an explanation. An easy blue armchair should be upholstered in the appropriate color with velvet, silk or, in extreme cases, satin, but the inhabitants of Moldavanka could hardly afford such a luxury. Most likely, it was a simple hard chair, covered with varnish and equipped with semicircular wooden armrests, from the local Kaiser factory on Novaya Street, the last examples of which are still preserved today in the homes of the same last Odessa old-timers. After such a correction, the beginning of the story looked more concise: "The wedding was over. The rabbi wearily sank into an armchair. Tables were placed along the entire length of the yard." Before the next publication of "The King" in the journal "LEF", Babel supplements and recasts the third phrase in such a way that it is included in the chain of successive actions of the rabbi: "The wedding is over. The rabbi sank wearily into an armchair. Then he left the room and saw the entire length of the yard. And in the collection of 1925, the second phrase is combined with the third: "The wedding was over. The rabbi sank into an armchair, then he left the room and saw tables set up along the entire length of the yard." Now, it would seem, it was necessary to cross out the pronoun "he" and thereby "close" the phrase to one subject "rabbi". But Babel did not do this, because in this case the rhythm would have accelerated, and it might seem to the reader that the rabbi, as soon as he sank into an armchair, immediately got up from it and left the room. A short story is generally more “sensitive” to rhythm than, for example, a novel, which is why Babel used it as one of the tools for realizing a creative idea. And, as you know, the more tools, the better. True, there were masters who managed to work a masterpiece with just an ax, but the expression "clumsy work" also exists. Combining the two phrases, Babel omits the indication that after the wedding ceremony, the rabbi sank into a chair wearily. Indeed, this says little to the reader, who knows nothing about the rabbi himself - whether he is young or old, strong or weak. Subsequently, after the release of the collection, Babel removes the point between the first two phrases, combining them into one that is completely devoid of "mosaic", smoothly, easily and freely introduces the reader into the atmosphere of the story: "The wedding was over, the rabbi sank into an armchair, then he left from the room and saw the tables placed along the entire length of the yard"

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It seems, at least in the Russian translation, that the fourth chapter of Maupassant's novel Life, written eleven years before Babel's birth, begins and tells about the marriage of the main character Jeanne and Julien: "The wedding is over. Everyone went to the sacristy, where it was almost empty" . Of course, Babel could subconsciously and in general terms use the plot of one of the chapters of the novel he read and re-read - such cases are known in writing practice - especially since the words "the wedding is over" made it possible to avoid many unnecessary details and tie the beginning of the story to a specific moment. However, this is nothing more than a guess. But in any case, it is not necessary to speak of direct borrowing, if only because Babel stubbornly, for a long time and carefully finished the first phrase of the story, bringing it to a degree of perfection that satisfied him. And he strictly followed Maupassant throughout his entire creative life in another way.

In 1908-11, the complete works of Maupassant were published in St. Petersburg. And the young man, born and raised in the city, which was not in vain called "little Paris", introduced to French culture by Monsieur Vadon, at first, as they say, swallowed all fifteen volumes of the classic. And then he kept returning and returning to his short stories and novels pierced by the sun, "inhabited" not by incorporeal figures or moving silhouettes, but by the most living people with all their joys and sorrows, problems and worries, virtues and vices, nobility and deceit, passions and joys: "Dumpling", "The Tellier's Establishment", "Life", "Mademoiselle Fifi", "Dear Friend", "Mont Auriol" ... And the novel "Pierre and Jean" had a symbolic meaning for Babel , because in the author's preface to it, Maupassant most accurately, concisely and clearly revealed the secret of his work with the word: "Whatever the thing that you are talking about, there is only one noun to name it, only one verb to designate its action , and only one adjective to define it.And one must search until this noun, this verb, and this adjective are found, and one should not be satisfied with approximations, one should never resort to fakes, even ud acny, to language tricks, to avoid difficulties. Perceived as immutable and not promising an easy life, the edifications of Maupassant, who conquered the pinnacle of glory, could discourage young Babel, who began to think about literary work early, from his intentions. But they were also able to inspire hope, because if the master claims that one must seek, then one can find. And he erected for himself the words of Maupassant into a postulate, searched, as it were, found, crossed out, searched again. It was necessary to value, respect and trust the word in such a way that, often without a penny in your pocket, an extra sheet of paper and, as he wrote, "the lousiest table", in response to the editor's demand to submit a long-promised and paid story, half-jokingly, but categorically declare: "You can whip me with rods at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Myasnitskaya Street (one of the central streets of Moscow - A.R.) - I will not hand over the manuscript until the day when I consider that it is ready." And sometimes he could only smile disarmingly and kindly ask: "As they say here in Odessa, or do you want me badly?"

It is not worth trying to check the harmony of the story "The King" with algebra, but elementary mathematics indicates that, since 1921, Babel has made more than two hundred edits to it. Similarly, we will not list them all and even more so characterize them. Let us be like archaeologists who do not fully excavate an ancient settlement or settlement, leaving some of them to future researchers armed with new knowledge, approaches, methods and techniques. But there are a few more examples that are a pity to ignore.

