The Underworld of Benia Krik and I. Babel's "Odessa Stories" Author(s): Boris Briker Source: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 36, No. 1/2, Centenary of Isaak Babel (March-June 1994), pp. 115-134 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40870776 Accessed: 28-12-2017 22:34 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Boris Briker
The Underworld of Benia Krik and I. Babel's Odessa Stories
In 1916, a short essay entitled "Odessa," by the then young and unkn
I. Babel, appeared in M. Gorky's Zhurnal zhurnalov. Using the typica
like rhetoric of his times, I. Babel predicted in "Odessa" that a messiah would come from that sunny port metropolis to break with
tradition of grey and foggy Petersburg. While it remains a question w
himself fulfilled the role of such a messiah, he was responsible for
shape the popular image of his native city in his Odessa Stories. It i however, that an image of Odessa had been formed well before Babel
material for his picture of Odessa and its Moldavanka district. This
city may be viewed as one "Odessa text."1 Such a text unites tw
structures: the structure provided by the history of the city, newsp urban folklore, and also the structure actualized in literary works.
The very title of one of Babel's Odessa Stories, "How It Was
Odessa" (KaK 3to aejiajiocb b Oaecce) suggests that the Odessa wa
things had very distinct features. Indeed, this phrase can be attribute
Odessa Stories, but to the "Odessa text" in general. While the urban
Petersburg had been associated with the evil and oppressive powers of
Empire, the image of Odessa in the nineteenth century evoked notions
In the Jewish context, Odessa, though located within the Pale of
offered a land of opportunity, an "alternative" to America, Argentina
forbidden Petersburg. As one prerevolutionary Odessa writer comment
from the Pale of Settlement does not dream of America or Palestine, k
will be in Odessa."2 In addition, Odessa had the reputation of being w
Robert Weinberg has called the "Russian Eldorado," a place where ea could be made. Like Menachem Mendl from Sholom Aleichem's stori
"Luftenmenschen" set out for Odessa in hopes of realizing their dre
1 The semiotic concept of the text of the city has been developed by s as Iu. Lotman and V. Toporov with regard to Petersburg. See, for ex Toporov, "Peterburg i peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury," and I
"Simvolika Peterburga i problemy semiotiki goroda," in Semioti
gorodskoi kuVtury. Peterburg (Tartu: Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo U 1984).
L A. Svirskii, "Iz putevogo dnevnika" Knizhki Voskhoda No. 7 (1904):
-■* R. Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on t
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 1.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes