On Isaac Babel's "The Story of My Dovecot"

Author(s): HAMUTAL BAR-YOSEF and Ilana Gomel

Source: Prooftexts, Vol. 6, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 1986), pp. 264-271
Published by: Indiana University Press
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264 NOTES AND READINGS

Does the plural, "that yemay look upon it," refer to both the pupil and the
harlot? Similarly, does the clause, "that ye remember and do all My command

ments," refer to the harlot's conversion (acceptance of all the commandments)

as well as to the pupil's act ofwill power? Does the phrase "and ye shall be holy
hint at the holiness ofmarriage (qiddushin)between the onetime harlot
[qedoshim]"
and the pupil? How far can a midrash be pushed? As far as Scripture lets it.
We have discussed an example of how a midrash develops a biblicalmetaphor
by taking it literally.Our brief discussion has concerned itself exclusively with
the literalmeaning of themidrashic story.We did not ask whether the story has
figurative or allegorical of meaning. We did not even ask what?if any?
layers
symbolicmeaning is to be found in, say, the six silver beds and the one gold bed:
do they represent the Six Days ofWork and the Sabbath? But if themidrash,
taken literally, is part of the biblical metaphor, would themidrash, takenmeta
phorically, also be part of it? I imagine so. For now, however, I am content with
the reward of reading our midrashic story on the literal level. As for its reward
on themystical or philosophic level, I know not how much it is.

WARREN ZEV HARVEY

Department of Jewish Thought
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

On Isaac Babel's 'The Story ofMy Dovecot"

Whenever Jewish literature in non-Jewish languages is discussed, the ques
tion arises: what is the criterion determining that thework or the author belong
to this category?the writer's origins, the fictional material, the thematic prob
lems, the psychological patterns, the use of motifs from ancient Jewish sources?
Babel's work does not pose such problems of classification. He began his
writing career as a successor in the direct line of Russian-Jewish literature that
flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century.1 From his first
story "Old Shloyme" (1923), and throughout his work, to "Karl-Yankel" (1931),
"Froym Gratch" (1933) and the film script "Wandering Stars,"2 he consistently
portrays Jewish characters and experiences, behavior and ways of speech. He is

particularly interested in the Jewish fate investigating the ability or inability to

escape from it, or change it.
Babel's attitude to the Jewish condition was extremely ambivalent. In
"Childhood. At Grandmother's," a reminiscence written at the age of
lyrical
twenty-one, we find the key sentence seemed alien to me at this
"Everything
very moment; I wanted to run away and I wanted to stay forever."3 During a
weekend visit to his grandmother's Jewishhome the child gradually discovers?as
in the tale of Red Riding Hood?the wicked image of the Jewish grandmother,
avaricious and full of suspicion.

1. See L. Lvov-Rogachevsky, A History of Russian-Jewish Literature, ed. and trans, by

Arthur Levin (Ann Arbor, 1979). Cf. also Simon Markish, "Russko-jevreiskaya literatura i
Isaak Baber in Isaak Babel, Detstvo iDrugie Raskazy (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 319-45.
2. "Bluzdajuscie Zvezdy," Babel?Zabytye Proizvedenja (Ann Arbor, 1979), pp. 195-203.
3. "Detstvo. U Babushki," Detstvo iDrugie Raskazy (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 32.

