I don’t like giving that line to Savitsky. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person to give that sort of advice. I like it better coming from a person of lower rank “the boss won’t tell you this, but here’s a way out.”
I think Babel's original version has two things that the 'severity' version doesn't: it subtly gives the sense of the time needed for the narrator to mull over/absorb his new situation - I get this sense of the situation percolating inside him when we see the description - the matter of beats, as in music - and the other is that the quartermaster's dialogue, because of the notes of apology, gives a sense of someone else internally resisting the brutality of the situation; as does the way he approaches the narrator as if he's going to confide something more before he gives the little jump back...it sets up some ghost of emotional resistance to the regime and so deepens the twist when the narrator kills the goose, to win his badge of brutality.
One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about Pulse 2 over the last few days was just how much the quartermaster contrasts with Savitsky, which for me raised the stakes in the warning about the glasses. It's not just this chiseled, Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson type of tough dude warning him, it's also this apologetic, somewhat bumbling guy as well.
That little trunk does a lot of work here in this pulse, and later in the story; It shows us that the quartermaster is lower status than the narrator, as he's required to carry this bag for him, which might explain why he, another low status guy, would try to give a clue for how to escape Cossack attacks, it get's flung over the fence by the Cossack as the first attack against the narrator, it holds the manuscript of Lenin's speech, a key story element, and it gets covered with hay for a pillow, echoing the hay on which the Cossacks were originally sitting. He's started the process of symbolically covering his real self with material from the Cossack's reality . What a hardworking little bag. He could have carried his own bag, but we would have missed the ability to see how he was still higher status than some people, in some contexts.
Next, observe the sun, and how it is introduced here so it can travel through the story, how its motion keeps us aware of time passing. Light fading, darkness entering, right on queue, with the next mention of the sun in the story noting that it just set, right before the narrator pivots from being the victim of violence to being a perpetrator. The next celestial body we meet is the moon, rising like a cheap earring. I'm sure we will consider why that is moment in the story where Babel placed it.
Again, apologies for not sticking just to Pulse #2, and looking ahead, but if the question is, what makes these details worth their weight, you need to see why the sun and the little bag are needed as wind up for the pitch that comes later in the story.
I have to comment on the image of the men sitting on hay shaving one another. When I first read this, it brought to mind images of monkeys all grooming one another in the branches of a tree —just a funny image I had to mention. It makes them seem a bit like animals, but also adds a “soft” touch to their hyper-masculinity. In addition, the image of these men shaving one another reinforces the level of their camaraderie. It implies a trust— they are shaving one another with potentially deadly instruments — and an acceptance that they each need the help of the others. This reinforces the outsider status of the narrator. As we know from reading further, this is going to continue. I also have to mention that at this point the first time I read it, I was filled with dread that they were going to shatter his glasses.
Savitsky, the guy in charge, the one with the power, can't both lay out the trouble (we don't cotton to glasses around here) and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble. This would force him to have to cop to ruthlessness, his own & the situation's, and thus undermine his power. The solution (a little rape, though a little murder would also work) is beneath him to acknowledge though in his heart he surely knows. And thus the quartermaster earns his place in the story by being a sort of dispenser of the essential information, what Savitsky knows but won't say, putting me in mind of the "Radar" character from "Mash", who knew more than he told but told when necessary (and who also happened to wear glasses & was a bit of an outsider).
I’m in the “keep the quartermaster” camp because of what many of you already said (thank you, sorry if I missed something) plus:
-These paragraphs offer a kind of transitional space of time where we are ushered more fully into the reality of the military from the command to the ranks (an order is given, then carried out; everyone has an official (and unofficial) role to play; no one is never truly alone) and also to the very real pecking order (later on: “Lenin hits it straight away, like a hen pecking at a grain.”)
-I felt a huge difference between the “village street lay before us” vs “lay before me” because the “us” invokes a sense of the “us who are not Savitsky or the enemy.” It sets up that question of “who is us” that the story revolves around.
