ISAAC BABEL ON WRITING

“Точность и краткость есть первые достоинства прозы. Precision and brevity are the primary virtues of prose.”

 …Babel quoting Pushkin

“Никакое железо не может войти в человеческое сердце так леденяще, как точка, поставленная вовремя. No iron can stab the human heart with such chill as a period placed just in time.” 

…Probably the most famous line Babel ever wrote, from his story, “Guy de Maupassant”

BAD NERVES, INSOMNIA, CAN’T WRITE

Letter written in Odessa, May 28, 1926: “Все было бы хорошо, если бы мне не приходилось возить по всем городам глупые мои нервы, не умеющие работать и не умеющие спать. Everything would be fine, if I were not obliged to transport to all different cities my stupid nerves, which cannot work and cannot sleep.” (there’s an echo of Gogol here)

ON WRITING NOVELS

“You know that I’ve never written any novels. I’ll tell you frankly: my greatest desire in life is to write a novel. And many times I’ve started doing it. Unfortunately, it never works out. What comes out is short. Maybe for that reason I’m in awe of people who write novels. I write short fiction. Such, it turns out, is my psychological mindset, such is the configuration of my soul.” (from the reminiscences of G. Markov)

THE HARD WORK OF WRITING

“When I start working I always think that I’m not up to doing it. Sometimes I weep out of sheer exhaustion . . . . If a certain sentence won’t come out right I get palpitations of the heart. And so often it is that they won’t come out right, the damned sentences.”

“I don’t have an imagination; I don’t know how to make things up. I must know everything, down to the last minute detail; otherwise I can’t write. The motto engraved on my shield is ‘authenticity.’ That’s why I write so slowly and get very little written. It’s hard. After every story I age several years. 

Какое там к черту моцартианство, веселье над рукописью и легкий бег воображения! Don’t tell me this damn stuff about Mozart, about the joy of working on a manuscript and the light flow of imagination!" (from the reminiscences of Konstantin Paustovsky)

SEARCHING FOR THE SUN OF THE SOUTH

As early as 1915, barely having begun his career as a writer, Babel, whose home town was Odessa, said that he was looking in literature for the sun full of bright colors. He exulted in Gogol’s Ukrainian stories and regretted how Petersburg had won out over Poltava. He strove for a certain verve, splashes of brightness not typical of much Russian literature. 

But by the beginning of the 1930s Babel was criticizing his earlier works for what he saw as overdone stylistic effects. He stated that he wanted to write more simply, to free himself from use of excessive imagery. Now he declared that the Gogol of “The Overcoat” (a story set in St. Petersburg, the frigid north) was dearer to him than the Gogol of the Ukrainian stories. But since he published very little in the 1930s, the bulk of his fiction is still characterized by the bright imagery of the south, of Odessa. (from the reminiscences of Ilya Erenburg)

ON REWRITING

“First of all, I cut all the superfluous words out of the sentence. You need a very sharp eye, because the language cleverly hides its garbage, its repetitions, synonyms, its simply nonsensical stuff; the language is all the time trying to outsmart you . . . . Each time I begin rewriting a text I work until my most beastly caviling can no longer detect in the manuscript a single grain of dirt.”

“I check the freshness and precision of all the images, similes, metaphors. If your similes are not precise better to use none at all . . . . a simile must be as exact as a slide rule and as natural as the smell of dill.” (from the reminiscences of Paustovsky)

THE PERFECT WORD

"There are times when you've been agonizing over one page for a month or two and suddenly you find a certain word that leaves you in awe of your very self, how perfect it is! On such occasions I tear out of the house and go running through the streets, like the town crazy." (from the reminiscences of V. Fink)

ODESSA

What does Odessa have for a writer? “Lots of ocean [said Babel], sun, beautiful women and lots of food for thought.” Babel loved all of the above, plus horses. In mentioning a friend from his Red Cavalry days, a man named Khlebnikov, Babel said that “Both of us looked at life as if looking at a meadow in May, a meadow through which walked women and horses.”