Guy de Maupassant (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Isaac Babel
- First Published: 1932
- Type of Plot: Impressionistic
- Time of Work: Winter, 1916-1917
- Setting: St. Petersburg
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Raisa Bendersky, Bendersky
- Genres: Short fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Journalism or journalists, Poverty or poor people, Reality, Jews or Jewish life, Hallucinations or illusions
- Locales: St. Petersburg, Russia
The Story
Although unnamed, the protagonist is approximately identical with the author, as the latter was in the winter of 1916-1917: a young Jewish writer from Odessa who has moved to the capital illegally, on the eve of the February Revolution.
The young writer, though poverty-stricken and selling almost nothing he has written, is so supremely confident that he spurns an offer of a job as a clerk. He sees himself as superior to Leo Tolstoy, whose religion was “all fear. He was frightened by the cold, by old age, by death.”
The narrator finds acceptable...
[The entire page is 1574 words long]
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