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 Prooftexts 265

A change of attitude in the opposite direction occurs through "Crossing

into Poland" (1924), the first story in the Red Cavalry cycle. The Jewish house as
it looks after the pogrom is at firstdescribed with hostile alienation; its inhabitants
seem to the narrator (whose Jewish identity is suppressed) like skippingmonkeys,
or "Japs in a circus act" (p. 38). Towards the end of the story the narrator is
forced into emotional involvement in spite of himself, when the pregnant woman
tells him how her father begged not to be killed in front of his daughter, and
was refused.
Even a superficial glance at Babel's fiction and correspondence rules out any
possibility of describing his attitude to his Jewishness as simple, consistent, and
proceeding in a straight line. The Jewish portrait has many facets in Babel's
fiction: Reb Arie Leib and Benya Krik; Dvoyra and her husband; Eliahu the
rabbi's son; Gedali, the founder of the International of Good Men; Aharon
Paskin the informer; dull-witted Mendel Krik.
Jewishness has many faces in "The Story ofMy Dovecot" as well. There are
the Jewish nouveaux riches, merchants of unbounded ambition, such as Khariton
Efrussi who bribes an official to get his son into the Russian secondary school.
There is the Jewishness of naive people, dreamers of dreams, acting without
thinking. "All the men in our family were trusting by nature, and quick to
ill-considered actions" (p. 223).4 There is the pathetically aggressive, ridiculous
Zionism of Lieberman, the Hebrew teacher. There is the Jewishness of the
mother, the only clear-sighted person in the story and therefore a pessimist,
and there is, of course, the Jewishness of the child-narrator, who distinguishes
himself in passing the test of cultural acceptability, but immediately undergoes
the shock of blind xenophobia. The Gentiles in the story are equally many-sided.
There is the sick sadism ofMakarenko and the psychopathic racism of his wife,
but there is also the antisemitic examiner who is open to conviction, and the
bird-seller?a figure of folkmagic?who says "They shouldn't!" (p. 228) of the
pogrom. There is also the janitor Kuzma, a fine father figure.
However, with all Babel's hesitation and ambivalence as regards the subject
of Jewishness, it can safely be said that "The Story of My Dovecot" (with its
"First Love") represents a significant turning point in his attitude to his
sequel
Jewish identity.The Red Cavalry cycle reflects the change in Babel's attitude to
Jewishness as a result of his encounter with Polish Jews during his movements
with the Red Army during the post-revolutionary civil war. The change is
expressed chiefly in his readiness to regard the Jewish condition as one of
suffering and victimization. In "The Rabbi's Son," the final story inRed Cavalry
(1924 version), the narrator accepts his personal part in this destiny, recognizing
his inability to run away from it. "The Story of My Dovecot" (1925) goes
further in this direction, and represents the narrator's autobiographical memories
as a distinctively Jewish autobiography.

Babel had a decided tendency to group together a number of stories with a

common background of time, place and characters, and to arrange them in a

4. All quotations taken from Isaac Babel, Collected Stories, trans, or revised by
W. Morison (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1961).

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266 NOTES AND READINGS

cyclical structure. The Red Cavalry and Tales ofOdessa cycles were composed in this
fashion.
There are indications that he intended to write a of autobiographical
cycle
stories dealing with the childhood and adolescent experiences of a first-person
narrator. "The Story ofMy Dovecot" was firstpublished in the periodical Krasnaya
Nov (1925, no. 4), with the author's note: "This story (rasskaz) represents the
beginning of an autobiographical novella {vovest')."5Although Babel himself never
collected his "autobiographical" stories into a full cycle, "The Story ofMy Dove
cot" seems to belong to a group of stories of an autobiographical nature.6

questions arise concerning the grouping and the proposed title of

Two
"Autobiographical Stories." First, do the narrative details faithfully reflect the
author's experiences at the period described, and, secondly, is the autobiographical
account the dominant theme of the story?
In Menachem Brinker's article "Autobiography in the Fiction of Brenner,"7
a clear distinction is proposed between these two a
literary work
questions:
(whether prose or may or may not contain authentic biographical ele
poetry)
ments. The presence of autobiographical material does not necessarily make the
work in question a "fictional This term, Brinker says, can be
autobiography."
applied only in cases where the narrator's life is the subject (whether explicit or
implicit) of thework.8 Autobiographical material may of course occur inwriting
that is not "fictional Brinker says, while a "fictional auto
autobiography,"
biography" may be entirely devoid of objective autobiographical detail (as, for
instance,when the author projects his personal fate on to a fictional or historical
figure). I would like to add a clause to Brinker's definition, namely that to
a work as possessing an autobiographical theme one must examine the
classify
etiological nature of the central event or series of events that is, the
depicted,
representation of these events as a key to the narrator's as
self-knowledge,
events a situation that determined the writer's present his
embodying identity,
life-history and his Weltanschauung. The fictional autobiography (to use Brinker's

