Red Cavalry, Isaak Babel - Robert A. Maguire (essay date 2000)
Robert A. Maguire (essay date 2000)
SOURCE: Maguire, Robert A. “Ekphrasis in Isaak Babel.” In Depictions: Slavic Studies in the Narrative and Visual Arts in Honor of William E. Harkins, edited by Douglas M. Greenfield, pp. 14-23. Dana Point, Calif.: Ardis, 2000.
[In the following essay, Maguire examines Babel's use of ekphrasis, or elaborate description, in the stories of Red Cavalry.]
Toward the beginning of Babel's “Pan Apolek,” one of the longest and most complex stories in Red Cavalry, the narrator, Liutov, pauses to describe a painting he sees hanging on the wall of a fugitive priest's house in Novograd-Volynsk:
I remember: the spiderweb stillness of a summer morning hung between the straight and bright walls. A straight shaft of light had been placed at the bottom of the picture by the sun. In it swarmed sparkling dust. The long figure of John [the Baptist] was descending straight down upon me out...
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