-It helps to have a brief moment where we kind of trust the narrator’s confidence when he says “I’ll get along.” We still don’t know if his response is justified or misguided or just naive. It heightens the anticipation of if we can believe him and if he will succeed.
-When the QM “jump[s] back in despair and [runs] into the first courtyard”—afraid of being associated too closely with the “glasses” in front of the Cossacks and/or afraid of what would happen to the narrator—it made me wonder what compromises he makes to get through his day every day. He seems like a mirror (perhaps lesser) of what the narrator later will become, straddling conflicting moral and social positions, dying inside.
On the Esthetic Delight Meter, those couple of paragraphs heightened my anticipation, hope, and then my dread, all of which I felt better set up the ending. Seems like the language chosen did double or triple duty beyond “setting the scene.”
Agree that efficiency is usually a virtue in storytelling. However, in this case the goal being achieved by repeating the information is not to underline the information itself, but rather to indicate the workings of the "society" of macho guys operating here; it's an authoritarian, domination society, where the big guy sets the rules and the little guys indicate they're part of the team by repeating what the big guy says. We've all seen a lot of this recently, so it's easy to recognize 🤓 Kinda like "The Emperor's New Clothes"; yeah, it's redundant to hear 100 people say how beautiful the Emperor's Clothes are. It's also exactly the point. And also serves a very important role in creating the creeping feeling of terror that if you don't fit it, you're in trouble.
While we're tossing around Hollywood terms like "logline", I'll just note that I think the Hollywood term for "pulse" would be something like "sequence". (Some would say "beat", but I don't think that quite captures the storytelling work a "pulse" has to do.) "Sequences" were championed by a guy named Frank Daniel, a Czech who had quite an interesting career. He was head of the Czech film school in Milos Forman's day, then went to AFI in Los Angeles for a while (where he was a mentor of David Lynch), then ultimately to USC at the end of his career. Briefly, while others talk about 3 acts, Daniel said it was easier to break a movie script into (usually) 8 sequences, each (running about 15 minutes) with its own "dramatic question" which is answered at the end of the sequence. In Daniel's analysis, the first act has 2 sequences, the second has 4, and the third has another 2. So in, for instance, "Bicycle Thieves" some of the sequences would have questions such as (going from memory here, be easy on me), "Will he get the job?" "Will he be able to get a bicycle?" "Will he find the stolen bicycle quickly?". Frank Daniel never wrote any books himself, but some of his disciples did, and they're worth looking into, in my opinion, if this appeals to you. I'll have to think about how the "sequences" would map out in this story, but the first one might be something like "Will the narrator think the boss is a hero or a goon?"
I'm reminded of an article I read years ago about a preference for minimalism in "good" writing. I believe Cormac McCarthy was one of the references. And the author saying that one thing minimal writing rarely accomplished was humour. That humour (in this author's opinion) requires a bit of playful verbosity.
I'm not saying Babel is funny (although maybe this is!). But there's something
I don't think it's just "to let the narrator know that he’s in trouble but there may be a way out."
The thing about the quartermaster is he's likable and seems reasonable and apologetic, so those words in his mouth, about the "nicest little lady" come across as him feeling bad about this awful behavior. Though also feeling it is inevitable. And also not being in a position to do anything about it. He could even be angry about it-- but being of lower rank can't afford to make that known.
And what about that bit that was missed out accidentally (?) in the last of George's full versions of this "pulse" above:
"He hesitated a moment with my little trunk on his shoulders, came right up to me, then jumped back in despair and ran into the first courtyard."
Came right up to me, then jumped back in despair.
Why does the quartermaster do that? He wanted to say something, maybe, then had a failure of courage.
Did the quartermaster want to exhort the narrator not to rape girls? or a particular girl? Then felt it was useless, pointless?
It seems unlikely he is about to recommend a particularly nice little lady for the narrator to attack first. He just doesn't come across that way.