Without telling, but showing the reader the yard where the wedding festivities were about to break out, Babel first wrote that “tables covered with heavy velvet tablecloths twisted around the yard like snakes with patches of all colors on their belly, and they sang in thick voices - those bands of orange and red velvet." Only in the second version of the story, Babel does not indicate that the tablecloths are heavy, since this, in particular, is the quality of velvet and differs from other fabrics. On the tables now are not "velvet tablecloths", but simply "velvet", since the word "overlapped" defines both its purpose and location, "stripes of orange and red velvet" are replaced by "patches", which tablecloths are named in the first half of the phrase. As a result of this editing, "velvet-covered tables curled around the yard like snakes with patches of all colors on their belly, and sang in thick voices - patches of orange and red velvet." From this phrase, not only nothing can be thrown away, but nothing needs to be added, and the orange and red velvet singing with thick voices is an unexpected metaphor akin to color music, which was born by Scriabin's beautiful "Poem of Fire" and migrated to variety shows, bars and discos. And “behind the scenes” a naive Moldavian force is highlighted, in accordance with which the festive tables are covered with velvet instead of crisply starched white tablecloths, so familiar at family feasts, in restaurants, in the Fanconi cafe on Ekaterininskaya street and in the tavern on Greek Square, which was nicely called once then "White Tablecloth". The multi-colored velvet luxury at the wedding of Dvoira Creek was, apparently, specially purchased for this occasion, because for the tables that "poked their tail out of the gate on Hospital Street", no master's tablecloths, even if they were available, would not be enough to collect but the King would never allow them in their neighbors. True, during a stormy and violent meal, something will certainly spill on precious tablecloths, wake up, or be burned with cigarettes by tipsy guests, but is it worth worrying when Eichbaum pays?

At the festive table, he was sitting, as Babel wrote, "in second place" by right of man who assumed the wedding expenses - from the purchase of delicious dishes to the payment of musicians, then, as they say, everywhere. The bride and groom sat in the first place, but it was purely a table graduation. In fact, the first person at the wedding was Benya. And his friends were not the last to stay there, whom Babel dressed for the first time, as they say, to the nines: "The aristocrats of Moldavian - they were pulled into crimson velvet vests, their steel shoulders covered red jackets, and on fleshy plebeian legs with bones, crammed into suede shoes, steel-blue leather wanted to burst.

But in this form, this phrase survived only the first edition, and then work began on it, as if on a canvas: doubts, questions, assessments, searches, finds, disappointments, replacements ... Is it worth mentioning steel shoulders when, moving into the raiders, the Moldavian guys, of course, did not pass the qualifying medical examination and in their midst, for example, impudence was valued no less than “pumped up” muscles? Is it really necessary to call the feet plebeian because of the overgrown bones on the feet, which are the result of gout, and it does not at all distinguish between plebeians and aristocrats? Can the comparison of the colors of the softest leather and the hardest steel be considered accurate, and is it not possible to replace it with the same color of celestial azure, which everyone has seen, but no one has felt? And isn't it more fitting for the courtiers of the King of France to show off in blue suede shoes than for raiders at the wedding of the King of Moldavian? Should the skin “want to burst” or is it better to write that it simply “bursts”, and it will be clear to everyone that the fleshy legs of the raiders for the sake of panache are squeezed into tight shoes, and it doesn’t matter if it’s shoes, boots or boots? Is it necessary to focus on the fact that crimson vests were velvet, if they were also sewn from cloth, wool or some other fabric, and velvet was most often used for curtains, bedspreads, curtains, tablecloths ... By the way, when I once asked about this old Odessa tailor Kramarov from Kartamyshevskaya street, he looked at me the way a specialist looks at an amateur: “You still don’t know how old I am? So in one month and six more days it will be one hundred and two years, exactly like on the dial , - he tapped with his fingernail on the old clock with a massive chain lying on the bedside table, - but so that I would never be one hundred and three if I ever worked on a velvet vest. Babel himself stopped "working" velvet vests and suede shoes for raiders who did not sin with sophistication of taste: "The aristocrats of Moldavian, they were pulled into crimson vests, red jackets covered their shoulders, and on fleshy legs the skin of the color of heavenly azure burst." Compared to the first edition, this phrase has become shorter, but the figures of the raiders are more clearly drawn at the wedding table, primarily due to the fact that each noun is now defined only by a single adjective, and one completely remains on its own without any, however, for him damage. This, in particular, happened with the story as a whole, from which, with numerous phased revisions, Babel mercilessly threw out no less than a quarter of all adjectives.

