'And So I Began to Talk of Style'

I learned of Isaac Babel from The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1962) by Frank O’Connor, who claimed Babel was “the man who has influenced me most.” I was sixteen and fell hard for Babel’s voice, readied for it by the raciness of Saul Bellow’s language.

 

The first of his stories I read was “The Sin of Jesus,” stumbled on in an anthology. Babel seemed an intriguing rumor, a ghost or underground presence hinted at by other writers, including Hemingway. He had been executed by order of Stalin in 1940, but most of us didn’t know the specifics. The next Babel story I read was “Guy de Maupassant,” probably in another anthology. It contains his best-known passage.

 

The edition of Babel’s stories most readily available then was The Collected Stories, published by Criterion Books in 1955, with an introduction by Lionel Trilling. I soon borrowed it from the library. Translated by various hands, the book was edited by Walter Morison, who translated “Guy de Maupassant.” Here is his version of Babel’s most quoted words:

 

“I began to speak of style, of the army of words, of the army in which all kinds of weapons come into play. No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.”

 

In 1994, Penguin brought out Collected Stories, translated by David McDuff. Here is his version:

 

“Then I began to speak of style, of the army of words, an army in which all kinds of weapons are on the move. No iron can enter the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.”

 

In 2002, W.W. Norton published The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, translated with notes by Peter Constantine. Here is his version:

 

“I spoke to her of style, of an army of words, an army in which every type of weapon is deployed. No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.”

 

Most recently, Boris Dralyuk has translated “Guy de Maupassant” in Of Sunshine and Bedbugs: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2022). Here is his translation of the pertinent passage:

 

“And so I began to talk of style, of the army of words, an army in which all sorts of weapons are always on the move. No iron penetrates the human heart as icily as a period placed at just the right moment.”

 

I have no Russian and must rely on translators, whose versions I judge as English prose. I can’t address accuracy. Babel is famously concise and Russian readers often speak of his style as condensed, lapidary and poetic. In these two sentences, our four translators achieve comparable word counts: Morison, 41 words; McDuff, 43; Constantine, 38; Dralyuk, 43.

 

Read for style (after all, the subject of the passage), McDuff probably comes off a little poorer than the others, especially by his choice for the key verb in the passage  – “enter” rather than “stab,” “pierce” or “penetrates.” Constantine gives us “iron spike” rather than “iron,” the word used by the other three. Constantine and Dralyuk use “icily” to describe the piercing of the heart. McDuff settles on the weaker “chillingly” and Morison eliminates the adverb entirely, substituting “with such force,” which corresponds to nothing in the other translations. McDuff, who is Scottish, uses “a full stop”; the others, the American usage, “period.”

 

My intention is not to condemn any of the translators, simply to note the subjective judgments they exercise that we as readers must rely on, usually without knowing it. We owe translators enormous debts of gratitude. For decades, my only translation was Morison’s. In retrospect, his versions and McDuff’s of Babel’s stories move more slowly. As a narrator, Babel emphasizes swiftness. Especially in Dralyuk’s hands, Babel’s prose never plods or loses its raffish poetry.

 

“Guy de Maupassant,” along with “The King,” “De Grasso” and “The Story of My Dovecote,” is among Babel’s finest stories, elevating him to the company of Chekhov, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud. It can also be read as an artistic apologia and veiled autobiography.