Is he hoping against hope that he could dissuade the narrator from such behavior, but realizes it's pointless? He seems in this view so wretched. So stuck - between Savitsky the outrageously exaggerated officer and the more mundane reality of the cossacks and their hardness.
And then the wry way he says, "and no nonsense, on account of his having suffered on the fields of learning..."
And then he reddens and walks away. Why redden? -- Afraid of revealing himself by this somewhat erudite wit - on the fields of learning - as a covert intellectual himself? A schoolteacher say, in hiding?
It is a transitional passage, but there is a lot in it too. I get carried away with these interpretations before I reread and maybe settle somewhere else and maybe I am now. But I'm seeing the quartermaster as a decent man among degraded ones, wanting to beseech the narrator not to harm an innocent girl - or "nicest little lady" - maybe he has known one - maybe in his own family - Maybe he's haunted, pulls back on the verge of blowing his cover. And realizing there is no other way for the narrator to survive maybe.
But the narrator does find another way - he symbolically rapes the goose - thus demonstrating a callous outlook that the cossacks find acceptable. I mean it's bad for the goose but at least he does kill the bird first before running his rapier through her.
Pulse 2 gives the narrator (and me) a chance to breathe, walk, take in the village in the company of another character who steps back from the violence of the opening and the violence to come with the Cossacks. The humanity of the brief encounter between the narrator and the quartermaster is made real by the "we" of their walk. The same observations about the village and so on wouldn't have an equivalent power if only coming from the narrator on a solo walk.
Re physical description: the description of the setting sun in this pulse for me ends up conversing with the moon on p 54, which “hung low over the yard like a cheap earring.” There was a surreal loveliness, or maybe an odd naturalness, to that dying pumpkin-sun, which ends up sacrificed along with the goose. Callousness, or guilt, or disgust has corroded our narrator’s view of the heavens.
Super duper interesting. Two things re: editing Babel's version. Thinking about this story as if it were food I feel like the quartermaster ingredient balances out the flavor. Bc we've got a strong ingredient in the Savitsky guy, same goes for the Cossacks, and the suicidal old lady is weak but a different kind of opposition--what the narrator doesn't want to be. So if it were just those three, Savitsky, Cossacks, suicidal old lady, it would feel like a bunch of very strong ingredients that needed something mellow and light, like lettuce in a sandwich. Second: I think there's a reluctance to edit an original for fear of cheapening it or making it worse and I think it's that same fear that gets in the way of writers who write stuff where nothing happens. So this exercise is very good practice, imo. Like just do it to do it, he's not going to come back from the dead and take offense. He was probably editing to his very last breath.
P.S. I've been reading the red cavalry stories in the complete works of babel, translated by peter constantine, and his daughter's preface in the book is very moving. The stories themselves have a ton of I don't get (I've been going too fast probably plus lack context) but I get the gist and it's making me brave. There's this one description, I can't remember in which story, about the sun looking like a beheaded head rolling around and it was just so much fun. This dude was fearless and I love him for it.
What strikes me is that the narrator doesn’t seem all that impressed by the whole situation. In pulse 1 we only hear him give affirmative answers: I can. I’ll get along. He seems very confident. His only emotions are admiration and envy of Savitsky. So when you leave out the quartermaster, all you have is this starstruck, overconfident revolutionary who walks blindly into dangers arms. We need a third party to remind us of the stakes.
In the original, the Quartermaster imbues it with this sort of creepy weirdness--like an Igor kind of character, whispering over his shoulder about how it is or what might happen while he leads the unknowing main character along. Without the Quartermaster, the main character is walking on his own, not being led, and the scene is almost idyllic, one of a fading afternoon. With the Quartermaster, the Cossacks shaving themselves (such a strange but simple image!) is latent with threat, but without him, the Cossacks are merely grooming themselves. I think it escalates the tension.
