Short Story Criticism | Red Cavalry, Isaak Babel - Cynthia Ozick (essay date 8 May 1995)

Cynthia Ozick (essay date 8 May 1995)

SOURCE: Ozick, Cynthia. “The Year of Writing Dangerously.” New Republic (8 May 1995): 31-8.

[In the following essay, Ozick investigates autobiographical aspects of the stories in Red Cavalry and elucidates the relationship between the short story collection and his 1920 Diary.]

Identity, at least, is prepared to ask questions.

—Leon Wieseltier

A year or so before the Soviet Union imploded, S.'s mother, my first cousin, whose existence until then had been no more than a distant legend, telephoned from Moscow. “Save my child!” she cried, in immemorial tones. So when S. arrived in New York, I expected a terrified refugee on the run from the intolerable exactions of popular anti-Semitism; at that time the press was filled with such dire reports. For months, preparing for her rescue, I had been hurtling from one agency to another, in search of...

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