And about why, how and with what difficulty all this is done, how the perfection of the story is achieved, Babel, it seems, told Paustovsky back in their common stay in Odessa: “When I write down a story for the first time, then my manuscript looks disgusting, just awful! It is a collection of several more or less successful pieces, interconnected by the most boring official connections, the so-called "bridges", a kind of dirty ropes ... But this is where the work begins. Here its source I check phrase after phrase, and not just once, but several times... A sharp eye is needed, because the language cleverly hides its rubbish, repetitions, synonyms, just nonsense, and all the time seems to be trying to outsmart us. When this work is finished, I rewrite the text on a typewriter (so the text is more visible) Then I let it lie down for two or three days - if I have the patience for this - and again I check phrase by phrase, word by word, and I always find some more missed quinoa and nettles. So, every time I rewrite the text anew, I work until, with the most brutal captiousness, I can no longer see a single grain of dirt in the manuscript. But that's not all... When the garbage is thrown away, I check the freshness and accuracy of all images, comparisons, metaphors. If there is no exact comparison, then it is better not to take any. Let the noun live by itself in its simplicity... All these options are weeding, pulling the story into one thread. And so it turns out that between the first and last options there is the same difference as between the salted wrapping paper and Botticelli's "First Spring" ... And the main thing, - said Babel, - is not to kill the text during this hard labor. Otherwise, all the work will go down the drain, the devil knows what will turn into! Here you need to walk like a tightrope. Yes, that's it..."

In Babel's revelations, one can catch the intonations of Paustovsky, and this is not surprising. According to the author of the story "A Time of Great Expectations", this conversation happened at the end of the "merry and sad" summer of 1921 at the blessed 9th station of the Bolshoi Fountain after Babel allegedly showed him a thick, two hundred pages, manuscript containing all twenty-two versions of the story "Lyubka Cossack". But the story about Madame Lyubka first appeared only in the autumn of 1924 in the Moscow magazine Krasnaya Nov, and had it been ready, at least in the first version, in the summer of 1921, Babel probably would not have failed to give it to The Sailor or "News". And it's not just that. Judging by the story "The King" published at the same time, which looked more like a draft than a finished work, it is not very likely that Babel had already determined such clear principles for working on the word by that time. And if he did, then, being not the most open in everything that concerned his own creativity, he would hardly have begun to share them so frankly, especially since he never considered and did not behave like a master or mentor. And if, more than aspirations, he shared, it is hard to imagine that even Paustovsky, who treated him with the greatest reverence for almost forty years, as they say in Odessa, kept in his head everything Babel said with all the nuances and specific details. Or did he not need to remember anything? To substantiate such a daring assumption, we can recall that, having conceived "A Time of Great Expectations", Paustovsky arrived in Odessa, where he sat down in the Gorky Scientific Library, which he still remembered as "Publicka". And he studied there the dilapidated file of the "Seaman" of 1921, in order to resurrect in memory and, in accordance with the romantic mood of the story, then imprint on its pages the then headline of the newspaper, its paper, layout, fonts and, most importantly, those who printed articles there, the marine chronicle, essays, poems, feuilletons, stories. Paustovsky initially intended to make Babel one of the characters in his book, and, having read in the hundredth issue of the newspaper the first edition of The King, which he had already forgotten, he marveled at its striking differences from the well-known canonical text, scrupulously analyzed them, and then skillfully "constructed" the author's brilliant monologue about the writer's labor. And this is quite legitimate, since Paustovsky did not at all intend to turn the story into a chronologically verified list of the Odessa events of the early 1920s, but, as far as it was permissible in the late 1950s, he sought to convey the very spirit of the era and create images of some of the people who inhabited it. Or maybe things were different...

But for the first image of Babel in fiction, written with a benevolent pen, by which the author incurred unexpected, offensive and even insulting claims from the editors of the Novy Mir magazine, we should only be grateful to Konstantin Paustovsky. In the same way, those who, despising the danger of such an act, saved Babel's letters, deserve our lowest bow. Now, after the disappearance of his archive and the death of his contemporaries, they have gained special value, if only because they retained the living voice of the writer, his thoughts, hopes, daring, torment and confession, like what Ize Livshits wrote about: "The only vanity what I have is to write as few unnecessary words as possible."

Indeed, Babel tirelessly recognized and mercilessly discarded such words, built up, as he called, the "inner muscles" of stories, sought to bring them closer to the "great traditions of literature", which he considered "sculptural, simplicity and figurativeness of art." The sculptor cuts off unnecessary pieces from a block of marble, releasing a figure hitherto hidden in it, and one wrong hammer blow on the instrument, like one unnecessary word, can ruin everything. As for the speed of this work, it depends on the creative individuality of the master. Once upon a time, an Odessa woman who returned from Italy admired the local sculptor: “You only need to think how he made a bust of my arm in half an hour!” Babel worked slowly, but made a "bust of the soul", releasing the hidden romance of the Moldavanka from the block of everyday life. The sculptor first sketches out the generalized outlines of the figure rather roughly, and only then works out and finishes the details with a finer tool, but the intermediate results of this work leave with fragments, crumbs and marble dust. Visible, or rather, revered traces of the stage-by-stage implementation of the writer's intention may remain in his draft manuscripts and, as the well-known literary critic and textual critic Boris Tomashevsky stated, "all editions and all stages of creativity are important for science."