5. Babel wanted to publish "My First Love" in the same magazine as a sequel to "The

Story of My Dovecot." However, in the same year "My First Love" was published as a

separate story in the Krasnaya Nop supplement. Babel was annoyed and wrote a letter of

complaint to Gorky, editor of both magazine and supplement. Cf. note by A. Zikher in the
collection Deisivo iDrugie Raskazy, p. 353.
6. This At Grandmother's"
group also includes "Childhood. (1915), "The Evening
with the Empress" (1922), "In the Basement" (1931), "The Awakening" (1931), "Guy de
Maupassant" (1932), "Di Grasso" (1937), "My First Honorarium" (published in 1963,
written between 1922 and 1928) and "The Road" (1932).
7. Cf. Mahbaro? Brenner, vol. 3-4, ed. Menachem Dorm?n and Uzi Shavit (Tel Aviv,
1985): 145-72.
8. So, for example, Brinker considers the four poems by Bialik collected under the
title Yatmut ("Orphanhood") as well as the story Safiah ("Aftergrowth"), but not Hamatmid
("The Talmud Student") to be fictional autobiography. The interpretation of the latter
poem as "dealing with the life of Bialik in Volozhin" iswrong, even though it contains
authentic autobiographic elements. See Brinker, "Autobiography," p. 149.

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 Prooftexts 267

term) is self-analysis and self-knowledge attained by the writer through auto

biographical or fictional elements.9

Many details in "The Story of My Dovecot" create the impression of

authentic documentation of memories of real events.10 The author's family
name, Babel, ismentioned in this story (and only in this one), in the scene where
the child-narrator hears of themurder of his old relative (p. 228). The events of
the story take place in 1904-1905 and the age of the narrator ("Iwas only nine,"
p. 220) corresponds to Babel's own age at that time (hewas born in 1894). The
family ambitions, and especially those of the father, regarding the boy's success
at school, the tender and permissive character of the mother, are all confirmed

by the testimony of familymembers and inother stories by Babel himself.11The

two crucial incidents in the story, the school entrance examination and the

pogrom, occur in the town of Nikolaev where Babel livedwith his family from
the year of his birth (he was born inOdessa) till 1905. In 1905 violent pogroms
broke out inNikolaev and in the same year similar disturbances erupted all over
the Ukraine.12
The strong illusion of authentic autobiographical reporting is reinforced by
the story's narrative technique: the frequent mentioning of precise and specific
dates: "But not till Iwas nine" (p. 220); "It was then 1904" (p. 220); "In 1892 he
ran away to avoid doing military service" (p. 223); "He used to tell about the
Polish Rising of 1861" (p. 224); "The events . . . occurred in the autumn of
1905" (p. 226); "From earlymorning on October 20" (p. 226); places and addresses
(Nikolaev, Herson, Odessa District, Belaya Tserkov, the Yeshiva of Volozhin,
Los Angeles, Bird Market Square, the Cathedral Square); details of Jewish day
to-day life and even the names of the authors of textbooks that the narrator had
to study forhis examination.
And yet itwould be a mistake to attempt a reconstruction of the life of
Babel and his family on the basis of all the facts in this and other stories of the
"autobiographical" cycle.13 The child Babel was indeed inNikolaev during the

9. Cf. Judith Bar-El's definition in "The Autobiographic Poem in the Works of Chaim
Nachman Bialik and His Generation" (Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
1983), especially pp. 2-3.
10. The most complete and authoritative
biography of Babel may be found in Judith
Stora-Sandor, et l'oeuvre (Paris, 1968). Stora-Sandor
Isaac Babel?l'homme uses Babel's letters
in the Italian (1961) and American (1965) editions, the foreword by Babel's daughter
Natalie to the book The Lonely Years, the foreword by Maria Ulsupova to the Italian edition
and an interview with Babel's sister, Mrs. Shaposhnikov. Cf. Stora-Sandor, Babel, p. 13.
11. Cf. Natalie Babel's foreword to The Lonely Years 1925-1939 (New York, 1964),
pp. xvi-xvii.
12. Ukrainian Jewry underwent three increasingly destructive waves of pogroms: at
the end of the eighties, in 1903-1905 and in 1919-1921.
13. Natalie Babel writes: "Because Babel often wrote in the first person, his stories
have been thought to be autobiographical; actually they are a blend of fact and fiction.
Two good examples are The and The First Love'. ... It is true that
Story of My Dovecot'
as a child Babel witnessed a pogrom and, evidently, was deeply shaken by the experience.
But the Babel family, though, of course, terrified, was not physically harmed" (The Lonely
Years, pp. xiv-xv).

