What is the profound truth that the young artist who is talented, and even the old artist who is not (Raisa) discover and live out in the seduction of their literary translation? That art is everything? That life is finite? That there is miserable war in France and Russia, and everywhere, then and today. That in the end, no matter how talented you are, even if you are the young Guy de Maupassant, whom Raisa claims is everything to her, you still eat shit and die? It is an amazing story in so few pages about youth and art and mortality. It took my breath away...made me happy and sad and desperate and gleeful all at the same time. What a story. I guess the feelings stand out because I write my own stories with an eye toward the ending, always asking the same question: "What from this story do I want the reader to feel?" Babel's target feeling is so much grander and deeper than I ever really manage. Nice. Thanks for the read.
I think you found the answer to my question "what foreboding of truth" is he talking about at the end? I guess the truth that no matter how talented you are, you will "still eat shit and die."
I have to say that, unfortunately and a little bit ashamed of myself for picking this out of all the great proses of Babel, how he wrote about generous/large bosomed women.
It happened quite a few times in the last story and it happened a few times in this story…
Now I’m going to reread Guy de Maupassant and try to find something more profound to say…
I loved all of the breast talk! It was so pure and honest. The allure of a pair of breasts--okay, we are perhaps not supposed to say such things, but there they are! Practically in our young narrator's face! How could he NOT mention them?
And he decided that the chamber maid with the high breasts (a detail he repeats, as if this is an assigned role) had a “hardened licentiousness,” right from the get go, and we realize what a goofy dolt our narrator is, full of glee and zest, in a way, imbuing his experiences with drama, as only the clever young can do, in short, full of himself, and I’m guessing he’s vastly inexperienced, despite his language proficiency and forged passport. But then the Muscadet reveals him to himself, and the view is not pretty.
I thought he was pretty funny. (Also ignorant, tossing off glosses on Jews that were more cringe-worthy than his obsession with breasts.)
I liked some of the bit parts here, that chamber maid doing her sinister walk throughs, and Kazantsev, with the downy canary hair, whose motherland is Spain, though he’s never been there.
Something or some things in all this felt very contemporary.
The narrator is Jewish, as is Babel. I wouldn't call his asides ignorant. Readers may find it all cringe-worthy, but it comes from an insider who has built up these ideas from his own life. People who live within a culture often poke fun or make comments about their own culture in a way that others are not allowed.
Yes, one of the things about Russia is that there is no . . . shall we say, shame regarding such commentary, even in public. A major CEO, in his online bio (in Russian), wrote of being 'a ladies' man,' (Russian: 'lover of the ladies') among his many other qualities and qualifications. In North America or much of the West one could not really do this . . . The distance between people is gauged quite differently, the word 'privacy' having little meaning.
This is not to say, though, that the attitudes are correct, or healthy. We're coming at it with our own views, often baked in when young, so a lot of this may rub readers the wrong way.
Such an important point. We can all poke fun at our own groups. Other groups need to only poke fun or ridicule their own group. This is how to not let cruelty and bigotry spread.
I wouldn’t call his asides ignorant either. At the same time, there was a whiff of prejudice there. Or at least stereotyping, which even in its benign forms is kinda demeaning.
I wasn’t sure what to make about his comment on wealthy families “without traditions” in terms of being Jewish or not. At any rate he wants to pose as a man of the world at age 20. (Then drinks five glasses of Muscadet and crashes down the bookcase. Which did endear me to him. Or rather endeared me to Babel.)
Yes, there is a grittiness that has been whitewashed. I love the earthiness. The passion. The drunkenness. I don’t think the CBC would publish such a piece today. Although the nature of man seems unchanged.
Interesting and refreshing to me that his observations aren’t about breast size or shape, but the “posture” of these different breasts: “high”, “downward-crushed”, “moving freely under the loose silk.” These breasts shift from being passive objects to /subjects/, girls of action, even lactating and feeding people.
I think it's fair to suggest his depiction of women is near-hallucinatory. Certainly in no way realistic. It's Babel amusing himself (and why not his readers?) with a version of his crazy younger self coming out of fear and deprivation and finding himself in a promised land of milk (if not honey), voluptuous women, well-paid work...
And fucking up completely. How much longer do we imagine that well-paid job will go on?
Wow - you hit the nail on the head here. I love the idea that the narrator is a young artist finally getting what all young artists dream of - a great job (and in this case, to be around an intellectual and beautiful woman) and he messes his up by his own excesses.
I could really take you to task here with "but they are practically in our young narrator's face! How could he NOT mention them?' If that's not supporting a misogynistic attitude I don't know what is. As a woman who was cursed from a young age to have large breasts I can tell you that having men talking to your chest when at university is not a happiness to have the feeling that you are just a pair of tits no matter what your intellect. I didn't mention it before because everyone is waxing lyrical about the 'art form' and whilst I agree it is a brilliant piece it is nevertheless a male and his attitude towards women - even though he acknowledges that she is a skilled translator ' her translation is wooden' and will never be as good as his and he gets what he wants from her in the end and don't you just love the generalization about all Jewish women's wiles how they send men crazy - as if anything .sexual happens it is their fault?
You are more than welcome to take me to task! I'm not going to talk about my own body shape, but let me say that I know well of what you speak when you say men spoke to your chest and not your face. I'm also of the generation that suffered through non-stop sexual harassment. At my University, i had physical harassment from a professor that went far beyond appropriateness. He was fired from his position. i say this to you so that you will know that i am not blind to harassment or sexual objectification. I, personally, do not consider it misogynistic for a man to notice a woman's breasts. I think the narrator in this story is being honest. That he was filled with lust for this woman does not bother me. That he found her translations wooden does not bother me. That he thinks of Jewish women in a lustful fashion does not bother me. There is lust in this world! Humans are lustful. Does he get what he wants from her, or are they both responsible for what happened? I stand by my comment that he couldn't help but notice her breasts. A reader has every right to find such views offensive. I simply do not. We all come to literary works (and all works of art) from our own backgrounds, histories, views, truths.
I enjoyed and admired the writing in the physical descriptions, and didn't find them personally offensive, and recognized them as what the narrator was experiencing. And they were funny!
But-- the prevalence of viewing women mostly or only according to their physical attributes -- has over time, in many societies -- been an example of what I see as misogyny- or a general demeaning of women. So, while I don't necessarily see the narrator as misogynistic- his focus on breasts, etc., while natural, and amusing, also adds to the history and culture of how women are viewed.
Yes we do come to literary works and all works of art and bring with us our own truths etc. As a painter I am well aware of the conversation between the artists and the viewer and as a fledgling writer, the relationship with the reader. Neither of these relationships are predictable or perhaps even knowable at the moment of contact, hence this exercise in noting what we are feeling when we read pieces like this. However, whilst I can appreciate and acknowledge the art form I cannot ignore the content.
I didn't connect the blunt body descriptions with the narrator's lustfulness. It interests me that others were able to. It changed how I saw the story. As a counter-example, I found the "wooden" translations to be a bit of a turn-off.
It will be interesting to read what George has to say next week after he goes through all of the comments and sees the very strong reaction to Babel's character taking note of breasts. You are completely correct that prurience and misogyny are not the same. What's interesting to me in these comments is that you can feel a lifetime of living in a patriarchy in the reactions. Being objectified can wear a woman down, and I can understand the exhaustion of it all. That being said (and as you know), I have no problems with this story and enjoyed the character's fascination with breasts!
Most societies have facinating pockets of nouveau riche people, most rich people are nouveau at some point, They often have amazing decorators and wild stories. But the way the sisters were looked after, with their little overshoes, was touching, and tender, and these juxtapositions always exist when Babels about
Having experienced much harrassment (in France, just walking in the street, not to mention the subway at rush hour...) my younger self would probably have been annoyed at seeing the women characterized as all boobs, but now I appreciate the narrator as a character in a story with all his shortcomings. An inexperienced young man under the spell of his hormones. Just one POV. Those breasts are absolutely necessary to this story! They bring us into this man's head. Now we need to imagine how Raissa (or the maid) saw all this!
Yes and I can also see the excellent description of a 'young man under the spell of his hormones' (see my first post). My understanding of the exercise was to say how you felt the first time you read the piece and to be honest my first reaction was as I have described. Yes I can acknowledge that this is literature, albeit of another era, and can see the skill and beauty in the prose. However, my point I suppose is where do you see this kind of description by women, in say the writings of Jane Austen. She doesn't have her characters wax lyrical about the bulge of Darcy 's crotch. And what I have written is a form of criticism which is pertinent to myself as an individual, not myself as a writer or graduate in English Lit. I am also pointing out the 'male gaze' so excellently described by John Berger in 'Ways of Seeing'. And yes we have moved on a lot since this was written.
Not sure where to jump in here, but did it strike anyone that Babel was trying his hand at lit-erotica? Like everyone else one of my first impressions was his fascination with breasts. But when I came to where Raisa brought a bottle and two wine glasses and "her breasts moved freely in the loose silk of her gown, the nipples erect under the silk.," I thought, wow, this is dialing it up a notch. And to what purpose? To ask a George question, what is Babel (or the story) trying to tell us here? It's almost a given that he is a young man under the spell of his hormones, and to me he is recounting an almost affair with an older woman. But does that moment add anything to the story? Is he recalling how besotted he is with Raisa this fateful night that her nipples are an important part of his experience? That may be important to him as the author. Or is he adding some soft porn to test the limits of what was acceptable at the time? Or maybe sell more stories? Happily Jane Austen didn't wax lyrical about the bulge of Darcy's crotch. Her books never would have made it into print.
How much fun someone is having at the time of writing can be a key factor. The mood. Are they sending up a style we’re not aware of or an event that was lost in history, or a melange of both. I never care with Babel. Im happy with whatever he gives.
Guy De Maupassant churned out 300 stories plus novels and other writings, in ten years.
His physical descriptions of the women jumped out at me, as well, even more so than in other Babel stories. It was even more noticeable to me because he formed a relationship with Raisa based on a common intellectual interest, but yet, all he could talk about was her body.
He doesn’t seem to respect her much. He finds her translations wooden; her allure is her body and the opportunity she presents to indulge his passion for literature.
I’m not even sure there’s a real relationship between them. He doesn’t really care about her. She represents an opportunity for him. But then again I do not find much in the text that describes any real relationship between them, not even something like a friendship.
I beg to differ with you. They have in common their love of Maupassant's stories. I imagine them bonding over it. I've tried my hand at showing her point of view here in response to one of mary g.'s prompts: https://maryg1.substack.com/p/prompt-14/comment/52295397.
Which is also kind of befitting if we think of Maupassant’s and Flaubert’s writing. I Wikipedias Babel learned that he was fluent in French and actually wrote his initial stories in French. Those early stories didn’t survive though.
This could be an opening to a larger discussion: how to write honestly, openly, even hungrily about sexuality without being boorish, chauvinistic, or plainly and stupidly offensive. Reading the story I was distinctly uncomfortable, thinking something like, dude, you can think this way if you like, but leave it in your head. Then I had to question my own response….something to do with the time period, and with the perspective (or gaze) we bring, or don’t bring, to the subject, that either upholds or discards the tendency toward objectification. (What a mess, but worthy of working through.)
I understand that a boorish and misogynistic narrator can be funny, or serve any number of artistic purposes for the writer. As a scholar of literature, I can analyze this story that way. But if I am honest about my first emotional responses to the story, I found the relentlessly sexist narrator exhausting and annoying. I hesitate to even admit it here because I still hear echoes of professors past implying that anyone (women) who objected to such things just didn’t understand art, but that was my honest response.
Is it sexist or misogynistic to speak of women's breasts? To lust for a woman's body? To speak openly of such things? This is a real question--I am not saying your honest response is in any way "wrong." To me, this young narrator is simply lustful--and he loves women.
He lusts after women’s bodies, but I don’t think that is the same as loving women. He shows plenty of contempt for Raisa’s intellect and shows no signs of considering women as his equals.
I agree it's not the same as loving women. That's not what the story's about. It's about a younger version of Babel coming out of dire poverty and rushing into a head-spinning wonderland of money and desirable women... and coming a cropper (not narrated but implied).
I see her translation as the first draft of an inexperienced translator. It just needed work. She focused so much on the vocabulary that she missed the music.
No, he doesn't love Raisa. I totally agree with that. (And when i say he loves women, I don't really know what I mean! So I probably shouldn't have written that.)
I was struck by the juxtaposition of ignorance and artist sensibility, intellectual subtlety and blatant sexual projection, the male-centered view and the extraordinary ability to undermine that very view by the particular author being discussed.
Me too! I also noted how privileged I am to be living in an age where we as women can talk openly about how cringey it is! Even while acknowledging that the writer probably thought it was edgy and original to record that kind of interior monologue.
My current situation may have affected my perspective. I am currently immersed in attending a new production of Wagner’s Ring, and the “love” for women, reminds me of Babel’s character. His view is clearly duplicated by Albericht, and I agree. Wotan whose only interest in women is either lust or opportunities for gain. Unlike the Ring characters, Babel’s is not trying to rule the world, he merely wants sex and a place to stay. He is more successful than Wotan. The parallels are obvious between the opera male characters and this story, albeit on a less grandiose level.
Alice, totally agree with you. And David S., as an older woman, it never occurred to me that it was boorish, or offensive. OKOKOKOK I'll leave the rest of what I want to say in my head :)
So interesting. I wasn’t necessarily saying it was offensive, but I know, even from reading the comments here today, there is a wide spectrum among humans concerning what is and isn’t offensive. I think my own private thoughts about someone’s body or sensuality might be offensive to one person, and welcomed by another. Big world.
Yeah I definitely didn’t think it was offensive. It was beautifully lovingly observed, by a young man who is appreciating details in ways that most young men would not. This boy has a generosity of heart
Alice, not to poke fun here but I'm impressed by the number of women who know what 20 year old males would be thinking. Back before the beginning of time I was 20, and my general recollection in conversations with my few remaining college mates is that I really didn't know what I was thinking. The conventional wisdom is that we were all sexed up with overactive hormones, and I don't deny the hormones. But I recall there was also a lot of anxiety, even fear, when it came to sex. Back in the immediate post WW-2 era there was no sex ed, no internet, virtually no porn that I'm aware of. Some of the dumbest, most embarrasing moments in my life -- which are still to me cringe worthy - happened because I had no clue , I didn't know what I was thinking because I didn't know what to think. I just reacted to what was in front of me. Obviously badly. I thinking I'm arguing against the convention that "we" all know what twenty year old males are thinking.
I thought it was kind of funny that it says 'autobiographical' stories, and not just autobiographical stories. As if the ' ' say: 'I'm not saying this is me.'
Oh yes! Honestly, I was alarmed and uncomfortable with the overt sexual comments about a Jewish woman. I wonder how graphic the Russian is and was worried about stereotypes. Then I realized that this narrator is 20 and hungering for experience and even just enough to eat and drink.
This is a good question. I'm not a Babel expert, but he writes as a Jew about Jewish characters. I don't know if he's written any story that does not have a Jewish protagonist. Perhaps George could weigh in here, though.
I hear you, David. I had that same struggle on first read. I kept thinking back to my theater professor, he was the guy who always stared at our boobs when he talked to us (the women).
It's what happens in the reader's brain when we read something from the past knowing everything that's going on now, we have all the reactions. Then, on re-reading, and realize how funny the narrator is. I think the reactions are all gold. I love reading the comments!
He’s a young guy, they think of sex how many times a hour? Is it 600? Or is that a day ?
He’s practically vibrating with hormones. But he is a romantic, from dreaming passionately about someone he hasn’t seen - to being enchanted by what he is seeing.
It is the details he writes about that elevate this story. And the beautiful phrases and wisdoms he punctuates it with.
I felt like he did leave it in his own head, where I happened to be, and he is a gentleman.
That was a bit over the top. But as some have said, he’s running us through with a narrator’s thoughts. It’s interesting how Jewish people, or people of other groupings, will make fun of their own kind savagely at times.
Thanks David, I understand that but he definitely was over the top. I did not think it added that much to the story. A bit of unresolved anger I thought.
I was deeply uncomfortable about this, too. I wonder if there’s a clue in the description of the Bendersky’s neighborhood: “Bankers without family or breeding, Christian converts who had got rich in the supply business…”
Is Babel criticizing people who have sold out their Jewish heritage? And thus he will not stop pointing out the Jewishness that is retained in their flesh and blood and ways of expression, while also highlighting the crass emptiness of their home culture: “without traditions,” “a Jewish noise.” It’s as if the Jewishness can never be emptied /erased/denied, and the Jewishness should not have to exist outside the proper context of Jewish tradition and culture (which is greatly beautiful to me).
Am I thinking right? Or too much making excuses for Babel?
Not sure why my comment from yesterday didn’t post, David. Anyway, I agree with you, there’s a need for more frank discussion and literary exploration of late teens/early 20s post adolescent male sexual energy. We joke that it’s “hormone poisoning” or even demonic possession but those jokes are based in a very real developmental stage and a very powerful compulsion. It’s awkward and painful and way too often it does irreparable harm—and not just to young women. I can’t help but think our narrator’s sense of foreboding may be related to his hypersexualized relationship to women and the chaos it can inject into a life. I also can’t help but think the spectre of de Maupassant’s syphilis, congenital though it was, looms rather large here.
Hi Dan, I think I did see a comment from you yesterday. At any rate, these are definitely things worth thinking about. All too often sex seems to be more about power dynamics than about affection, affinity and support. It’s the place where ‘normal’ consciousness opens to the raw power of the Universe as a whole.
I had the same reaction. Boorish. At the same time, Babel’s portrayal of this guy feels true to life for a 20ish male. When I was his age I was—or rather I KNEW guys who were—in total thrall to their lustfulness. (I was above all that, of course 😬) It’s a biological feature of post-adolescence. Used to call it hormone poisoning. You’re right, David, we need a way to talk about it frankly. Ironically, it’s a form of innocence, this sexual restiveness, that can cause a lot of damage. Maybe this is at least a partial answer to the narrator’s foreboding at the end.
I just want to comment positively on your observation that "hormone poisoning" is "Ironically, ...a form of innocence, this sexual restiveness" Well put, at least in my observation as a woman now nearly fifty years after that time in my life, as a confident of a close (male) cousin and his best friend, and an observer of other male friends. For me, these were very young men who did not know how to handle the kindling of lust or where it fit into their attraction to women.
It's near impossible. Writing about embodied sexuality puts us in touch with primitive drives that we usually repress, I think Freud was right about this. No matter how civilized we become (and after "me too", I appreciate having women's point of view respected), it is very very hard to change our reptilian brains. It may take several generations (if indeed we keep to that path, which already seems doubtful given the popularity of Trumpian sexual politics).
Breasts, breasts, breasts. So many breasts! But then, our narrator is 20, and capable of having erotic dreams and aspirations toward anyone -- even the gray charwoman. (Speaking of breasts, I read "Idyll" as a side excursion, what with the titillating mention in the story. Oh my! https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/idyll/ )
I just read that story. Wow. Was it a fetish? Or representative of the haves and have nots. Or both? (Again another example of what would not be published mainstream)
That also struck me at first, but then I checked myself. It is the characters’ s honest pre-occupation, not necessarily the author’s. Even if it was the author’s … it a bad thing to disclose it in writing? To me it makes the story all the more convincing.
I've been reading the "breast-talk" with lots of interest. Where else would we find a conversation about what is offensive that is so amicable? No one took offence in reacting very differently to the breasts -- kudos to Storyclub!
I think one of the great appeals of literature is that it lets us get into the head of someone who might be far from our own experience, desires, or values. We visit the head of King Lear, of Hannibal Lecter, a rapist, or a testosterone driven twenty-year-old. While we might not like, or enjoy, or see the humor in what we find there, I'm glad we do have the option to gain a perspective that might be so far from our own.