The manuscript of the story "The King" has not been preserved, but the five author's editions of its text remaining on the pages of books and periodicals provide a happy opportunity almost "from the first moment to the last" to trace Babel's work on the text, which, in addition to purely qualitative changes, turned out to be in the final reduced by ten percent. And it seems that it has become much shorter, because the reader in his perception of the story no longer slows down at sharp turns of the plot, does not make his way through the fence of adjectives, does not stumble over inaccurate comparisons, is not distracted by the contemplation of unnecessary details. And the aphorisms flying by like poles outside the car window only emphasize the swiftness of the movement: “If you don’t shoot into the air, you can kill a person”, “Stupid old age is no less pitiful than cowardly youth”, “The lining of a heavy wallet is sewn from tears”, "Passion rules the world." Continuing this "railway analogy", we must remember that the reader of the story "The King" then had an unsolicited opportunity, designed only for big originals, to transfer from a courier or, as they say now, a fast train to a so-called worker, who is not in a particular hurry and has a habit of stopping at every God-forgotten half-station or platform chosen by summer residents.

In 1926, Babel wrote and soon published the script "Benya Krik", which critics immediately called a film story and even a film novel, which, however, did not add any merits to him or to the film of the same name based on it. The first part of the script was an augmented version of the story "The King" "translated" into the language of the then silent cinema, and the laws of the genre, multiplied by the "rules of the game" adopted in the then "most important of the arts", did their job. Is it worth complaining about the fact that the magnificent replicas and dialogues of the characters turned out to be torn into narrow ribbons of titles, when the magic of the story itself evaporated overnight, its aphorism, romance, wisdom, dating back to myth, and laconism, reeking of significance. According to Babel's initial words, in the story of Benny Krik "it's all about the raid", and then this episode completely disappeared, Eichbaum himself disappeared somewhere, and the miserable informer who "settled" in the plot whispers to the bailiff the date of the wedding of the King's sister, as if about this the epochal event did not gossip all over Moldavanka ahead of time. And the sixty-year-old Manka from Peresyp no longer expresses her irrepressible delight with a piercing whistle, Benya does not advise her father to give up "these nonsense", Dvoira Krik does not stare carnivorously at her newly-made husband, but simply drags him to the double bed, and Aunt Khana's young assistant has no more to say To the king his eternal couple of words.

Aunt Khana, as you know, lived on Kostetskaya, and this specific address binding says more to Odessans than any lengthy description. In a different position, if not to say in ignorance, are readers from other cities and, especially, foreign ones. By the way, in the French translation of the story, the young man announces to the King that he was sent by "Aunt Khana from Kostecka Street." Only in Odessa they don’t say and didn’t say that, because everyone knows from an early age that Kostetskaya is not a square, a settlement or a summer cottage, but a street on Moldavanka. And in French it is impossible to say "Aunt Khana with Kostecka" - such is the specificity of the language, which, according to Babel, who spoke and wrote it fluently, "is honed to the utmost degree of perfection and thus complicates the work of writers." Difficulties and often insurmountable obstacles also arise when translating such specific expressions, phrases and constructions, born in Odessa and, as Babel wrote, "her own bright hand-made word", such as "Benya knows not heard", "what will happen to this?", "mines violate the holiday" and others. But the greatest difficulty is created, of course, by the skill of the author of the story, which requires, if not adequate, then at least a comparable level of translator.

Nevertheless, successfully or not very well, closer to the original or to the interlinear translation, but Babel's stories are translated and printed, periodically repeating this over the years and the emergence of new people who are eager for such a difficult task. And Hospital, Balkovskaya, Dalnitskaya, Kostetskaya, Prokhorovskaya - the legendary streets of Moldavanka, "crossing" Babel's stories, according to his words, today readers in England, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, USA, Turkey, France know., somewhere else. .. But only Odessans have the opportunity to touch the origins, look into the courtyards on Kosvennaya and Hospitalnaya, in which weddings once died down, whose echo remained in Babel’s story, go to the “original” addresses of Rishelievskaya, Primorsky Boulevard, Krasny Lane, where " King" was written, prepared for printing and printed for the first time in typographic letters. And only the inhabitants of Odessa have every right and have considered it their duty to elevate the 80th anniversary of the first publication of The King, which marked the beginning of Odessa Tales, to the rank of a significant date. And only Odessans celebrated it in the only way worthy of a literary anniversary...

If, without naming surnames, you pronounce "Borya" or "Sasha", then this will tell absolutely nothing to anyone, because citizens with such euphonious names in Odessa are like sand on Lanzheron. But if you say "Borechka", then everyone who is not indifferent to the fate of our city will immediately understand that we are talking about Boris Litvak, the creator and director of the children's rehabilitation Center on Pushkinskaya Street, the good angel of this, as it is called, "House with an Angel" . And those who have touched the cultural life of Odessa and follow the book novelties, having heard "Borya and Sasha", will immediately understand what they mean Boris Eidelman and Alexander Taubenshlak, respectively the director and editor-in-chief of the Optimum publishing house, whose famous philologist, Professor Mark Sokolyansky invariably calls them "optimists". Indeed, you need to be such that at your own expense, fear and risk, in our difficult time, a collection of Babel is published, moreover, in a very considerable circulation.

