Talk:Isaac Babel

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Untitled[edit]

What is preferred for birthdates for Russian writers--New Style calendar or Old? I've edited the page to reflect Babel's birthday in the New Style.

adoarns 16:46, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Death date?[edit]

There are two of them~in the article. Xx236 09:07, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The official Soviet history was trying to shift the Great Purge related death dates of prominent people to the Great Patriotic War time, so that an unsophisticated reader would attribute it to the War. The 1940 date is almost certainly the correct one. abakharev 12:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. I made an attempt to make it more clear. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 02:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are taking his early life from a fictional story "The Story of My Dovecote." His family was in Nikolaev during the great Odessa Pogrom of 1905. He fictionalized his childhood and was coy about his real childhood. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.31.139.184 (talk) 18:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1920 Diary[edit]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300093136/104-7772162-1082348?v=glance&n=283155

Wife/Widow[edit]

Are the woman he married in 1919 and his widow two different people? There seems to be a chunk of biography missing. --♥ «Charles A. L.» 17:38, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isaac or Isaak?[edit]

There are noticeably more google hits for "Isaak Babel". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 23:54, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't really matter; the Russian is "Исаак", which transliterates, depending on your preferences, to either the (literal) "Isaak" or to "Isaac"; there is no ambiguity concerning the English pronunciation of the final consonant in either case. I personally prefer the version with "k". For those non-Russian-speakers who really want to get it right (and why not!), note that the name is pronounced, as is usual when paired or double vowels occur in Russian, with each "a" forming a syllable, and the emphasis (stress) on the second "a": approximately (in "phrasebook" English pronunciation!) "Eez-a-ARK". "EYE-zök", as in "Isaac Newton", is not correct. Maelli (talk) 10:21, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes section[edit]

The current quote selection is misleading, because it seems to imply that Babel wrote about two things - Jews and how bad the Communist revolution was. Both are very wrong. As for communism, the lead already admits that he was an adherent of the Communist revolution himself and there are many pro-Communist quotes that could be extracted from his works, including the play Maria quoted here. And while he has written a lot about his people, the Russian Jews, it is not clear that the specific Jewish-related quotes given there are the most important ones; in fact, I doubt that it's possible to interpret them in a satisfactory manner without having read the play Sunset. The same applies to the quotes from Maria.

So why am I not fixing the section by adding other quotes? Because it would remain unbalanced, and any selection made by an individual editor is bound to be subjective. It is simply very hard to give a correct impression of what is important or notable about an author in a few quotes, and such a selection inevitably seems to claim to give such an impression. Furthermore, if everyone were to add those quotes he finds noteworthy or reflective of his particular view of what is important about the author, the result would be an endlessly expanding section (it is too big already). If I were to choose, I would simply delete the section. And if one absolutely must have such a section, one should at least stick to quotes that third-part reliable sources have found especially important or somehow "emblematic" - though the best thing would probably be to collect such stuff in Wikiquote.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pogrom[edit]

I stuck the dubious tag on the paragraph about Babel's family and the 1905 pogrom because it contradicts David McDuff's Introduction to "Red Cavalry and Other Stories" (Penguin edition). According to McDuff - "If Babel did witness an anti-Jewish pogrom, neither he nor the rest of the Babel family were physically harmed in it." He also quotes Nathalie Babel: "Nor would his father have to kneel at a Cossack's feet and beg that his store be spared, for the simple reason that he did not own a store. He owned a warehouse, which was neither broken into nor plundered during the pogrom".

I am not an expert but it seems like the reference in the article (now a dead link) might be taking Babel's "autobiographical" stories as fact. GabrielF (talk) 21:59, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Execution[edit]

The article has a quotation that he was sentenced to death by firing squad, but doesn't go into any further details. In the following book, it's stated that he was sentenced to death by Vasiliy Ulrikh and executed by Vasili Blokhin. He was cremated and his ashes were thrown into Burial Pit No. 1 at Donskoy Cemetery.

Rayfield, Donald (2005). Stalin and His Hangmen: The tyrant and those who killed for him. New York: Random House. p. 365. ISBN 0375757716.

Lara 02:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is "Bobel" a typo?[edit]

Just checking... Bobel is his original surname. His first published stories appeared under the name Bab' El -- later "Babel." Rosekelleher (talk) 22:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Date[edit]

Babel's date of birth is given variously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.197.48.128 (talk) 13:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Mass changes of spelling[edit]

Due to previous vandalism, some of the quotes and titles of books were incorrectly altered. I think I have corrected this now but if I have missed something then let me know. Mellk (talk) 02:12, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]