I don’t like giving that line to Savitsky. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person to give that sort of advice. I like it better coming from a person of lower rank “the boss won’t tell you this, but here’s a way out.”
I think Babel's original version has two things that the 'severity' version doesn't: it subtly gives the sense of the time needed for the narrator to mull over/absorb his new situation - I get this sense of the situation percolating inside him when we see the description - the matter of beats, as in music - and the other is that the quartermaster's dialogue, because of the notes of apology, gives a sense of someone else internally resisting the brutality of the situation; as does the way he approaches the narrator as if he's going to confide something more before he gives the little jump back...it sets up some ghost of emotional resistance to the regime and so deepens the twist when the narrator kills the goose, to win his badge of brutality.
One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about Pulse 2 over the last few days was just how much the quartermaster contrasts with Savitsky, which for me raised the stakes in the warning about the glasses. It's not just this chiseled, Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson type of tough dude warning him, it's also this apologetic, somewhat bumbling guy as well.
That little trunk does a lot of work here in this pulse, and later in the story; It shows us that the quartermaster is lower status than the narrator, as he's required to carry this bag for him, which might explain why he, another low status guy, would try to give a clue for how to escape Cossack attacks, it get's flung over the fence by the Cossack as the first attack against the narrator, it holds the manuscript of Lenin's speech, a key story element, and it gets covered with hay for a pillow, echoing the hay on which the Cossacks were originally sitting. He's started the process of symbolically covering his real self with material from the Cossack's reality . What a hardworking little bag. He could have carried his own bag, but we would have missed the ability to see how he was still higher status than some people, in some contexts.
Next, observe the sun, and how it is introduced here so it can travel through the story, how its motion keeps us aware of time passing. Light fading, darkness entering, right on queue, with the next mention of the sun in the story noting that it just set, right before the narrator pivots from being the victim of violence to being a perpetrator. The next celestial body we meet is the moon, rising like a cheap earring. I'm sure we will consider why that is moment in the story where Babel placed it.
Again, apologies for not sticking just to Pulse #2, and looking ahead, but if the question is, what makes these details worth their weight, you need to see why the sun and the little bag are needed as wind up for the pitch that comes later in the story.
I have to comment on the image of the men sitting on hay shaving one another. When I first read this, it brought to mind images of monkeys all grooming one another in the branches of a tree —just a funny image I had to mention. It makes them seem a bit like animals, but also adds a “soft” touch to their hyper-masculinity. In addition, the image of these men shaving one another reinforces the level of their camaraderie. It implies a trust— they are shaving one another with potentially deadly instruments — and an acceptance that they each need the help of the others. This reinforces the outsider status of the narrator. As we know from reading further, this is going to continue. I also have to mention that at this point the first time I read it, I was filled with dread that they were going to shatter his glasses.
Savitsky, the guy in charge, the one with the power, can't both lay out the trouble (we don't cotton to glasses around here) and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble. This would force him to have to cop to ruthlessness, his own & the situation's, and thus undermine his power. The solution (a little rape, though a little murder would also work) is beneath him to acknowledge though in his heart he surely knows. And thus the quartermaster earns his place in the story by being a sort of dispenser of the essential information, what Savitsky knows but won't say, putting me in mind of the "Radar" character from "Mash", who knew more than he told but told when necessary (and who also happened to wear glasses & was a bit of an outsider).
I’m in the “keep the quartermaster” camp because of what many of you already said (thank you, sorry if I missed something) plus:
-These paragraphs offer a kind of transitional space of time where we are ushered more fully into the reality of the military from the command to the ranks (an order is given, then carried out; everyone has an official (and unofficial) role to play; no one is never truly alone) and also to the very real pecking order (later on: “Lenin hits it straight away, like a hen pecking at a grain.”)
-I felt a huge difference between the “village street lay before us” vs “lay before me” because the “us” invokes a sense of the “us who are not Savitsky or the enemy.” It sets up that question of “who is us” that the story revolves around.