This idea was born in the basement occupied by the publishing house, shrouded in blue cigarette smoke and flavored with red Bessarabian wine, and then turned into a book in which destinies, principles, coincidences intertwined. It turned out so by chance, but it is symbolic that the publishing house is only a block and a half away from that house on Dvoryanskaya Street, where, at the behest of his father, Babel took violin lessons from Maestro Stolyarsky himself. But it is not at all accidental that the philologists Borya and Sasha, who, of course, would have found the words and time to roll up five or even ten pages of the preface, limited themselves to a few introductory phrases, rightly believing that in this case "the best preface There is an author's name on the cover. It was possible to include a variety of Babel's works in the collection, only publishers - the author's native countrymen considered it necessary for the first time to collect everything written by him about his native city under one cover and dedicate the book to the anniversary of the story "The King". It was possible, finally, without any trouble to emboss it in Odessa, but, unfortunately, it would not have turned out the way one wanted. And the publishers had to make several trips to Simferopol, where the local craftsmen managed to create a book, fine, like a piece of good bread and warm, like the gentle hand of a woman. And placed there, in particular, a wonderful lithograph by the famous artist Ilya Shenker, who has been away from Odessa for many years. And in his workshop now works inseparable from Odessa, like Odessa from him, Gennady Garmider, whose works on the themes of Babel's stories are also included in the book. Opposite Garmider's workshop, in the basement on Belinskaya Street at the corner of Lermontovsky Lane, Eduard Bagritsky once lived, and his pencil drawing, depicting the mighty bindyuzhnik Mendel Krik with the same whip and a glass of vodka, precedes the play "Sunset" in the book. And a kind of "invitation to the book" depicts on the cover a savory "red watermelon with black pits, with slanting pits, like the eyes of crafty Chinese women" - the work of Tanechka Popovichenko, whose ancestors from time immemorial lived on Peresyp, which, according to Babel, is better than any tropics. And what makes this book absolutely delightful are the words of Babel's relative Tatyana Kalmykova, full of light sadness and quiet joy, who still lives in the blessed Moldavanka, not far from the long-destroyed "family nest" addressed to the reader ...

I think Babel would be pleased with this book. As for the opus about the "King", it could cause the author's sly and ironic smile, since the story takes only a few pages, and I had to write about it .., however, the reader himself knows how much I had to write, unless, of course , he had the interest and patience to master it to the end.

