ISAAC BABEL THE LAUGHER

ISAAC BABEL THE LAUGHER

"Шакал стонет, когда он голоден, у каждого глупца хватает глупости для уныния, и только мудрец раздирает смехом завесу бытия."

[The jackal whines when he is hungry, every fool has folly enough to lose heart, and only the sage can tear the veil of being with his laughter.]
                                                                                   ...from Babel's story "The Rabbi"

Joseph T. Shipley’s Dictionary of Word Origins has an appendix on the sources and meanings of given names. Under Isaac we read, “Heb. Laughter.”

Isaac the Laugher in the Bible

Genesis 18: 10-15

“And he [the Lord] said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

[Commentary: the Book of Genesis is full of hilarious passages, but you wonder how much of the humor is intentional. Try reading, for example, about how God commands Abraham, age 99, to circumcise himself, his relatives and all his manservants. Try reading that without laughing. But the God of the Old Testament seems none too keen on laughter. Sarah imagines herself (what is she, 98? 99?) copulating with her old husband (see above) and she cannot help laughing. God takes umbrage]:

“And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return to thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.”

[There seems to be some laughing taboo operative in this ancient myth from the bible. At any rate, the Supreme Deity does not appreciate someone laughing at His plans. Being sore afraid of offending, Sarah tries to weasel out of her laughter: “No, I didn’t laugh.” But God says, “Oh yes you did.”]

Genesis 21: 1-8

And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken [Did exactly what? Impregnate her Himself? Is this an early example of parthenogenesis?] For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age. 

[Why does Sarah bring up her faux pas again here, after God earlier made it clear that he disapproved of her laughing? Is she trying to justify the earlier laughter by asserting that everyone now has a joyous occasion for laughter, the birth of a child? Who, to boot, they name Isaac, Hebrew for “he who laughs or will laugh.”]

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As for Isaac Babel, his father was named Emmanuel, who in modern-day New Jersey would probably be called Manny. The father and mother are not alive, so we cannot ask them why they chose a laughing name for their son, the writer-to-be. Possibly after his grandfather, who was an Isaac.

But the name is appropriate. Isaac Babel laughed his way through life. As his wife Antonina Pirozhkova has attested, merriment was extremely important to him. In the same story quoted above, "The Rabbi," Gedali asks the narrator Lyutov (Babel's alter ego, the Jew who rides with the Red Cavalry), "What is the Jew seeking?" The answer is one word: "Merriment." When sending New Year's cards to his friends, wishing them a Happy New Year, Babel would write: "Желаю вам веселья, как можно больше веселья, важнее ничего нет на свете. I wish you merriment, as much merriment as possible; there's nothing on earth more important."

Jokes were ever on his lips; he was a practical joker. In his works he often laughed ironically, and sometimes at things that are none too laughable. Like the Old Testament God, the Soviet authorities were uncomfortable with laughter and irony. True believers do not like their dogma undermined by some laughing Jew with a sly grin on his face. Laughter in the Soviet Union was dangerous. Babel went on laughing all the same. 

In the middle of the night on May 15, 1939, he was arrested at his villa in Peredelkino (a writers’ colony outside Moscow). As he rode with the secret policemen on the way to Lubyanka Prison—where he would live the last eight months of his life in hell, before they finally, mercifully, shot him in January, 1940—he could not resist one last joke. He said to one of his arresters, “You must not get very much sleep,” and he laughed.