It's an opportunity to understand those who different from ourselves. Understanding does not imply any moral validation, it's simply seeing the world through their eyes for the moment of one story.
This being said, not everyone is comfortable in all those heads. And that is fine.
It’s a bit kaleidoscopic. All the comments together seem to mirror the ping-ponging of society vis-a-vis sexuality over the decades…or centuries. I feel like writing something that plunges into these waters and sprouts gills.
I noticed how many people (at least in the narrator’s eyes) seem to be living with falsity/delusion.
- His friend who knows every crevice of Spain but has never visited
- The nouveau riche and their fetish for fake castles
- the Benderskys, converts to Christianity who still signal as Jewish
- Raisa with her passionate love for Maupassant yet her clunky, soulless translations of him
The narrator has a moment of falling for an illusion (the fantasies of the washer woman who disappoints when he finally sees her). But I wondered if the pattern - people embracing Thing 1 over here despite Thing 2 over there being the truth - could/should apply more widely to our narrator, his beliefs, and/or even the politics of the 1917 revolution (because it feels important that we’re given the date we are).
Great comment, Annemarie. I'd add, though, that narrator is falling for an illusion throughout. The women he describes are unreal. A kind of delirium of rounded flesh narrator is going crazy to get at. Raisa, physically at least, bears no more relation to reality than a Barbie doll (with different specifications).
The little detail of the washerwoman is there to remind us that narrator is in such a state he will eroticize just any woman - in his mind.
Yes, good point. I looked up the two Maupassant stories (Idyll and the Confession) and the women in Babel’s story are echos of those women, fetishised into body parts. So if the pattern is ‘person fantasises this here but reality is that there’, the narrator falls into that pattern with his relationship to the world. He’s living in a romantic, idealised state where starving artist is better than mundane desk-worker and women are avatars of sex, sprung free from their Moroccan leather bindings.
Annemarie, you and John Evans both vocalized parts of the story that I could not. Thank you! I could feel these thoughts in my subconscious but your discussion really pulled them out.
Was Maynial's book on Maupassant's life true?? Did Maupassant really end in that horrible way? I grew up reading Maupassant, but had no idea that he had such a tragic life (if true).
Now, what I noticed at the beginning of the story: "Happier than any of us was Kazantsev. He had a motherland: Spain." (which was not really his motherland; he was simply translating from Spanish, where he'd never been). From the above, we understand that "the rest of us," including the narrator, had no motherland.
Second thing I noticed: the narrator is offered a job as a clerk (this is 1916 during the war, when people were starving and were very poor). Yet, he declines to take it because more important than anything for him is his freedom. "Even at the time--20-years-old--I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk 10 hours a day." This reminds me of another Russian writer, Marina Tsvetaeva, who, during the same time (well, actually a few years later because the Bolsheviks had taken power), did the same thing: was offered a job as a clerk and even though she was starving, eventually gave it up because she couldn't stand working as a bureaucrat. This also makes me reflect on differences between Russians/Easterners and Westerners, the latter feeling fulfilled by their careers. I am always puzzled by American women who think that their careers (mostly jobs in an office that kill your soul) "liberate" them.
I saw that some other readers here have noticed the writer's interest in women's bosoms. I too noticed that, but only because I thought: "I am sure that someone will comment on this." But speaking on the way the author/narrator depicts women, there are other sentences I enjoyed: "These women let their resourceful husbands' money overflow onto the rosy fat on their bellies."
Finally, as a translator myself, I enjoyed the way he describes a good translation: "The secret rests in a barely perceptible turn. [...] It must be turned once and no more."
I forgot about the part about Kazantsev's "motherland"! Thanks for mentioning! I also loved the line about the husband's wealth overflowing to some belly fat :)
Maupassant's life was destroyed by hereditary syphilis, as told. Babel is staring horrified at the reality behind the image of the great French writer (who Babel really admired).
Random fact: George’s Story Club is so large that our sudden joint interest in Babel and Maupassant registers on Google Trends, like tiny seismic shocks. Visible (statistically) in internet search activity in the US and UK, where evidently our previous interest was low - and our ignorance was deeply felt.
I was struck by the opening -- how it stated the details of the main character's life matter of factly. Yet these details add up to a precarious life. Russia in 1916? There's a war going on and this is a year before the Bolsheviks revolt. This character is an intellectual, talented at translation, who manages to "bum around" -- turning down a "real" job, writing for the paper, blowing the money he manages to earn, hanging out with (and making love to?) the wife of his patron.
I'm afraid for him. This feels like the calm before the storm.
You're right about 1916, Angie. In a story called The Journey, Babel tells how he left "the collapsed front" (in 1917, but he plays with time to get the focus for his stories). He first made his way home (Odessa) then headed for St Petersburg. As a Jew, he was not allowed to be there without a permit. He went there all the same. The journey was long and freezing, and he lost everything he had.
"This feels like the calm before the storm." Agreed! What happens to narrator-who-is-not-really-Babel is only hinted at, but there's surely an unpleasant fall on the way.
I believe that was a sort of classification of his stories later on (possibly only by English translators/publishers? not sure of this). In fact, the Red Cavalry stories and the Odessa stories also contain stories purporting to be taken from Babel's life. Emphasis on _purporting_, because his stance as narrator fogs things up a fair amount.
I too noticed the understated opening. It wasn't showy--wasn't trying to elicit pity, worry, etc from me while being truthful about the desperate circumstances--but made me feel like I was in the hands of a good storyteller. It was Storyteller Voice.
I noticed the comments about translating, especially - "how a phrase is born into the world is good and bad at the same time. The secret rests in a barely perceptible turn. The lever must lie in one
hand and get warm. It must be turned once, and no more." and " No iron can enter the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time." Does this story mimic this principle? The seduction scene between Raisa and the narrator does end in a full stop, and after the narrator reads a biography of Maupassant, his heart constricts and the story ends.
first read: I love our young horny narrator ogling everyone's boobs; And the last line: "I was brushed by a foreboding truth" because, same. Something had affected me, just wasn't sure what yet. But felt it in the gut with all deep truths that feel too earthshaking to grasp in the moment :')
second read: Maupassant's life was a hellish fight against hereditary syphilis, and his mother outlived him, how incredibly unlucky; "Maupassant is the only passion of my life" says a woman embarrassed to introduce new people to her Rasputin-tied, crazy-eyed husband. They're all guzzling that "sacred muscadet" just as fast as they're burning through the works of their literary hero; The first story they translate is a "hungry young carpenter" sucking the "overflowing milk of the fat wet nurse" (as everyone recalls!)
Right, in French Les Valseuses. The hungry young fellow (Patrick Dewaere) sharing a baby's meal, encouraged and I'd say pimped by Gérard Depardieu. In a rural train somewhere in France. Writer-director Bertrand Blier had (of course) read Maupassant.
I saw it when it came out and was enthusiastic about it because it kicked the ass of both "classic" French cinema and also the Nouvelle Vague. There were moments when I was dubious, and the train incident was one.
A small, perhaps trivial, item struck me on my first read.
"A red carpet ran up the staircase. On the landings, raised on their hind legs, stood plush velvet bears."
I was trying to envision such gauche monstrosities (were they life-sized? what color was the velvet -- possibly red? Did they have faux jewels for eyes? And so on...), when I read the next sentence. Which is actually the next paragraph:
"In their gaping jaws burned crystal lamps."
With the lamps, the bears' kitsch factor multiplied by quite a bit. But why not put that second sentence right after the first one (as I would have), in the same paragraph? Somehow, getting a bonus description in a new paragraph gave me a little surprise -- perhaps someone seeing those bears would not take in the full aesthetic horror all at once; separating the sentences gave me a sense of registering their appearance in jolts.
Anyway, a small thing, but something that stood out for me. Did anyone else notice this?
I saw that too--the bears and then the lamps in their mouths given their own paragraph. The delay made it feel like the other shoe dropping. The gaucheness of the decor went to a new low with the mini-paragraph of one detail.
Observing that a woman has breasts and recording it on paper is not misogyny. Nor is spending time with a woman and noticing you are attracted to her and want to have sex with her misogyny. Even if she is a poor translator.
This story - man is broke, man gets paid, man gets laid, (although it was so subtle I had to read about it in a critical essay on the story), man has an epiphany. Some purplish prose describing the Jewish nouveau riche, and a couple of good lines about literature. Which apparently was good enough to seduce Raisa, and that's what good literature does. Seduce.
But where is the rising action George talks about, what's the curve of this story? Oh right, it's in the narrator's pants. Sorry, I've had a couple glasses of wine. I'm ambivalent about this story. It kinda sucks, and it's great, at the same time.
I'd suggest that the rising action is in the foreboding hints that come in from time to time. In the fiction, narrator is playing with fire, fixated on sex with the wife of a man who hangs out with Rasputin. The closer he gets to her, the more danger he's in.
Babel doesn't tell us what will happen to narrator. At the very least, he'll fall back into dire poverty.
But we do get to learn about the real life of a writer, Maupassant, an awfully bad life ruined by syphilis, cut short. And that brings narrator up with a jolt.
The rising action seems to me to concern the dangerous nature of the narrator's sexual obsession with (unrealistically portrayed) women, the climax is he and Raisa get drunk and cross a red line (consummated or not) meaning bad things to come for both of them, the after-climax is the reading of a life of Maupassant and the sobering realisation that a great writer's life may be painful and cut short.
"Sorry, I've had a couple glasses of wine."
That's what Raisa says to her husband when he gets home from a poker game with Rasputin ;)
Well, when you put it that way, John. I think I put too much stock in the word "action."
I don't know if it's the translation or what, but this story was not satisfying to read in my opinion. But reviewing John Barth's comments on "unstable homeostatic system," etc, and considering Raisa's and the narrator's translation work together just that, other pieces fall into place. One disadvantage I felt reading this story was lack of familiarity with Maupassant - so that's two Babel stories where he leans on another writer to get the story out. If the reader doesn't like the other writer ( Shakespeare ) or doesn't know the other writer (Maupassant ) one has to make accommodations, is one way to put it.