A bunch of four short stories (“King”, “How it was done in Odessa”, “Father”, “Lyubka Cossack”)1, included in the “Odessa Stories”, is perceived as exotic sketches of the life of Odessa Jews, entertaining readers with the spicy aroma of Odessa jargon, extravagant antics of heroes and detective plots.
In the 1930s, Babel wrote the stories "The End of the Almshouse" and "Froim Grach", directly related to the "Odessa Tales".
How does Odessa in Odessa Tales compare with the real Odessa? “Odessa is a very nasty city. Everyone knows this." These are the first lines of Babel's autobiographical notes, which he entitled "My sheets". “Instead of “big difference” they say “two big differences”, and also “here and there”. It seems to me that one can say a lot of good things about this significant and charming city of the Russian Empire.
And further - in the same majestic spirit: “Think: a city in which it is easy to live, in which it is clear to live. Half of its population is Jews, and the Jews are a people who have hardened a few very simple things very well. First: they get married in order not to be lonely. Second: love in order to live forever. Third: they save up money in order to have houses and give their wives astrakhan jackets. Fourth: loving children, because it is very good and necessary to love your children.”
This, in essence, is a kind of replacement for the ten commandments - familiar and domesticated. From time immemorial, these commandments have served as the spiritual stronghold of the persecuted people, and in Odessa, they apparently acted quite effectively. It is no coincidence that Babel states: “The poor Jews from Odessa are very frightened by the governors and circulars, but it is not easy to knock them out of their position, a very ancient position. To a large extent, their efforts created the atmosphere of lightness and clarity that surrounds Odessa.”
But how is this system of spiritual self-preservation (and physical survival) of the people preserved without prejudice to their tablets in insulting and humiliating conditions - the “Pale of Settlement”, the percentage rate, pogroms? .. And, most importantly, do people manage to remain faithful to these commandments for really?
Four Odessa short stories form a very peculiar unity, the basis of which is Moldavanka. The Moldavian woman is the cosmos in which the life of all the characters of "Odessa Tales" takes place, where the co-existence of their being takes place.
The realities of Moldavanka, the Odessa outskirts, which stretches from Staroportofrankivska to Slobodka-Romanovka, these realities appear in the fragrant names of the streets: Hospitalnaya, Kostetskaya, Dalnitskaya, Stepovaya, Okhotnitskaya, Balkovskaya. But actually, at Babel, Moldavanka is expanding, capturing the whole of Odessa, with its central streets - Catherine, Bolshaya Arnautskaya and Sofiyivska, with a mighty port and distant Peresyp. Babel paints all of Odessa with “Moldovan flavor”, everything Odessa bears the stamp of what can be called the “Moldovan mentality”. It is this “Moldovan mentality” that Babel paints and analyzes, trying to comprehend its essence, its light and dark sides, its dynamics.
The appearance of the Moldavian woman, her way of life and customs, her types are a kind of carnival embodiment of the spiritual world, the spiritual substance of Russian Jewry. To the practical knowledge of these dirty, poor, cramped nooks and crannies of Odessa, Babel contrasts the enchantingly colorful, tetralized appearance of Moldavanka: “And then Baska from Tulchin saw life in Moldavanka, our generous mother, a life stuffed with sucking babies, drying rags and wedding nights full of suburban chic and soldier's indefatigability. The feast and luxury of the entourage of the Babel artistic world instead of the dirt and poverty of the real Moldavian woman is a certain challenge: yes, the Moldavan woman, whatever one may say, is another hypostasis of the Jewish ghetto, but this ghetto does not ask for compassion, its inhabitants do not need condescending pity. They know their worth and realize their place in the universe.
The narration in "Odessa Tales" is conducted in a solemn biblical style. Already in the story “The King” there is a reference to the Holy Book of the Jews: “Three cooks, not counting the dishwashers, were preparing a wedding dinner, and over them reigned the eighty-year-old Raizel, traditional, like a Torah scroll, tiny and hunchbacked.”
In a similar way, epic tales are usually performed by professional aeds and rhapsodists, collectors and keepers of the legendary history of their peoples. Odessa Tales also has its own rhapsodist - this is Aryeh-Leib. "A proud Jew living with the dead" - so, without false modesty, he certifies himself. In Jewish culture, cemetery beggars are a special caste: holy fools and saints, jesters and mourners, importunate beggars and wise philosophers - they wittingly or unwittingly act as the guardians of age-old covenants - after all, at least they know Kaddish.
Having sung his Arye-Leib, he leads in full accordance with the epic canon: “And now I will speak, as the Lord spoke on Mount Sinai from a burning bush. Put my words into your ears. Everything that I saw, I saw with my own eyes, sitting here, on the wall of the second cemetery, next to the lisping Moiseyka and Shimshon from the funeral home ... "Arye-Leib is an aed of" a new formation ", he does not repeat" the legends of the old days " He talks about what he saw with his own eyes. Aed chronicler, reporter from the graveyard wall.

In Odessa Tales, Yiddish tracing papers, Ukrainisms, and an elementary disregard for Russian grammar form such verbal corals that amaze with their grotesque splendor and some kind of graceful absurdity. Well, whoever quotes these passages: “What is such a dad thinking about? About drinking a good glass of vodka, about punching someone in the face, about their horses, and nothing else ... "; "Dad, ... don't worry about these stupid things"; "Listen, King, I have a few words to say to you"...
Presented in such a speech shell, the world of the Moldavanka acquires the features of a kind of epic legend, where high pathos is intricately intertwined with reducing carnivalism. And in the epic one should expect the appearance of legendary heroes and their great deeds. Expectations come true...
In this exotic world, among the hodgepodge of buyers of stolen goods, smugglers, keepers of brothels, petty brokers, graveyard beggars, the bearers of the lofty ideals of Moldavanka rise, her pride and glory, her knights. Who are they? Raiders led by their Robin Hood, their king Benya Krik.
Why did these same “knights” appear in Moldavanka, why did the “Moldovan mentality” turn these raiders into knights? And because those who
offended by any form of humiliation - in this case, the planetary outcasts, which are the Jews, entangled, like barbed wire, by a sophisticated system of state, confessional, social prohibitions and taboos - oh, how they want to see in their midst "knights without fear and reproach"! Fair judges and brave defenders, whose word is immediately backed up by deed.
The world of the Moldavian woman, created on the pages of "Odessa Stories", of course, in general, is a romantic world. “And then the friends of the King showed that blue blood and the still unextinguished Moldavian chivalry are worth it.”
And with what Flemish colors Benya himself is depicted: “He was dressed in an orange suit, a diamond bracelet shone under his cuff.” Or: "He was wearing a chocolate jacket, cream pants and raspberry boots." And this is how his friends look like: “The aristocrats of Moldavanka, they were pulled into crimson vests, their shoulders were covered with red jackets, and on their fleshy legs the skin of the color of heavenly azure burst.”
Here is how they go to a brothel: “They rode in lacquer carriages, dressed up like hummingbirds, in colored jackets, their eyes were bulging, one foot was set aside to the footboard, and in a steel outstretched hand they held bouquets wrapped in tissue paper” . Solemnly, in front of the whole public, they follow the cultural event.
In this parodic and decorative depiction of the raiders, in these exaggerated delights of the narrator and in the worship of the inhabitants of Moldavanka before Benya Krik and his colleagues, there is some kind of all-encompassing ethical inversion.
Why exactly Benya was awarded the title of King?
First of all, as befits an epic hero, Benya is endowed with some kind of supernatural qualities. His temperament is spoken of in the most sublime terms. “And now Benya Krik achieved his goal, because he was passionate, and passion dominates the world.” His oratorical abilities are highly appreciated by Froim Grach himself, the “godfather” of Moldavianka: “Benya speaks little, but he speaks with relish. He doesn't talk much, but I want him to say something more."
And indeed, how artistically sensitive Benya is! “Monsieur Tartakovsky,” Benya Krik answered him in a low voice, “here are the second days that I am crying for the dear dead, as for my own brother, but I know that you didn’t give a damn about my young tears.” And what a power of persuasiveness in his repentant word addressed to Aunt Pesya, the mother of the murdered clerk Iosif Muginshtein: “... There was a huge mistake, Aunt Pesya. But wasn't it a mistake on the part of G-d to settle the Jews in Russia so that they would suffer like hell? And why would it be bad if the Jews lived in Switzerland, where they would be surrounded by first-class lakes and mountainous air and solid French people? ? He saw a couple of trifles. What was he doing? He counted other people's money. What did he die for? He died for the entire working class.”