-It helps to have a brief moment where we kind of trust the narrator’s confidence when he says “I’ll get along.” We still don’t know if his response is justified or misguided or just naive. It heightens the anticipation of if we can believe him and if he will succeed.
-When the QM “jump[s] back in despair and [runs] into the first courtyard”—afraid of being associated too closely with the “glasses” in front of the Cossacks and/or afraid of what would happen to the narrator—it made me wonder what compromises he makes to get through his day every day. He seems like a mirror (perhaps lesser) of what the narrator later will become, straddling conflicting moral and social positions, dying inside.
On the Esthetic Delight Meter, those couple of paragraphs heightened my anticipation, hope, and then my dread, all of which I felt better set up the ending. Seems like the language chosen did double or triple duty beyond “setting the scene.”
On the very first page of Red Cavalry, Babel wrote: "The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head." SOLD!
Agree that efficiency is usually a virtue in storytelling. However, in this case the goal being achieved by repeating the information is not to underline the information itself, but rather to indicate the workings of the "society" of macho guys operating here; it's an authoritarian, domination society, where the big guy sets the rules and the little guys indicate they're part of the team by repeating what the big guy says. We've all seen a lot of this recently, so it's easy to recognize 🤓 Kinda like "The Emperor's New Clothes"; yeah, it's redundant to hear 100 people say how beautiful the Emperor's Clothes are. It's also exactly the point. And also serves a very important role in creating the creeping feeling of terror that if you don't fit it, you're in trouble.
While we're tossing around Hollywood terms like "logline", I'll just note that I think the Hollywood term for "pulse" would be something like "sequence". (Some would say "beat", but I don't think that quite captures the storytelling work a "pulse" has to do.) "Sequences" were championed by a guy named Frank Daniel, a Czech who had quite an interesting career. He was head of the Czech film school in Milos Forman's day, then went to AFI in Los Angeles for a while (where he was a mentor of David Lynch), then ultimately to USC at the end of his career. Briefly, while others talk about 3 acts, Daniel said it was easier to break a movie script into (usually) 8 sequences, each (running about 15 minutes) with its own "dramatic question" which is answered at the end of the sequence. In Daniel's analysis, the first act has 2 sequences, the second has 4, and the third has another 2. So in, for instance, "Bicycle Thieves" some of the sequences would have questions such as (going from memory here, be easy on me), "Will he get the job?" "Will he be able to get a bicycle?" "Will he find the stolen bicycle quickly?". Frank Daniel never wrote any books himself, but some of his disciples did, and they're worth looking into, in my opinion, if this appeals to you. I'll have to think about how the "sequences" would map out in this story, but the first one might be something like "Will the narrator think the boss is a hero or a goon?"
I'm reminded of an article I read years ago about a preference for minimalism in "good" writing. I believe Cormac McCarthy was one of the references. And the author saying that one thing minimal writing rarely accomplished was humour. That humour (in this author's opinion) requires a bit of playful verbosity.
I'm not saying Babel is funny (although maybe this is!). But there's something
in this extended cut that gives a bit more play.
I don't think it's just "to let the narrator know that he’s in trouble but there may be a way out."
The thing about the quartermaster is he's likable and seems reasonable and apologetic, so those words in his mouth, about the "nicest little lady" come across as him feeling bad about this awful behavior. Though also feeling it is inevitable. And also not being in a position to do anything about it. He could even be angry about it-- but being of lower rank can't afford to make that known.
And what about that bit that was missed out accidentally (?) in the last of George's full versions of this "pulse" above:
"He hesitated a moment with my little trunk on his shoulders, came right up to me, then jumped back in despair and ran into the first courtyard."
Came right up to me, then jumped back in despair.
Why does the quartermaster do that? He wanted to say something, maybe, then had a failure of courage.
Did the quartermaster want to exhort the narrator not to rape girls? or a particular girl? Then felt it was useless, pointless?