True, "action" is a misleading word. But it can't only mean a physical deed (such as, narrator gets beaten up in a dark corner, though that may happen the day after the end of the story). A character says something non-trivial (to steal a good word from George), that's an action. A character thinks something non-trivial ("Raisa wants sex with me!"), that's an action. And, in this story, I think the brief hints dropped by the narrator (Rasputin, the scars on Raisa's back, the reflections like "I only found out a week too late") are actions too.
Though there are actions, things that happen, in a more conventional sense. Narrator manages to get a share of an attic; tries to scrape a living as a stringer; rejects an office job; gets an introduction to rich, vulgar people who will pay him; is confirmed in job with them; starts almost living at their huge place, fantasizes about the wife, his employer... And so on.
Suppose he'd just stayed on the freezing streets. Not the same story.
Good stuff. I guess I need to read Maupassant. That's the name of this story after all, and I know nothing about him, but for the little bit at the end. Well I did Wiki him. I didn't like the Maupassant insertion, which was in part what turned me off to this story, like Shakespeare did In the Basement. There's a way it feels contrived, or something.
It's highly literary, which good stories sure don't need to be. And it is contrived. It's not "natural" or naturalistic. You could strip it out of Guy de Maupassant and I think the story would be as powerful. (Others may disagree).
What would remain would still be about class, and money, and power, and a little scribbler filled with illusions stepping out of his proper place.
I hadn't read the three Maupassant stories before. I still haven't finished Miss Harriet. The one that probably matters most is the one that is part-told in Babel's story, the one about Céleste and the coachman. Did Babel expect his Russian readers to know these stories? Don't know.
I agree Tod. I'm ambivalent about the story too. And was equally so for In The Basement. The Babel stories are too Felini-esque for me. Wild romps of sexuality, pathology and abandon that are quite fun and graphic but in the end, for me, exhausting and over wrought. They become vaudevillian. I'm relieved when they end. I love sexuality and abandon, but I need them to be balanced by other things, for some contrast. If these Babel stories were a food they would be overly spiced, losing the subtlety of the underlying flavors.
That brilliant line, “No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.” (Constantine). Used to quote that to my Composition students. The entire passage on art of translation seems applicable to Babel’s own style. At the least he certainly would not have cottoned to Nabokov’s insistence on strict faithfulness to original works.
I loved reading it because it felt like intense gossip. I hate to admit that’s why it drew me in, but it felt like I was being let in on something. Something juicy and whispered. My other impression on first reading was boobs boobs boobs different shapes and sizes of boobs. So many times. That threw me off, all the boobs talk.
By my count there are five mentions of mammary glands by Babel, one mention in a GdM story and one mention of nipples in nine pages. You just mentioned five boobs in one paragraph. Hmmm?
In addition to the narrator's fixation on women's bodies (and their supposed licentiousness—which he is perhaps projecting onto them), which others have mentioned, I also was struck and a little mystified by his fixation on Jewishness:
• Raisa is "the ravishing type of Jewess"
• Raisa writes "the way Jews used to write the Russian language in earlier days"
• her husband is "a sallow-faced Jew"
• in the Bendersky's house, dinner is "a noisy affair. It was a Jewish noise"
• Raisa's sisters' eyes have a "myopic, semitic sheen"
Not a fixation, to my mind. Keeping it front and center. Describing a world he knows very well. Remarking on the Jewishness, to Babel (who is Jewish), is a necessary component to make all of it known to the reader. You can't read his stories and forget he writes about Jews. He is reminding you. That's my take.
These Jews have new money and are flaunting it, along with the women’s sexuality. “In the Basement” shows us two other Jewish families, starkly different from each other and from Raisa’s crew. “The Story of My Dovecote,” which I have loved for a lifetime, is yet another slice of Jewishness, a tragic one. Jewish life contained multitudes and always will.
The (historically cruel) contrast between dirt-poor shtetl Jews and the rising Jewish bourgeoisie is vital to Babel and he focuses on it in more than one story. Needless to say, he finds the first group full of life and interest, and the nouveaux riches tasteless and sinister.
By "Babel" here I mean the person I imagine Babel was as a writer, and not the unnamed narrator of his stories.
Yes! Came in here to say that. That stuck with me a lot and made me uncomfortable.
Later, I remembered too, that it is important that Babel is Jewish himself. So, in a way, I think that plays to the contrast of the familiar/unfamiliar -- it is the theme of lusting for a far away author, a far-away country, while diminishing what is there. Like, almost, if she was just a rich Russian, it would have been easier for him to lust after her, and it is her proximity and common Jewishness that makes it a contradiction.
I kept thinking about the title. Yes, Raisa and our narrator translate Maupassant's works, but I felt certain there must be more to the story than that. (And the last lines of the story proved me correct.)
Oh those lines about what is ingrained from his forefathers! And so, he doesn't take the clerkship and instead looks for a life of labor, fighting and love--well, with those words, I am primed. I think, okay, he's young and he's got to live his life and learn from it. And i'm pretty sure the story is going to show me exactly that.
When Babel writes that Raisa lives in a "vulgar" castle, i'm looking for vulgarity. And again--found it!
(So many breasts!)
This line: "Maupassant is the passion of my life," followed by her inability to translate him with any passion--that cracked me up. Maupassant may be her passion, but really what she wants is a living embodiment of Maupassant's passion--and she finds it in our narrator.
"When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time." At that, I wondered: is that true?
These lines: “I couldn’t resist telling her about my childhood. To my own surprise, my tale sounded doleful.” I'm still thinking about those sentences. I guess he's young enough to not have realized how his life would come off to someone much wealthier. In her eyes, his life seems doleful, and right now he's seeing himself through her eyes. The same way she is seeing Maupassant is his.
I LOVED the tale within the tale, when the narrator recounts The Confession--not in "real time," but in summary, and then swooping back into the story and out again, etc. I thought that was a very clever way to do that.
Ending the story the way he did seemed so utterly original and new. Fantastic!
Babel's stories always contain a funny/sad quality that I love--the moment I fall into this story and feel fully committed to it comes on page 681 (the Constantine translation) when Raisa says, "Maupassant is the one passion of my life." And yet, she stinks at translation! His prose in her hands is flat and lifeless.
Some of my favorite lines follow:
"When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice."
"I spoke to her of style, of an army of words, an army in which every type of weapon is deployed. No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place."
P.S. did anyone else rush to read Maupassant's "Idyll" based on Babel's description of the story?
I've read nothing else by Maupassant. Are his other stories all so.... horny? I can't help but laugh when I think of our narrator and Raisa sipping coffee from little blue cups and translating "Idyll."
I haven't read enough Maupassant to answer. But as a "realist", like Flaubert and Zola, he included sex in his narrative world (to the horror of the literary establishment of the time).
What is the profound truth that the young artist who is talented, and even the old artist who is not (Raisa) discover and live out in the seduction of their literary translation? That art is everything? That life is finite? That there is miserable war in France and Russia, and everywhere, then and today. That in the end, no matter how talented you are, even if you are the young Guy de Maupassant, whom Raisa claims is everything to her, you still eat shit and die? It is an amazing story in so few pages about youth and art and mortality. It took my breath away...made me happy and sad and desperate and gleeful all at the same time. What a story. I guess the feelings stand out because I write my own stories with an eye toward the ending, always asking the same question: "What from this story do I want the reader to feel?" Babel's target feeling is so much grander and deeper than I ever really manage. Nice. Thanks for the read.
Yes! In the end you still eat shit and die! I couldn't have worded it better myself :)
I think you found the answer to my question "what foreboding of truth" is he talking about at the end? I guess the truth that no matter how talented you are, you will "still eat shit and die."
And what gave Maupassant the miserable death is syphilis.
Inherited
his mother had it when she was pregnant with him so it passed on to him
I have to say that, unfortunately and a little bit ashamed of myself for picking this out of all the great proses of Babel, how he wrote about generous/large bosomed women.
It happened quite a few times in the last story and it happened a few times in this story…
Now I’m going to reread Guy de Maupassant and try to find something more profound to say…
But I have to be honest first.
I loved all of the breast talk! It was so pure and honest. The allure of a pair of breasts--okay, we are perhaps not supposed to say such things, but there they are! Practically in our young narrator's face! How could he NOT mention them?
And he decided that the chamber maid with the high breasts (a detail he repeats, as if this is an assigned role) had a “hardened licentiousness,” right from the get go, and we realize what a goofy dolt our narrator is, full of glee and zest, in a way, imbuing his experiences with drama, as only the clever young can do, in short, full of himself, and I’m guessing he’s vastly inexperienced, despite his language proficiency and forged passport. But then the Muscadet reveals him to himself, and the view is not pretty.
I thought he was pretty funny. (Also ignorant, tossing off glosses on Jews that were more cringe-worthy than his obsession with breasts.)
I liked some of the bit parts here, that chamber maid doing her sinister walk throughs, and Kazantsev, with the downy canary hair, whose motherland is Spain, though he’s never been there.
Something or some things in all this felt very contemporary.
The narrator is Jewish, as is Babel. I wouldn't call his asides ignorant. Readers may find it all cringe-worthy, but it comes from an insider who has built up these ideas from his own life. People who live within a culture often poke fun or make comments about their own culture in a way that others are not allowed.
Yes. I guess, though, that I’m seeing his creation of his narrator as purposefully cringe-worthy.
Yes, I can see that, too.
Yes, one of the things about Russia is that there is no . . . shall we say, shame regarding such commentary, even in public. A major CEO, in his online bio (in Russian), wrote of being 'a ladies' man,' (Russian: 'lover of the ladies') among his many other qualities and qualifications. In North America or much of the West one could not really do this . . . The distance between people is gauged quite differently, the word 'privacy' having little meaning.