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268 NOTES AND READINGS

pogrom but neither he nor his familywere harmed. The loss of his pigeons and
the murder of the uncle, the two traumatic shocks that the child sustains, are,

therefore, entirely fictional.

Further in the story the school entrance examination precedes the pogrom.
In actual fact Babel passed the examination after the pogrom, and not in Nikolaev
but inOdessa, where he came to live after having been admitted to the Tsar
Nikolai the First School of Commerce.14 His family remained inNikolaev and
Babel lived with his grandmother and two maternal uncles, his parents and
sister joining him after some time.15
Babel himself saw themixture of fact and fiction in his "autobiographical"
stories as self-evident. In a letter to his mother, discussing the publication of his
stories "The Awakening" and "In the Basement," he writes: "The themes of the
stories are taken from my childhood, but obviously, I have invented many
details and changed others."16

The plot of "The Story of My Dovecot" consists of two fabulae, each center

ing upon a traumatic experience: the entrance examination and the pogrom.
The connecting link between them is the dovecot promised to the child as a
reward (or a bribe) ifhe passes the examination, but brutally torn from him by
the pogrom. The title, read literally (in Russian: "Istoria moyei golubyatni,"
"istoria" meaning both "a story" and "a history," see below), prepares the reader
for some kind of animal stories about a child and a beloved pet, such as "The
Calf" by Feierberg. The familiar connotations of the dove as a symbol of love
and tenderness (inRussian, as well as inHebrew and Yiddish) contribute to the
false anticipation aroused by the title.
At the first reading the Secondary School entrance examination appears to
be the central event of the story, both thematically and emotionally. This
impression, if proved correct, would assign "The Story of My Dovecot," together
with "Childhood. At Grandmother's" and "The Awakening," to a group of
stories whose main subject is family pressure on the gifted child, forcing him
into extraordinary scholarly achievements. This pressure stems from illusory

expectations for the future: "My Granny believed me, believed inme and wanted
me to become a great lord when I grow up. ("Childhood. At Grandmother's,"

p. 31). In "The Awakening" the father attempts to turn his son into a famous
violin virtuoso.
In these two stories the compulsive pressure is characteristic of only certain
members of the family (the father and the grandmother, but not themother);
however, it is also presented as a pathological trait of Jews of a certain social
standing in assimilated Jewish society, who want their children to achieve the
high, even noble, social position they themselves lack: "All the folk in our
circle?brokers, shopkeepers, clerks in banks and steamship offices?used to
have their children music" ("The Awakening," ". . . but
taught p. 267); though
my father could have reconciled himself to poverty, fame he must have" (ibid.,

14. Cf. his brief "Autobiography" in I. Babel, lzobrannoje (Moscow, 1966), pp. 23-24.
15. Cf. Stora-Sandor, Isaac Babel, p. 16.
16. In a letter dated 14.10.1931. The Lonely Years, p. 189.

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 Prooftexts 269

p. 268). The author represents this Jewish ambition as based on

self-deception
empty family pride: '"It's not possible/ people feeding at his expense would
insinuate, that the grandson of such a . . ." He sees in it both
grandfather (ibid.).
a cultural anachronism and a threat to the sensual vitality of the child, degener
ating into sterility and cruelty. This form of the theme recalls motifs from the
Hebrew Haskalah literaturewhich accused Jewish religious culture of evading
the demands of "life." Here the same criticism is directed at semi-assimilated

Jewish society remaining unchanged in this respect.

