Title of the article:

THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN THE BIOGRAPHY AND WORK OF ISAAC BABEL

Author(s):

Pogorelskaia, E.I.

Information about the author/authors

Elena I. Pogorelskaia — PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bldg., 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000‑0002‑0668‑7320
E-mail: elena_pog@mail.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2024

Volume

Vol. 73

Pages

pp. 151‑164

Received

November 14, 2023

Approved after reviewing

January 23, 2024

Date of publication

September 25, 2024

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37816/2073-9567-2024-73-151-164

Index UDK

821.161.1

Index BBK

83.3 (2Рос=Руе) 6

Acknowledgements

The research was carried out at A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences with support of the grant of the Russian Scientific Foundation No 23‑28‑01239 ‘From fact to artistic image — understanding of the First World War in the works of prose writers and poets — A.N. Tolstoy, N.S. Gumilev, S.A. Yesenin, V.V. Mayakovsky, I.E. Babel’, Available at: https://rscf.ru/ project/23‑28‑01239/

Abstract

The paper discusses the issue of I.E. Babel’s participation in the events of the First World War, and what place this war occupies in his work. In his Autobiography, written in November 1924, the writer reports that he was a soldier on the Romanian front. This fact is not documented, but two stories of 1932, Argamak and The Road, mention military formations that operated during the war. The theme of the First World War was somehow reflected in some stories and essays of 1916–1918. The cycle On the Field of Honor (1920) is dedicated directly to this war, but its content is borrowed from literary sources and is dedicated to a foreign army. If Babel’ participated in military events, it was for a very short time. Apparently, therefore, the theme of the First World War was reflected in his stories and essays only in strokes and individual mentions. Nevertheless, for many years, the consequences and echoes of that war remained in the writer’s field of vision, which was reflected in his works not only in the 1910s and 1920s, but also in the 1930s.

Keywords

I.E. Babel, First World War, Biography, Prose, Journalism, Cycle ‘On the Field of Honor’.

Reference

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Luck, Christopher D. The Field of Honour. An analysis of Isaak Babel’s cycle On the Field of Honour (Na pole chesti), with reference to Gaston Vidal’s Figures et anecdotes de la Grande Guerre. Birmingham, Department of Russian Language & Literature University of Birmingham Publ., 1987. 84 p. (In English)

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