This is not to say, though, that the attitudes are correct, or healthy. We're coming at it with our own views, often baked in when young, so a lot of this may rub readers the wrong way.
Such an important point. We can all poke fun at our own groups. Other groups need to only poke fun or ridicule their own group. This is how to not let cruelty and bigotry spread.
I wouldn’t call his asides ignorant either. At the same time, there was a whiff of prejudice there. Or at least stereotyping, which even in its benign forms is kinda demeaning.
I wasn’t sure what to make about his comment on wealthy families “without traditions” in terms of being Jewish or not. At any rate he wants to pose as a man of the world at age 20. (Then drinks five glasses of Muscadet and crashes down the bookcase. Which did endear me to him. Or rather endeared me to Babel.)
Yes, there is a grittiness that has been whitewashed. I love the earthiness. The passion. The drunkenness. I don’t think the CBC would publish such a piece today. Although the nature of man seems unchanged.
Interesting and refreshing to me that his observations aren’t about breast size or shape, but the “posture” of these different breasts: “high”, “downward-crushed”, “moving freely under the loose silk.” These breasts shift from being passive objects to /subjects/, girls of action, even lactating and feeding people.
I think it's fair to suggest his depiction of women is near-hallucinatory. Certainly in no way realistic. It's Babel amusing himself (and why not his readers?) with a version of his crazy younger self coming out of fear and deprivation and finding himself in a promised land of milk (if not honey), voluptuous women, well-paid work...
And fucking up completely. How much longer do we imagine that well-paid job will go on?
Yes, and it's easy to imagine him as again rock-poor, since whatever he earns is immediately spent on drinking with his friends
Wow - you hit the nail on the head here. I love the idea that the narrator is a young artist finally getting what all young artists dream of - a great job (and in this case, to be around an intellectual and beautiful woman) and he messes his up by his own excesses.
He finds them all so interesting! And I can see all of it from his point of view.
Agree!!! I loved the "downward-crushed" description
I could really take you to task here with "but they are practically in our young narrator's face! How could he NOT mention them?' If that's not supporting a misogynistic attitude I don't know what is. As a woman who was cursed from a young age to have large breasts I can tell you that having men talking to your chest when at university is not a happiness to have the feeling that you are just a pair of tits no matter what your intellect. I didn't mention it before because everyone is waxing lyrical about the 'art form' and whilst I agree it is a brilliant piece it is nevertheless a male and his attitude towards women - even though he acknowledges that she is a skilled translator ' her translation is wooden' and will never be as good as his and he gets what he wants from her in the end and don't you just love the generalization about all Jewish women's wiles how they send men crazy - as if anything .sexual happens it is their fault?
You are more than welcome to take me to task! I'm not going to talk about my own body shape, but let me say that I know well of what you speak when you say men spoke to your chest and not your face. I'm also of the generation that suffered through non-stop sexual harassment. At my University, i had physical harassment from a professor that went far beyond appropriateness. He was fired from his position. i say this to you so that you will know that i am not blind to harassment or sexual objectification. I, personally, do not consider it misogynistic for a man to notice a woman's breasts. I think the narrator in this story is being honest. That he was filled with lust for this woman does not bother me. That he found her translations wooden does not bother me. That he thinks of Jewish women in a lustful fashion does not bother me. There is lust in this world! Humans are lustful. Does he get what he wants from her, or are they both responsible for what happened? I stand by my comment that he couldn't help but notice her breasts. A reader has every right to find such views offensive. I simply do not. We all come to literary works (and all works of art) from our own backgrounds, histories, views, truths.
I enjoyed and admired the writing in the physical descriptions, and didn't find them personally offensive, and recognized them as what the narrator was experiencing. And they were funny!
But-- the prevalence of viewing women mostly or only according to their physical attributes -- has over time, in many societies -- been an example of what I see as misogyny- or a general demeaning of women. So, while I don't necessarily see the narrator as misogynistic- his focus on breasts, etc., while natural, and amusing, also adds to the history and culture of how women are viewed.
I think women are just so tired of being objectified--so that when we read this story, some of us just cannot enjoy it. I understand that.
Yes we do come to literary works and all works of art and bring with us our own truths etc. As a painter I am well aware of the conversation between the artists and the viewer and as a fledgling writer, the relationship with the reader. Neither of these relationships are predictable or perhaps even knowable at the moment of contact, hence this exercise in noting what we are feeling when we read pieces like this. However, whilst I can appreciate and acknowledge the art form I cannot ignore the content.
I'm with you on that.
I didn't connect the blunt body descriptions with the narrator's lustfulness. It interests me that others were able to. It changed how I saw the story. As a counter-example, I found the "wooden" translations to be a bit of a turn-off.
Prurience and misogyny are not synonymous. Too many commenters here either from ignorance or preference conflate the two.
It will be interesting to read what George has to say next week after he goes through all of the comments and sees the very strong reaction to Babel's character taking note of breasts. You are completely correct that prurience and misogyny are not the same. What's interesting to me in these comments is that you can feel a lifetime of living in a patriarchy in the reactions. Being objectified can wear a woman down, and I can understand the exhaustion of it all. That being said (and as you know), I have no problems with this story and enjoyed the character's fascination with breasts!
Excessive libido is not misogyny…but could be a factor in misogyny, I suppose. Analogous to rage vis-a-vis murder?
Maybe integrity evolves from experiencing intense feelings and desires but not allowing such to overwhelm or overpower respect for another’s autonomy?
Most societies have facinating pockets of nouveau riche people, most rich people are nouveau at some point, They often have amazing decorators and wild stories. But the way the sisters were looked after, with their little overshoes, was touching, and tender, and these juxtapositions always exist when Babels about
Having experienced much harrassment (in France, just walking in the street, not to mention the subway at rush hour...) my younger self would probably have been annoyed at seeing the women characterized as all boobs, but now I appreciate the narrator as a character in a story with all his shortcomings. An inexperienced young man under the spell of his hormones. Just one POV. Those breasts are absolutely necessary to this story! They bring us into this man's head. Now we need to imagine how Raissa (or the maid) saw all this!
Yes and I can also see the excellent description of a 'young man under the spell of his hormones' (see my first post). My understanding of the exercise was to say how you felt the first time you read the piece and to be honest my first reaction was as I have described. Yes I can acknowledge that this is literature, albeit of another era, and can see the skill and beauty in the prose. However, my point I suppose is where do you see this kind of description by women, in say the writings of Jane Austen. She doesn't have her characters wax lyrical about the bulge of Darcy 's crotch. And what I have written is a form of criticism which is pertinent to myself as an individual, not myself as a writer or graduate in English Lit. I am also pointing out the 'male gaze' so excellently described by John Berger in 'Ways of Seeing'. And yes we have moved on a lot since this was written.
Not sure where to jump in here, but did it strike anyone that Babel was trying his hand at lit-erotica? Like everyone else one of my first impressions was his fascination with breasts. But when I came to where Raisa brought a bottle and two wine glasses and "her breasts moved freely in the loose silk of her gown, the nipples erect under the silk.," I thought, wow, this is dialing it up a notch. And to what purpose? To ask a George question, what is Babel (or the story) trying to tell us here? It's almost a given that he is a young man under the spell of his hormones, and to me he is recounting an almost affair with an older woman. But does that moment add anything to the story? Is he recalling how besotted he is with Raisa this fateful night that her nipples are an important part of his experience? That may be important to him as the author. Or is he adding some soft porn to test the limits of what was acceptable at the time? Or maybe sell more stories? Happily Jane Austen didn't wax lyrical about the bulge of Darcy's crotch. Her books never would have made it into print.
Exactly 'Her books never would have made it into print.'
I've just finished writing a story from Raïsa's point of view. I'm going to post it on mary g's what now. https://maryg1.substack.com/p/prompt-14/comment/52295397.
loved it!!!!!
Being totally new where do I find mary 'g's what now because I would love to read your piece?
Well done you :-)
And how about Babel was exaggerating somewhat to laugh at himself?
How much fun someone is having at the time of writing can be a key factor. The mood. Are they sending up a style we’re not aware of or an event that was lost in history, or a melange of both. I never care with Babel. Im happy with whatever he gives.
Guy De Maupassant churned out 300 stories plus novels and other writings, in ten years.
Wasn’t going to mention it but im so glad you did! It’s funny, his fixation on them. It fits right in with his impulsive nature.
It's certainly honest, and I value that.
His physical descriptions of the women jumped out at me, as well, even more so than in other Babel stories. It was even more noticeable to me because he formed a relationship with Raisa based on a common intellectual interest, but yet, all he could talk about was her body.
He doesn’t seem to respect her much. He finds her translations wooden; her allure is her body and the opportunity she presents to indulge his passion for literature.
And money, although he wouldn’t take a menial job at a desk 10 hours a day.
I’m not even sure there’s a real relationship between them. He doesn’t really care about her. She represents an opportunity for him. But then again I do not find much in the text that describes any real relationship between them, not even something like a friendship.
I beg to differ with you. They have in common their love of Maupassant's stories. I imagine them bonding over it. I've tried my hand at showing her point of view here in response to one of mary g.'s prompts: https://maryg1.substack.com/p/prompt-14/comment/52295397.
I got this feeling too
Which is also kind of befitting if we think of Maupassant’s and Flaubert’s writing. I Wikipedias Babel learned that he was fluent in French and actually wrote his initial stories in French. Those early stories didn’t survive though.
Breasts and hips - over and over and over again!
This could be an opening to a larger discussion: how to write honestly, openly, even hungrily about sexuality without being boorish, chauvinistic, or plainly and stupidly offensive. Reading the story I was distinctly uncomfortable, thinking something like, dude, you can think this way if you like, but leave it in your head. Then I had to question my own response….something to do with the time period, and with the perspective (or gaze) we bring, or don’t bring, to the subject, that either upholds or discards the tendency toward objectification. (What a mess, but worthy of working through.)