It seems unlikely he is about to recommend a particularly nice little lady for the narrator to attack first. He just doesn't come across that way.
Is he hoping against hope that he could dissuade the narrator from such behavior, but realizes it's pointless? He seems in this view so wretched. So stuck - between Savitsky the outrageously exaggerated officer and the more mundane reality of the cossacks and their hardness.
And then the wry way he says, "and no nonsense, on account of his having suffered on the fields of learning..."
And then he reddens and walks away. Why redden? -- Afraid of revealing himself by this somewhat erudite wit - on the fields of learning - as a covert intellectual himself? A schoolteacher say, in hiding?
It is a transitional passage, but there is a lot in it too. I get carried away with these interpretations before I reread and maybe settle somewhere else and maybe I am now. But I'm seeing the quartermaster as a decent man among degraded ones, wanting to beseech the narrator not to harm an innocent girl - or "nicest little lady" - maybe he has known one - maybe in his own family - Maybe he's haunted, pulls back on the verge of blowing his cover. And realizing there is no other way for the narrator to survive maybe.
But the narrator does find another way - he symbolically rapes the goose - thus demonstrating a callous outlook that the cossacks find acceptable. I mean it's bad for the goose but at least he does kill the bird first before running his rapier through her.
Pulse 2 gives the narrator (and me) a chance to breathe, walk, take in the village in the company of another character who steps back from the violence of the opening and the violence to come with the Cossacks. The humanity of the brief encounter between the narrator and the quartermaster is made real by the "we" of their walk. The same observations about the village and so on wouldn't have an equivalent power if only coming from the narrator on a solo walk.
Re physical description: the description of the setting sun in this pulse for me ends up conversing with the moon on p 54, which “hung low over the yard like a cheap earring.” There was a surreal loveliness, or maybe an odd naturalness, to that dying pumpkin-sun, which ends up sacrificed along with the goose. Callousness, or guilt, or disgust has corroded our narrator’s view of the heavens.
Super duper interesting. Two things re: editing Babel's version. Thinking about this story as if it were food I feel like the quartermaster ingredient balances out the flavor. Bc we've got a strong ingredient in the Savitsky guy, same goes for the Cossacks, and the suicidal old lady is weak but a different kind of opposition--what the narrator doesn't want to be. So if it were just those three, Savitsky, Cossacks, suicidal old lady, it would feel like a bunch of very strong ingredients that needed something mellow and light, like lettuce in a sandwich. Second: I think there's a reluctance to edit an original for fear of cheapening it or making it worse and I think it's that same fear that gets in the way of writers who write stuff where nothing happens. So this exercise is very good practice, imo. Like just do it to do it, he's not going to come back from the dead and take offense. He was probably editing to his very last breath.
P.S. I've been reading the red cavalry stories in the complete works of babel, translated by peter constantine, and his daughter's preface in the book is very moving. The stories themselves have a ton of I don't get (I've been going too fast probably plus lack context) but I get the gist and it's making me brave. There's this one description, I can't remember in which story, about the sun looking like a beheaded head rolling around and it was just so much fun. This dude was fearless and I love him for it.
What strikes me is that the narrator doesn’t seem all that impressed by the whole situation. In pulse 1 we only hear him give affirmative answers: I can. I’ll get along. He seems very confident. His only emotions are admiration and envy of Savitsky. So when you leave out the quartermaster, all you have is this starstruck, overconfident revolutionary who walks blindly into dangers arms. We need a third party to remind us of the stakes.
In the original, the Quartermaster imbues it with this sort of creepy weirdness--like an Igor kind of character, whispering over his shoulder about how it is or what might happen while he leads the unknowing main character along. Without the Quartermaster, the main character is walking on his own, not being led, and the scene is almost idyllic, one of a fading afternoon. With the Quartermaster, the Cossacks shaving themselves (such a strange but simple image!) is latent with threat, but without him, the Cossacks are merely grooming themselves. I think it escalates the tension.