The theme appears again in the first part of "The Story ofMy Dovecot."
The father's unlimited aspirations and dubious pedigree are criticized by impli
cation, together with the whole cruel competitiveness forced upon Jewswho
wanted to send their children to Russian Secondary schools, which, before the
revolution, practiced the numerus clausus system. The child fails his first exam
ination because a rich Jewish merchant bribes the examiner: "My mark was
changed from A to A minus, and Efraim Juniorwent to the secondary school
instead of me" (p. 221). Still, Babel provides historical perspective in his expo
sition, taking the trouble to explain to the contemporary reader the problems
imposed on Russian Jewry by the school regulations. At the same time he
caricatures the Hebrew teacher's hope of national revival, and ridicules the
exaggerated hysterical excitement, characteristic of both the teacher and the
father, examples of emasculated Jewish manhood (p. 225).17
Yet it is not the Jewish aspiration to see the childmake good in his studies
that constitutes the chief object of criticism; neither does the plot of the story
culminate in the school examination, but in the pogrom. The parallel structure
of the plot invites the reader to seek a common denominator of the two traumas
the boy suffers: the examination and the pogrom. This common denominator is
the experience of encountering antisemitism.
The "victory" of the examination pass marks the first round. It is a false

breakthrough since it fosters in the narrator and his family the illusion that the
young generation, by being diligent and worthy, may gain admission intoRussian
society. And indeed the Jewish boy proves to his gentile teacher that he knows
Russian history and literature better than gentile children and forces him, how
ever to admire his This admiration, however, is
grudgingly, accomplishments.
couched in words with an antisemitic flavor: "'What a people', the old man

whispered, 'these little Jews of yours! There's a devil in them'" (p. 222).
The illusion built up by the success in the examination reinforces the shock
of the pogrom and its lack of any rational causality. It stresses the effect of total
"Their must be wiped out/ said Kate, . . .'I can't a-bear their
absurdity: spawn
spawn, nor their stinkingmenfolk'" (p. 230). David Roskies writes in his book
Against theApocalypse (Harvard, 1984): "Life, in Babel's scheme, was a series of
initiations into violence" (p. 161). The plot structure of "The Story ofMy Dove
cot" offers a visual model of this idea.

Let us return to the question of the central theme. Is this an auto

story's
biographical story of initiation, centered on the hero's growth tomaturity, or is
17. The inversion of sexual roles in traditional Jewish society is particularly empha
sized in another story by Babel, "The King," in the descriptions of the bride and groom.
On this point he may have been influenced by Mendele Mocher Sforim.

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270 NOTES AND READINGS

its main thrust socio-historical: the confrontation of the "new Jew" in Russia
with antisemitism after he has been misled by hopes of integrating inRussian
It is not easy to answer this question, or to distinguish between the two
society?
elements, as Brinker demands. The conclusion would depend on the relative
one is willing to ascribe to antisemitism as a factor in Isaac Babel's
importance
biography and also on the extent as far as it can be analyzed, towhich he himself
saw this factor as crucial in his life.
personal
Babel (as the implied author of this story) regards the Jewishworld with
different degrees of involvement or detachment, or aversion in dif
sympathy
ferent stories or even in one and the same work. Thus, "The of My
Story
Dovecot" does not lack criticism of the Jewishmilieu; neither are all theGentiles
tarred with the same brush. The plot of the story, however, is structured in
such a way that all the blemishes of the Jewish community and the pressure it
exerts on the child mark only the first stage of the "initiation into violence" (in
this case, more precisely, into antisemitism). As in Poe's "The Pit and the Pendu

lum," the trauma becomes palpable only at the stage when logic and causality
slip away and events pile up in a haphazard, irrational, fashion, incomprehensible
to the child-narrator.
The scene (the only one in the story) inwhich the child is confronted with
the actuality of the pogrom becomes a visual emblem of absurdity. The picture
seems to be based on a revolutionary poster representing the future
visually
brave new world of workers and peasants: "In the lane on one side a young