I understand that a boorish and misogynistic narrator can be funny, or serve any number of artistic purposes for the writer. As a scholar of literature, I can analyze this story that way. But if I am honest about my first emotional responses to the story, I found the relentlessly sexist narrator exhausting and annoying. I hesitate to even admit it here because I still hear echoes of professors past implying that anyone (women) who objected to such things just didn’t understand art, but that was my honest response.
Is it sexist or misogynistic to speak of women's breasts? To lust for a woman's body? To speak openly of such things? This is a real question--I am not saying your honest response is in any way "wrong." To me, this young narrator is simply lustful--and he loves women.
He lusts after women’s bodies, but I don’t think that is the same as loving women. He shows plenty of contempt for Raisa’s intellect and shows no signs of considering women as his equals.
I agree it's not the same as loving women. That's not what the story's about. It's about a younger version of Babel coming out of dire poverty and rushing into a head-spinning wonderland of money and desirable women... and coming a cropper (not narrated but implied).
I didn't see contempt, just honesty about her lack of translating skills.
And she does get it when he shows her his translation from Maupassant. So she's capable of learning.
I see her translation as the first draft of an inexperienced translator. It just needed work. She focused so much on the vocabulary that she missed the music.
I agree that he doesn’t seem to love or even to have truly found or be able to describe Raisa’s inner spark.
No, he doesn't love Raisa. I totally agree with that. (And when i say he loves women, I don't really know what I mean! So I probably shouldn't have written that.)
he's looking for love, "in the mood for love"
I was struck by the juxtaposition of ignorance and artist sensibility, intellectual subtlety and blatant sexual projection, the male-centered view and the extraordinary ability to undermine that very view by the particular author being discussed.
Me too! I also noted how privileged I am to be living in an age where we as women can talk openly about how cringey it is! Even while acknowledging that the writer probably thought it was edgy and original to record that kind of interior monologue.
My current situation may have affected my perspective. I am currently immersed in attending a new production of Wagner’s Ring, and the “love” for women, reminds me of Babel’s character. His view is clearly duplicated by Albericht, and I agree. Wotan whose only interest in women is either lust or opportunities for gain. Unlike the Ring characters, Babel’s is not trying to rule the world, he merely wants sex and a place to stay. He is more successful than Wotan. The parallels are obvious between the opera male characters and this story, albeit on a less grandiose level.
Misogynistas conveniently confuse prurience with misogyny. I guess it's part of the game.
I was more at ease with the narrator’s thoughts because I felt they were completely in keeping with what many twenty year old males would be thinking.
Alice, totally agree with you. And David S., as an older woman, it never occurred to me that it was boorish, or offensive. OKOKOKOK I'll leave the rest of what I want to say in my head :)
So interesting. I wasn’t necessarily saying it was offensive, but I know, even from reading the comments here today, there is a wide spectrum among humans concerning what is and isn’t offensive. I think my own private thoughts about someone’s body or sensuality might be offensive to one person, and welcomed by another. Big world.
Yeah I definitely didn’t think it was offensive. It was beautifully lovingly observed, by a young man who is appreciating details in ways that most young men would not. This boy has a generosity of heart
Also true.
Alice, not to poke fun here but I'm impressed by the number of women who know what 20 year old males would be thinking. Back before the beginning of time I was 20, and my general recollection in conversations with my few remaining college mates is that I really didn't know what I was thinking. The conventional wisdom is that we were all sexed up with overactive hormones, and I don't deny the hormones. But I recall there was also a lot of anxiety, even fear, when it came to sex. Back in the immediate post WW-2 era there was no sex ed, no internet, virtually no porn that I'm aware of. Some of the dumbest, most embarrasing moments in my life -- which are still to me cringe worthy - happened because I had no clue , I didn't know what I was thinking because I didn't know what to think. I just reacted to what was in front of me. Obviously badly. I thinking I'm arguing against the convention that "we" all know what twenty year old males are thinking.
How about Babel is laying it on thick at his own expense? In his narrator persona he is never far from poking fun at himself.
True!
I thought it was kind of funny that it says 'autobiographical' stories, and not just autobiographical stories. As if the ' ' say: 'I'm not saying this is me.'
So interesting! I did not find him offensive at all. Nor was I uncomfortable. I want to hear what is in his head!
Oh yes! Honestly, I was alarmed and uncomfortable with the overt sexual comments about a Jewish woman. I wonder how graphic the Russian is and was worried about stereotypes. Then I realized that this narrator is 20 and hungering for experience and even just enough to eat and drink.
He's also Jewish--the narrator is.
What makes you assume that the narrator is Jewish?
This is a good question. I'm not a Babel expert, but he writes as a Jew about Jewish characters. I don't know if he's written any story that does not have a Jewish protagonist. Perhaps George could weigh in here, though.
And where his erotic frenzy and newfound income is leading...
I hear you, David. I had that same struggle on first read. I kept thinking back to my theater professor, he was the guy who always stared at our boobs when he talked to us (the women).
It's what happens in the reader's brain when we read something from the past knowing everything that's going on now, we have all the reactions. Then, on re-reading, and realize how funny the narrator is. I think the reactions are all gold. I love reading the comments!
Thank you! As usual, I am of 17 minds (at least) on all these issues.
He’s a young guy, they think of sex how many times a hour? Is it 600? Or is that a day ?
He’s practically vibrating with hormones. But he is a romantic, from dreaming passionately about someone he hasn’t seen - to being enchanted by what he is seeing.
It is the details he writes about that elevate this story. And the beautiful phrases and wisdoms he punctuates it with.
I felt like he did leave it in his own head, where I happened to be, and he is a gentleman.
I was very uncomfortable not so much about the breasts and his own lust but about he described the Jewish people.
That was a bit over the top. But as some have said, he’s running us through with a narrator’s thoughts. It’s interesting how Jewish people, or people of other groupings, will make fun of their own kind savagely at times.
Thanks David, I understand that but he definitely was over the top. I did not think it added that much to the story. A bit of unresolved anger I thought.
I was deeply uncomfortable about this, too. I wonder if there’s a clue in the description of the Bendersky’s neighborhood: “Bankers without family or breeding, Christian converts who had got rich in the supply business…”
Is Babel criticizing people who have sold out their Jewish heritage? And thus he will not stop pointing out the Jewishness that is retained in their flesh and blood and ways of expression, while also highlighting the crass emptiness of their home culture: “without traditions,” “a Jewish noise.” It’s as if the Jewishness can never be emptied /erased/denied, and the Jewishness should not have to exist outside the proper context of Jewish tradition and culture (which is greatly beautiful to me).
Am I thinking right? Or too much making excuses for Babel?
As with every culture, Jews talk about other Jews in many ways! As in all cultures, you'll find envy, humor, crassness, and so on.
Not sure why my comment from yesterday didn’t post, David. Anyway, I agree with you, there’s a need for more frank discussion and literary exploration of late teens/early 20s post adolescent male sexual energy. We joke that it’s “hormone poisoning” or even demonic possession but those jokes are based in a very real developmental stage and a very powerful compulsion. It’s awkward and painful and way too often it does irreparable harm—and not just to young women. I can’t help but think our narrator’s sense of foreboding may be related to his hypersexualized relationship to women and the chaos it can inject into a life. I also can’t help but think the spectre of de Maupassant’s syphilis, congenital though it was, looms rather large here.
Hi Dan, I think I did see a comment from you yesterday. At any rate, these are definitely things worth thinking about. All too often sex seems to be more about power dynamics than about affection, affinity and support. It’s the place where ‘normal’ consciousness opens to the raw power of the Universe as a whole.
I had the same reaction. Boorish. At the same time, Babel’s portrayal of this guy feels true to life for a 20ish male. When I was his age I was—or rather I KNEW guys who were—in total thrall to their lustfulness. (I was above all that, of course 😬) It’s a biological feature of post-adolescence. Used to call it hormone poisoning. You’re right, David, we need a way to talk about it frankly. Ironically, it’s a form of innocence, this sexual restiveness, that can cause a lot of damage. Maybe this is at least a partial answer to the narrator’s foreboding at the end.
I just want to comment positively on your observation that "hormone poisoning" is "Ironically, ...a form of innocence, this sexual restiveness" Well put, at least in my observation as a woman now nearly fifty years after that time in my life, as a confident of a close (male) cousin and his best friend, and an observer of other male friends. For me, these were very young men who did not know how to handle the kindling of lust or where it fit into their attraction to women.
It's near impossible. Writing about embodied sexuality puts us in touch with primitive drives that we usually repress, I think Freud was right about this. No matter how civilized we become (and after "me too", I appreciate having women's point of view respected), it is very very hard to change our reptilian brains. It may take several generations (if indeed we keep to that path, which already seems doubtful given the popularity of Trumpian sexual politics).
Nevertheless I aim for higher love.
He did leave it in his head. His prurience was never communicated to any character.
Good comment David. I didn't know quite what to make of the sexuality either but as you said it wasn't boring.
I doubt Babel was ever boring as a writer or a person even for a nanosecond.
Excellent point.
Breasts, breasts, breasts. So many breasts! But then, our narrator is 20, and capable of having erotic dreams and aspirations toward anyone -- even the gray charwoman. (Speaking of breasts, I read "Idyll" as a side excursion, what with the titillating mention in the story. Oh my! https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/idyll/ )
I just read that story. Wow. Was it a fetish? Or representative of the haves and have nots. Or both? (Again another example of what would not be published mainstream)
Five Babel mammaries, one GdM, one Babel nipple. In nine pages. Ever see any French post cards? Playboy?
It seems that Babel had a breast fixation for sure.
That also struck me at first, but then I checked myself. It is the characters’ s honest pre-occupation, not necessarily the author’s. Even if it was the author’s … it a bad thing to disclose it in writing? To me it makes the story all the more convincing.
That was going to be my comment. I commented on it in the last story as well. A theme!
Maupassant is hot, any time, every time 💎💕📚💕💎
I've been reading the "breast-talk" with lots of interest. Where else would we find a conversation about what is offensive that is so amicable? No one took offence in reacting very differently to the breasts -- kudos to Storyclub!
I think one of the great appeals of literature is that it lets us get into the head of someone who might be far from our own experience, desires, or values. We visit the head of King Lear, of Hannibal Lecter, a rapist, or a testosterone driven twenty-year-old. While we might not like, or enjoy, or see the humor in what we find there, I'm glad we do have the option to gain a perspective that might be so far from our own.
It's an opportunity to understand those who different from ourselves. Understanding does not imply any moral validation, it's simply seeing the world through their eyes for the moment of one story.
This being said, not everyone is comfortable in all those heads. And that is fine.
It’s a bit kaleidoscopic. All the comments together seem to mirror the ping-ponging of society vis-a-vis sexuality over the decades…or centuries. I feel like writing something that plunges into these waters and sprouts gills.
I found the same. Every time a woman is mentioned, there is eventually a mention of her breasts.
Except for Katya, the washerwoman, and Celeste, and GdM's mother. MIght want to read it again.
My reaction too, for what it’s worth
It seems to be his thing.
This struck me too. and in one scene "nipples erect beneath the silk."
I noticed how many people (at least in the narrator’s eyes) seem to be living with falsity/delusion.
- His friend who knows every crevice of Spain but has never visited
- The nouveau riche and their fetish for fake castles
- the Benderskys, converts to Christianity who still signal as Jewish
- Raisa with her passionate love for Maupassant yet her clunky, soulless translations of him
The narrator has a moment of falling for an illusion (the fantasies of the washer woman who disappoints when he finally sees her). But I wondered if the pattern - people embracing Thing 1 over here despite Thing 2 over there being the truth - could/should apply more widely to our narrator, his beliefs, and/or even the politics of the 1917 revolution (because it feels important that we’re given the date we are).
Great comment, Annemarie. I'd add, though, that narrator is falling for an illusion throughout. The women he describes are unreal. A kind of delirium of rounded flesh narrator is going crazy to get at. Raisa, physically at least, bears no more relation to reality than a Barbie doll (with different specifications).
The little detail of the washerwoman is there to remind us that narrator is in such a state he will eroticize just any woman - in his mind.
Yes, good point. I looked up the two Maupassant stories (Idyll and the Confession) and the women in Babel’s story are echos of those women, fetishised into body parts. So if the pattern is ‘person fantasises this here but reality is that there’, the narrator falls into that pattern with his relationship to the world. He’s living in a romantic, idealised state where starving artist is better than mundane desk-worker and women are avatars of sex, sprung free from their Moroccan leather bindings.
Annemarie, you and John Evans both vocalized parts of the story that I could not. Thank you! I could feel these thoughts in my subconscious but your discussion really pulled them out.
That’s kind of you to say. Thinking with a group can really help reveal things that might (or might not!) be there.
And another one.
Here passions seem to live inside delusions, shattering post satiation into the madness of reality.
Was Maynial's book on Maupassant's life true?? Did Maupassant really end in that horrible way? I grew up reading Maupassant, but had no idea that he had such a tragic life (if true).
Now, what I noticed at the beginning of the story: "Happier than any of us was Kazantsev. He had a motherland: Spain." (which was not really his motherland; he was simply translating from Spanish, where he'd never been). From the above, we understand that "the rest of us," including the narrator, had no motherland.
Second thing I noticed: the narrator is offered a job as a clerk (this is 1916 during the war, when people were starving and were very poor). Yet, he declines to take it because more important than anything for him is his freedom. "Even at the time--20-years-old--I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk 10 hours a day." This reminds me of another Russian writer, Marina Tsvetaeva, who, during the same time (well, actually a few years later because the Bolsheviks had taken power), did the same thing: was offered a job as a clerk and even though she was starving, eventually gave it up because she couldn't stand working as a bureaucrat. This also makes me reflect on differences between Russians/Easterners and Westerners, the latter feeling fulfilled by their careers. I am always puzzled by American women who think that their careers (mostly jobs in an office that kill your soul) "liberate" them.
I saw that some other readers here have noticed the writer's interest in women's bosoms. I too noticed that, but only because I thought: "I am sure that someone will comment on this." But speaking on the way the author/narrator depicts women, there are other sentences I enjoyed: "These women let their resourceful husbands' money overflow onto the rosy fat on their bellies."
Finally, as a translator myself, I enjoyed the way he describes a good translation: "The secret rests in a barely perceptible turn. [...] It must be turned once and no more."
Thank you for choosing this exceptional story!
I forgot about the part about Kazantsev's "motherland"! Thanks for mentioning! I also loved the line about the husband's wealth overflowing to some belly fat :)
Maupassant's life was destroyed by hereditary syphilis, as told. Babel is staring horrified at the reality behind the image of the great French writer (who Babel really admired).
Random fact: George’s Story Club is so large that our sudden joint interest in Babel and Maupassant registers on Google Trends, like tiny seismic shocks. Visible (statistically) in internet search activity in the US and UK, where evidently our previous interest was low - and our ignorance was deeply felt.
Nice homework effort!
Love this, Nadia - thanks for letting us know.
George- to use Steve Jobs’ term, you are putting a dent in the universe. Bravo!
Better an ego burnished than an ego bruised?
This is great! The personal becoming the universal. Thanks for letting us know.
I was struck by the opening -- how it stated the details of the main character's life matter of factly. Yet these details add up to a precarious life. Russia in 1916? There's a war going on and this is a year before the Bolsheviks revolt. This character is an intellectual, talented at translation, who manages to "bum around" -- turning down a "real" job, writing for the paper, blowing the money he manages to earn, hanging out with (and making love to?) the wife of his patron.
I'm afraid for him. This feels like the calm before the storm.
You're right about 1916, Angie. In a story called The Journey, Babel tells how he left "the collapsed front" (in 1917, but he plays with time to get the focus for his stories). He first made his way home (Odessa) then headed for St Petersburg. As a Jew, he was not allowed to be there without a permit. He went there all the same. The journey was long and freezing, and he lost everything he had.
"This feels like the calm before the storm." Agreed! What happens to narrator-who-is-not-really-Babel is only hinted at, but there's surely an unpleasant fall on the way.
Hi John: I didn’t realize Babel was Jewish. Add that in and it really amps up my anxiety for this character in this time and place.
Not to conflate the character with Babel… but the book title is ‘Autobiographical’ Stories…
I believe that was a sort of classification of his stories later on (possibly only by English translators/publishers? not sure of this). In fact, the Red Cavalry stories and the Odessa stories also contain stories purporting to be taken from Babel's life. Emphasis on _purporting_, because his stance as narrator fogs things up a fair amount.
I too noticed the understated opening. It wasn't showy--wasn't trying to elicit pity, worry, etc from me while being truthful about the desperate circumstances--but made me feel like I was in the hands of a good storyteller. It was Storyteller Voice.
Agree—I like the contextualiza you’re pointing out!—I didn’t think of the Frame before the storm! Good point!
I noticed the comments about translating, especially - "how a phrase is born into the world is good and bad at the same time. The secret rests in a barely perceptible turn. The lever must lie in one
hand and get warm. It must be turned once, and no more." and " No iron can enter the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time." Does this story mimic this principle? The seduction scene between Raisa and the narrator does end in a full stop, and after the narrator reads a biography of Maupassant, his heart constricts and the story ends.
I thought the full stop did.
I was amused by the horniness of the young narrator.
haha same!
Hey, he's 20.
Lolllllll
first read: I love our young horny narrator ogling everyone's boobs; And the last line: "I was brushed by a foreboding truth" because, same. Something had affected me, just wasn't sure what yet. But felt it in the gut with all deep truths that feel too earthshaking to grasp in the moment :')
second read: Maupassant's life was a hellish fight against hereditary syphilis, and his mother outlived him, how incredibly unlucky; "Maupassant is the only passion of my life" says a woman embarrassed to introduce new people to her Rasputin-tied, crazy-eyed husband. They're all guzzling that "sacred muscadet" just as fast as they're burning through the works of their literary hero; The first story they translate is a "hungry young carpenter" sucking the "overflowing milk of the fat wet nurse" (as everyone recalls!)
love a "scared straight by stds" short story lol
watch the 1974 French movie Going Places with a young Gerald Depardieu
Right, in French Les Valseuses. The hungry young fellow (Patrick Dewaere) sharing a baby's meal, encouraged and I'd say pimped by Gérard Depardieu. In a rural train somewhere in France. Writer-director Bertrand Blier had (of course) read Maupassant.
Oh, and all I remember was Gerard Depardieu, not the debauched Depardieu, but when he was young and lean. Ah...memory fails again.
Looked it up and love it already. Thanks, Ruth! :)
I saw it when it came out and was enthusiastic about it because it kicked the ass of both "classic" French cinema and also the Nouvelle Vague. There were moments when I was dubious, and the train incident was one.
"love a "scared straight by stds" short story lol" I agree!
haha glad I'm not the only one :)
A small, perhaps trivial, item struck me on my first read.
"A red carpet ran up the staircase. On the landings, raised on their hind legs, stood plush velvet bears."
I was trying to envision such gauche monstrosities (were they life-sized? what color was the velvet -- possibly red? Did they have faux jewels for eyes? And so on...), when I read the next sentence. Which is actually the next paragraph:
"In their gaping jaws burned crystal lamps."
With the lamps, the bears' kitsch factor multiplied by quite a bit. But why not put that second sentence right after the first one (as I would have), in the same paragraph? Somehow, getting a bonus description in a new paragraph gave me a little surprise -- perhaps someone seeing those bears would not take in the full aesthetic horror all at once; separating the sentences gave me a sense of registering their appearance in jolts.
Anyway, a small thing, but something that stood out for me. Did anyone else notice this?
I saw that too--the bears and then the lamps in their mouths given their own paragraph. The delay made it feel like the other shoe dropping. The gaucheness of the decor went to a new low with the mini-paragraph of one detail.
Yes! Although I didn’t really register consciously how the order amplified the surprise - but it did!
As you put it so well!
A small element of style - which the puerile and the misogynistas preoccupied with breasts obviously missed.
Observing that a woman has breasts and recording it on paper is not misogyny. Nor is spending time with a woman and noticing you are attracted to her and want to have sex with her misogyny. Even if she is a poor translator.
This story - man is broke, man gets paid, man gets laid, (although it was so subtle I had to read about it in a critical essay on the story), man has an epiphany. Some purplish prose describing the Jewish nouveau riche, and a couple of good lines about literature. Which apparently was good enough to seduce Raisa, and that's what good literature does. Seduce.
But where is the rising action George talks about, what's the curve of this story? Oh right, it's in the narrator's pants. Sorry, I've had a couple glasses of wine. I'm ambivalent about this story. It kinda sucks, and it's great, at the same time.
I'd suggest that the rising action is in the foreboding hints that come in from time to time. In the fiction, narrator is playing with fire, fixated on sex with the wife of a man who hangs out with Rasputin. The closer he gets to her, the more danger he's in.
Babel doesn't tell us what will happen to narrator. At the very least, he'll fall back into dire poverty.
But we do get to learn about the real life of a writer, Maupassant, an awfully bad life ruined by syphilis, cut short. And that brings narrator up with a jolt.
The rising action seems to me to concern the dangerous nature of the narrator's sexual obsession with (unrealistically portrayed) women, the climax is he and Raisa get drunk and cross a red line (consummated or not) meaning bad things to come for both of them, the after-climax is the reading of a life of Maupassant and the sobering realisation that a great writer's life may be painful and cut short.
"Sorry, I've had a couple glasses of wine."
That's what Raisa says to her husband when he gets home from a poker game with Rasputin ;)
Well, when you put it that way, John. I think I put too much stock in the word "action."
I don't know if it's the translation or what, but this story was not satisfying to read in my opinion. But reviewing John Barth's comments on "unstable homeostatic system," etc, and considering Raisa's and the narrator's translation work together just that, other pieces fall into place. One disadvantage I felt reading this story was lack of familiarity with Maupassant - so that's two Babel stories where he leans on another writer to get the story out. If the reader doesn't like the other writer ( Shakespeare ) or doesn't know the other writer (Maupassant ) one has to make accommodations, is one way to put it.
True, "action" is a misleading word. But it can't only mean a physical deed (such as, narrator gets beaten up in a dark corner, though that may happen the day after the end of the story). A character says something non-trivial (to steal a good word from George), that's an action. A character thinks something non-trivial ("Raisa wants sex with me!"), that's an action. And, in this story, I think the brief hints dropped by the narrator (Rasputin, the scars on Raisa's back, the reflections like "I only found out a week too late") are actions too.
Though there are actions, things that happen, in a more conventional sense. Narrator manages to get a share of an attic; tries to scrape a living as a stringer; rejects an office job; gets an introduction to rich, vulgar people who will pay him; is confirmed in job with them; starts almost living at their huge place, fantasizes about the wife, his employer... And so on.
Suppose he'd just stayed on the freezing streets. Not the same story.
Good stuff. I guess I need to read Maupassant. That's the name of this story after all, and I know nothing about him, but for the little bit at the end. Well I did Wiki him. I didn't like the Maupassant insertion, which was in part what turned me off to this story, like Shakespeare did In the Basement. There's a way it feels contrived, or something.
It's highly literary, which good stories sure don't need to be. And it is contrived. It's not "natural" or naturalistic. You could strip it out of Guy de Maupassant and I think the story would be as powerful. (Others may disagree).
What would remain would still be about class, and money, and power, and a little scribbler filled with illusions stepping out of his proper place.
Yes. And on that point all writing is contrived anyway.
And I skipped the Maupassant too. !
I hadn't read the three Maupassant stories before. I still haven't finished Miss Harriet. The one that probably matters most is the one that is part-told in Babel's story, the one about Céleste and the coachman. Did Babel expect his Russian readers to know these stories? Don't know.
I agree Tod. I'm ambivalent about the story too. And was equally so for In The Basement. The Babel stories are too Felini-esque for me. Wild romps of sexuality, pathology and abandon that are quite fun and graphic but in the end, for me, exhausting and over wrought. They become vaudevillian. I'm relieved when they end. I love sexuality and abandon, but I need them to be balanced by other things, for some contrast. If these Babel stories were a food they would be overly spiced, losing the subtlety of the underlying flavors.
Love everything about this comment, Tod.
Thank you Mary.
Seduction. Yes, literature should seduce. Have some more wine!
That brilliant line, “No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.” (Constantine). Used to quote that to my Composition students. The entire passage on art of translation seems applicable to Babel’s own style. At the least he certainly would not have cottoned to Nabokov’s insistence on strict faithfulness to original works.
I am delighted you brought that line up. Now that is Babel.
I loved reading it because it felt like intense gossip. I hate to admit that’s why it drew me in, but it felt like I was being let in on something. Something juicy and whispered. My other impression on first reading was boobs boobs boobs different shapes and sizes of boobs. So many times. That threw me off, all the boobs talk.
By my count there are five mentions of mammary glands by Babel, one mention in a GdM story and one mention of nipples in nine pages. You just mentioned five boobs in one paragraph. Hmmm?
Hahahaha! Boobs boobs boobs I like typing the word boobs.
Wait til you try it on a calculator
In addition to the narrator's fixation on women's bodies (and their supposed licentiousness—which he is perhaps projecting onto them), which others have mentioned, I also was struck and a little mystified by his fixation on Jewishness:
• Raisa is "the ravishing type of Jewess"
• Raisa writes "the way Jews used to write the Russian language in earlier days"
• her husband is "a sallow-faced Jew"
• in the Bendersky's house, dinner is "a noisy affair. It was a Jewish noise"
• Raisa's sisters' eyes have a "myopic, semitic sheen"
Not a fixation, to my mind. Keeping it front and center. Describing a world he knows very well. Remarking on the Jewishness, to Babel (who is Jewish), is a necessary component to make all of it known to the reader. You can't read his stories and forget he writes about Jews. He is reminding you. That's my take.
These Jews have new money and are flaunting it, along with the women’s sexuality. “In the Basement” shows us two other Jewish families, starkly different from each other and from Raisa’s crew. “The Story of My Dovecote,” which I have loved for a lifetime, is yet another slice of Jewishness, a tragic one. Jewish life contained multitudes and always will.
The (historically cruel) contrast between dirt-poor shtetl Jews and the rising Jewish bourgeoisie is vital to Babel and he focuses on it in more than one story. Needless to say, he finds the first group full of life and interest, and the nouveaux riches tasteless and sinister.
By "Babel" here I mean the person I imagine Babel was as a writer, and not the unnamed narrator of his stories.
Yes. And the writer broadens the story to universal misfortune with depth and grace.
Yes, thank you Rona for this take--there are so many different kinds of Jews in this world.
Yes! Came in here to say that. That stuck with me a lot and made me uncomfortable.
Later, I remembered too, that it is important that Babel is Jewish himself. So, in a way, I think that plays to the contrast of the familiar/unfamiliar -- it is the theme of lusting for a far away author, a far-away country, while diminishing what is there. Like, almost, if she was just a rich Russian, it would have been easier for him to lust after her, and it is her proximity and common Jewishness that makes it a contradiction.
It was a Jewish noise- ‘with thundering peals and melodious endings’.
Beautifully written
What did I notice? So many things!
I kept thinking about the title. Yes, Raisa and our narrator translate Maupassant's works, but I felt certain there must be more to the story than that. (And the last lines of the story proved me correct.)
Oh those lines about what is ingrained from his forefathers! And so, he doesn't take the clerkship and instead looks for a life of labor, fighting and love--well, with those words, I am primed. I think, okay, he's young and he's got to live his life and learn from it. And i'm pretty sure the story is going to show me exactly that.
When Babel writes that Raisa lives in a "vulgar" castle, i'm looking for vulgarity. And again--found it!
(So many breasts!)
This line: "Maupassant is the passion of my life," followed by her inability to translate him with any passion--that cracked me up. Maupassant may be her passion, but really what she wants is a living embodiment of Maupassant's passion--and she finds it in our narrator.
"When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time." At that, I wondered: is that true?
These lines: “I couldn’t resist telling her about my childhood. To my own surprise, my tale sounded doleful.” I'm still thinking about those sentences. I guess he's young enough to not have realized how his life would come off to someone much wealthier. In her eyes, his life seems doleful, and right now he's seeing himself through her eyes. The same way she is seeing Maupassant is his.
I LOVED the tale within the tale, when the narrator recounts The Confession--not in "real time," but in summary, and then swooping back into the story and out again, etc. I thought that was a very clever way to do that.
Ending the story the way he did seemed so utterly original and new. Fantastic!
Babel's stories always contain a funny/sad quality that I love--the moment I fall into this story and feel fully committed to it comes on page 681 (the Constantine translation) when Raisa says, "Maupassant is the one passion of my life." And yet, she stinks at translation! His prose in her hands is flat and lifeless.
Some of my favorite lines follow:
"When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice."
"I spoke to her of style, of an army of words, an army in which every type of weapon is deployed. No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place."
P.S. did anyone else rush to read Maupassant's "Idyll" based on Babel's description of the story?
I will have to read it; it is that scene on the train re-enacted in the 1974 movie Going Places that threw me completely out of the Babel story.
I thought of that scene as well! I remember so little of that movie except that scene is.... unforgettable
that was years ago, and I haven't forgotten it...... almost 40 years ago
Not yet. I read L'Aveu (the story of Céleste and the coachman), and I've started on Miss Harriet.
I've read nothing else by Maupassant. Are his other stories all so.... horny? I can't help but laugh when I think of our narrator and Raisa sipping coffee from little blue cups and translating "Idyll."
I haven't read enough Maupassant to answer. But as a "realist", like Flaubert and Zola, he included sex in his narrative world (to the horror of the literary establishment of the time).