The narrator gives the word to Beni with reverence and delight. But how ridiculous and ridiculous this combination of high expression with sentimental lyricism looks against the background of literary speech.
Let's move on to the description of the hero's exploits.
The first feat of Benny Krik (short story "The King") - setting fire to a police station - was a sign of his self-affirmation. Once the bailiff said: "... Where there is a sovereign emperor, there is no king," - so Benya will show that there is a King! In Russia, the arson of a police station, or in general any damage inflicted on the authorities, has always been perceived not without approval: the authorities, not the authorities!
But the second feat of Benya (the story "How it was done in Odessa") - a raid on Tartakovsky - is not so ethically impeccable. “Let’s try it on Tartakovsky,” the council decided, and everyone who still had a conscience blushed when they heard this decision. Why did even the worldly-wise unspoken masters of Odessa blush? But because, although Tartakovsky is far from an angel, nine raids have already been made on him. The tenth raid on a man who has already been buried once is a rude act. Benya Krik, in order to be accepted into the community of the knights of Moldavanka, even transgressed the ethical boundaries that exist among thieves.
And then there is a whole series of ethical failures, paradoxically covered up by aesthetic magnificence. During the raid, poor Iosif Muginshtein, the only son of his mother, is accidentally killed. Then follows retribution, which is done through new blood: for the murdered clerk, the raiders finished off the killer himself, Savka Bucis.
The third act of Beni Krik, described in the story "Father", is difficult to call a feat. But still, there is something heroic in how long he has been working in a brothel with the “substantial Katyusha”. And especially in the fact that immediately after these exercises, he conducts business negotiations with Froim Grach about marrying his daughter. And if we keep in mind what this Baska, Froim’s daughter, is like (“a woman of gigantic growth”, “she weighed five pounds and a few more pounds,” she says in a “deafening bass”), then otherwise than as a feat, Benya’s consent You can't marry her...
In Odessa Tales, the legendary love of children, the cult of the family, and the tender reverence for parents turn into not only cynicism, but also violence against the most sacred human feelings. What is the scene when Mendel Krik tells how his own sons, Benya and Levka, crippled him. “He yelled his story in a hoarse and terrible voice, showed his crushed teeth and let me feel the wounds on his stomach. The porcelain-faced tzaddiks of Volhynia listened in a daze to the boasting of Mendel Krik and marveled at everything they heard, and Grach despised them for it.
Why does Froim Grach despise them? For the fact that they cannot transgress through an ethical taboo.
Why did Benya Krik deserve the title of King? It turns out, just for what he was able to transgress - to rob the robbed, to kill a person, to marry by rough calculation, to beat his own father. But “the first to utter the word “king” is none other than the “lisping Moses” (an absolutely carnival replacement for Moshe, the keeper of the sacred commandments, who, according to legend, was tongue-tied). This means that the highest authority - Moshe inside out - blessed the exploits of Beni Krik.
The author of Odessa Tales is most interested in this very process - the process of inverting ethical norms, the cynical trampling of the precepts inscribed on the tablets. Apparently, it is not by chance that the short story "Lyubka Cossack" completes the cycle. There is no longer any Beni, nor the story of his next feat. On the other hand, there is a story about the most terrible crime that traditional Jewish morality can only imagine - a story about a mother who neglects her maternal duty. The Jewish mother, whose mad love has long since become legendary, here "thinks of her son like last year's snow." A woman, whose nature is to be gentle and affectionate (after all, her surname is “Schneiweis”, that is, Snow White!), has turned into a rude, disheveled woman, in whom the pursuit of “profit” has completely atrophied maternal feeling. “You want to take everything for yourself, greedy Lyubka ...” cries out old Tsudechkis, “and your little child, such a child as an asterisk, must drop by without milk.”
Everything is turned upside down. Ethics is broken. Even piety turns into blasphemy in the scene when Benya orders the funeral of his murderer, Savka Bucis, together with poor Iosif Muginshtein. Now it becomes clear to numerous participants in the funeral rite that another bloody crime has been committed, and they are involuntarily stained with participation in this matter. And the solemn, magnificent memorial service ends with a stampede: “And so the people, quietly moving away from Savka’s grave, rushed to run, as if from a fire. They flew in chaises, in carts, on foot.
This apocalyptic flight is a spontaneous and therefore a true ethical assessment by people of the feats that Benya Krik, the hero of the Moldavanka epic, accomplished.
This result is not unexpected, at least for the Author. About the doom of the strategy of self-affirmation, which Benya Krik chose, a warning was made at the very beginning of just that short story, which told about his rise. Recall: The author-listener asks the epic narrator: “Reb Arye-Leib... let's talk about Ben Krik. Let's talk about its lightning-fast beginning and terrible end. It can be assumed that, conceiving his cycle, Babel intended to complete it with the story of the death of Beni Krik. Perhaps Babel had in mind the fate that befell Mishka Yaponchik, the prototype of Beni Krik.
This story is not in Odessa Tales. But there are stories "The End of the Poorhouse" and "Froim Grach". They represent the completion of the story about Moldavanka and her knights.