peasant in a waistcoat was a window-frame in the house of Khariton

smashing
Efrussi. He was smashing itwith a wooden mallet, striking out with his whole
body. Sighing, he smiled all around with the amiable grin of drunkenness,
"
sweat, and spiritual power (p. 231).
This plot structure draws "The Story of My Dovecot" into a substantial

body ofwriting, both inHebrew and Yiddish, which describes unexpected out
bursts of antisemitism that shatter the lives of Jewswho had let themselves be
beguiled into believing that by cunning or personal perfection they could stave
off the disaster. These works include, for example "Under Cover of Thunder"
by Mendele (1886), "Get Thee Out" by Sholem Aleichem (1914), and "The
Disgraced Trumpet" by Bialik.18 In our timeAharon Applefeld's Baddenheim1939
makes use of the same structural device: it starts with an illusion of peaceful
assimilation in a gentile culture,while in the background destruction ispreparing
and finally breaks out, unforeseen and incomprehensible. Thus, "The Story of
My Dovecot" is both an autobiographical story and a story concerned with the
historical destiny of the Jew. The double meaning of the title "Istoria moyei
golubyatni" then becomes clear.
Babel dedicated the story to Gorky, one of the few Russian writers who
openly opposed antisemitism, encouraged Jewish authors and promoted trans?a

18. There is a great deal of similarity between our story and "The Disgraced Trumpet/'
especially in the way the child's expectations concentrate upon the object that symbolizes
for him the illusion of blending with the gentile world: in Bialik the trumpet, which
belongs to the brother serving in the Russian army; in Babel, pigeon-breeding, which was
supposed to be an unsuitable occupation for a Jewish child, as it iswritten: "Pigeon-fliers
are forbidden to bear witness" (Sanh?drin 24b).

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 Prooftexts 271

tions of Hebrew literature into Russian. Gorky played an especially important

part in the lifeof Babel, and it is not by accident that Babel in his short "Auto
biography" devotes much space to a detailed account of his meeting with Gorky
and stresses its influence upon his development. Gorky often stood by Babel in
times of trouble,19 probably symbolizing forhim the chance of a fraternal recep
tion by the Russian and by Russian literature. However, Gorky was not
people
at ease with Babel's poetic style, the subtlety of his structure and his bias
towards the marvelous and the exceptional. He himself a more realistic
preferred
mode ofwriting and advised Babel to follow it.
"The of My Dovecot" may be as a concession to Gorky's
Story interpreted
artistic requirements: in comparison with the Red Cavalry stories and even the
Odessa cycle, it is relatively closer to the mainstream of realistic writing. The
language is hardly ever lyrical;20 the time structure is relatively simple and
linear, with no attempt to compress
everything into a single brief situation;
is and against a socio-historical
psychological experience represented explained
background; and the division of the characters into "positive" and "negative" is
less ambiguous. unique characteristics of the earlier fiction are sacrificed
Many
and the writing is brought into line, to some extent, with the demands made

upon Soviet literature in the twenties and the thirties.The dedication toGorky
may imply that "The Story ofMy Dovecot" is Babel's answer toMy Universities,
relating themost important lesson that life taught the Jewish child inRussia.
HAMUTAL BAR-YOSEF
Department of Hebrew Literature
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Translated from the Hebrew by liana Gomel

19. In 1916
Gorky published Babel's first stories "Ilya Isakovich and Margarita
Prokofievna" and "Mother, Rima and Alia" in the November issue of Utopis (The Chronicle),
stories leading to a trial on the charge of "an attempt to overthrow the present government,
and pornography" see "Nachalo" ("The Beginning") in Babel, Izobrannoje, p. 316. When the
Red Cavalry cycle was attacked in an article by Budyonny, Commander-in-Chief of the corps,

Gorky came to the rescue and defended Babel in an open letter. See S. Budyonny, "Babizm

Bablja" in Oktjabr 3 (1924): 45.

20. Exceptional in this respect is the description of the peacock sitting on the bird
seller's shoulder: "It sat as July sits on a pink riverbank, a white-hot July in the long cool
years" (228) and the expression "Somewhere far away Woe rode across it on a great
steed . .
."(p. 230).

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