Tales FROM Odessa

KPGT

TALES FROM ODESSA / THE RED HORSEN, Isak Babel, I was born on July 13, 1894 in Odessa, Russia…Turgenev sang about the dewy morning, the nighttime peace. With Dostoevsky, you can feel the uneven and rough cobblestone road that Karamazov took to the inn, the enigmatic and heavy Petrograd fog...Do you remember the fruitful bright sun with Gogol, the man who came from Ukraine? The first person in Russian literature to speak to the sun with excitement and passion was Gorky...It turns out that life here is cold, there is a lot of primitivism. Soon, reading that old story will become tedious. And I think: the Russian people will head south, to the sea and the sun. They will set out, that is, after all, a mistake. They have been setting out for many centuries. In the indestructible longing for the steppe, perhaps 'for the cross on Saint Sophia,' the most important paths of Russia are hidden. It feels like the blood needs to be refreshed. It becomes stifling. The literary messiah, awaited by the world for so long and so futilely, will come from there, from 13 sunny steppes surrounded by the sea. 1916. I was shot on January 27, 1940 in Moscow, USSR.ORGANIZER/SOURCE: Association for the Development of Arts "VULPE"