The almshouse at the Jewish cemetery, where the cemetery beggars huddle, is the bitter quintessence of the Jewish lot and the focus of folk wisdom. This world is collapsing not only because the Soviet power came in the person of Broidin, the head of the cemetery, but because it decayed on its own. Because the great covenants written in the Holy Books are displaced in it, because the tablets are turned upside down. That is why the Broidins manage to sweep away the old almshouse with such ease, like unnecessary rubbish. And at the same time, throw out of the life of its inhabitants - holy fools and saints, sages and Aeds.
And the story "Froim Grach" is already an epilogue to the history of the Order of the Knights of Moldavanka. Not with the death of Benny Krik, but with the death of Froim Grach, the whole cycle ends. And this is no coincidence. If we remember that it was Benya who turned to Froim with a request to take him into his business, that Froim gave Benya a recommendation at the council, then we can guess what was hidden behind Arye-Leib’s words about Grach: “... Then I already looked at the world with one eye was what it is.” But only in the last story this is said in plain text: "The one-eyed Froim, and not Benya, was the true head of forty thousand Odessa thieves." But when Froim came to Cheka and tried to speak with the new authorities in his usual language: “Let go of my guys, master, tell me your price,” in the language that was understood and accepted not only by the Tartakovskys and Eichbaums, but by police officers and police officers, - Nobody spoke to him. He was simply shot without trial or investigation, in a matter of minutes. And that's it. The explanation is quite Soviet: "... Why is this person needed in the future society?" asks the Chairman of the Cheka. The author clarifies - "who came from Moscow", that is, who does not know the history of Odessa, is not familiar with its legends and its heroes. But after all, the investigator Borovoy, to whom Froim Grach is dear in his own way as a legendary person, as a landmark of Odessa, also says: "Probably not needed."
This is the terrible end that awaited Benya Krik and the entire order of Moldavian raiders.
According to Babel, this world and its heroes doomed themselves to such an end by the very way of their lives. The code of anti-morality, the code of shameless mockery of the age-old foundations, which they followed with such chic cynicism, could not but lead to self-destruction
The carnival of "Odessa Tales" is the carnival of "terrible fun". There is such a Jewish expression, which is similar to Russian: "So funny that you already want to cry." This is precisely the aesthetic pathos of the Odessa Tales.
Why, for all that. Benya Krik and his raiders evoke sympathy for both the narrator, Arye-Leib, and his listener? And not only with them: even the Bolshevik Borovoy calls Froim Grach a “grand guy” and cannot hide his sadness when he was shot. And why do the Russian people have so many beautiful songs, tales and legends about Stenka Razin, Emelyan Pugachev, Kudeyar Ataman, Sagaidachny and Doroshenko? After all, they are robbers, thieves, rapists, murderers, rioters. Behind each of them are rivers of blood of innocent people. And they are called "people's defenders."
Reading "Odessa Tales", it seems, you begin to understand what is the matter here. The humiliated and offended compensate for the inferiority of their real existence with virtual permissiveness. And in the transgression of boundaries there is some kind of perverted pleasure and ugly delight. Of course, all this is a manifestation of ethical dislocation, moral corruption that affects those who drag out a slavish existence.
As long as the "Pale of Settlement" exists not only on the geographical map, but also in the minds of people, everything holy, good, humane, everything worthy and proud will either be cruelly destroyed or farcically distorted. No other is given.

1 Other stories that publishers sometimes include in this cycle only on the grounds that their action takes place in Odessa or nearby, in Nikolaev (“The Story of My Dovecote”, “You Missed, Captain!”, “The End of the Almshouse”, “Karl- Yankel, etc.), they don’t belong to Odessa stories - these are other characters, other conflicts, a different style.