Correspondent of the newspaper “Red Kava-le-rist” Lyutov (storyteller and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, headed by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a trip along Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the horsemen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You’re from Kinder Balzam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a scab! They send you away without asking, but here they kill you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being assigned to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. People here are not used to standing on ceremony and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving scholar, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, exhausted, demands that the mistress feed him. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose wandering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry him. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost like his own, and only his heart, stained by murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.
Death of Dolgu-shov
Even having fought and watched death enough, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephonist Dolga-shov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to lose a cartridge on me,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He drives off to the side, pointing to Dolgu-shov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide, who promptly showed up. Dolgushov and Afonka talk briefly about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the heart-sick Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You, bespectacled ones, pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”
Life-description of Pavli-chenka, Matvey Rodi-o-nych
Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the Konarmen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. Here is the red general talking about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and so Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot at him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of the eyes of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife, he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “Shooting a person... is the only way to get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but it’s a vile ease for yourself; shooting doesn’t reach the soul, where does a person have it and how is it so far?” -you-want.”
Salt
Konar-Metz Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman, he approaches her, rips off the baby’s diapers and discovers a “good pood of salt” living under them. Balmashev makes a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bag-bag down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”
Letter
The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his white guard father, the company commander of Denikin, “a guard under the old regime.” He cut his son until dark, “saying - skin, red dog, Son of a bitch and various things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich passed away.” And after some time, the father himself, trying to hide by re-coloring his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.
Clothes
The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, jugs for kvass and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having put the collected things in their places, he locks himself in his father’s house and for two days drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames began to rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.
Squadron Trunov
Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the fields and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov tempers the prisoner. Immediately, the soldier-marauder Andryushka Vos-letov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads towards the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he, together with Vos-mi-letov, enters into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.
The story of one horse
Passion rules in the artistic world of Babel. For a horseman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. Divisional chief Savitsky took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is dismissed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the horse to be returned to him. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, decisively refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment towards the Communist Party, which cannot return “his blood money,” and a week later the demo-bili- He is described as a disabled person with six wounds.
Afonka Bida
When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset horseman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trail of Afonka’s robbery, getting his own horse. Only when the division enters Bere-stechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of freedom has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.
Pan Apolek
The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the story of an unheard-of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless god-maz, on the other,” wars that last -spanning three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people. He was presented with a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes of the Holy Scriptures (“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets draped over plains of Palestine"), the Novo-Grad priest was entrusted with the painting of the new church. What is the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize in the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church of the lame cross Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and mother of many foster children. The artist, invited to take Apolek’s place, does not dare to cover up Elka and the lame Yanek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for five to ten marks. He also tells him a blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.
Gedali
Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness remembers Jewish life, now half-destroyed by the war, remembers his childhood and his grandfather, swallowed -living with a yellow beard tome of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gold shoes and ship ropes to a broken pan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks around, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of the “Inter-na-tsio-nal” good people" The narrator convincingly instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly answers him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they are crying there..."
Rabbi
Lyutov feels sorry for this life, swept away by the whirlwind of the revolution, with great difficulty trying to preserve himself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky , whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the powerful forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi calls on the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov with relief leaves for the station, where the propaganda train of the First Cavalry stands, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station awaits him , the persistent running of machines in the printing house and an half-written article for the newspaper “Red Kava-le-rist”.
Ankifiev Ivan is a cavalryman, a cart driver of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who receives an order to take deacon Ivan Ageev, who is feigning deafness, to Rovno (the story “Ivana”). The relationships between the namesake heroes are based on an absurd combination of affection and hatred. Ankifiev periodically shoots a revolver over the deacon's ear in order to expose the malingerer and have a reason to kill him. The deacon really begins to hear poorly from the shots; he understands that he is unlikely to reach Rovno alive, which is what he tells Lyutov. Subsequently, Ankifiev, despite being seriously wounded, remains in service (“Chesniki”). After the battle at Chesniki, he accuses Lyutov of going on the attack with an unloaded revolver (“After the Battle”); falling to the ground in a fit, Akinfmev breaks his face. Apollinaris (Apolek) - an old monk, an icon painter. Thirty years ago (“Pan Apolek”) he came to Novograd-Volynsky with his friend, the blind musician Gottfried, and received an order to paint a new church. Ankifiev gives the characters of the icons the features of townspeople, as a result of which he is accused of blasphemy: for thirty years the war has lasted between the church and the god, who “produces saints” real people. Parishioners defend Ankifiev, and the churchmen fail to destroy his paintings. In a conversation with Lyutov, Ankifiy sets out the “true” versions of hagiographical subjects, giving them the same everyday flavor as his icons.
Ankifiev's stories are severely condemned by the church servant, Pan Robatsky. Later (“At St. Valentine’s”) Lyutov sees Ankifiev’s paintings in the Berestechka Church; the artist's manner is characterized as "a seductive point of view on the mortal suffering of the sons of men." Afopka Vida is a cavalry platoon commander whom Lyutop initially calls his friend.
In the story “The Path to Brody,” Ankifiev tells him a parable about a bee that did not want to sting Christ, after which he declares that bees must endure the torment of war, for it is being waged for their benefit. After this, Ankpfiy sings a song about a foal named Dzhigit, who took his owner to heaven, but he missed a bottle of vodka forgotten on earth and “cried about the futility of his efforts.” Seeing that Lyutop cannot: shoot the mortally wounded telephone operator Dolgushov in order to end his torment (“The Death of Dolgushov”), Ankifiev himself does this, after which he begins to treat Lyutov with hatred for his weakness and lack, according to Ankifiev, of true mercy; tries to shoot Lgotov, but the cart-bound Grischuk prevents him.
In the story “Afopka Vida,” the Cossacks of Ankifiev’s platoon “for fun” whip foot militiamen. Soon Apknfiev's mines are killed in a shootout; the next morning the hero disappears and is absent for several weeks, getting a new horse. When the division enters Berestechko, Apkpfiev rides out to meet it on a tall stallion; During this time, Ankifiev lost one eye. Then the hero “walks”: drunk, breaks the reliquary with the relics of the saint in the church, and tries to play the organ, accompanying his songs (“At St. Valentine’s”). Balmashev Nikita - cavalryman. In the story “Salt” - the hero-narrator, the author of the letter to the editor, dedicated to the topic“the lack of consciousness of women who are harmful to us.” At the Fastov station, soldiers from the cavalry echelon fight off numerous bagmen carrying salt and trying to board the train; however, Balmashev takes pity on one of the women, in whose arms infant, and puts her in the carriage, and convinces the fighters not to rape her. However, after some time, Balmashev realizes that the woman deceived them, and in her package there is “a good pood of salt.” Offended by the baseness of a woman whom the fighters “raised as a working mother in the republic,” Balmashev first throws her out of the car as it moves, and then, feeling that this is not enough punishment, kills her with a rifle. Balmashev’s letter ends with an oath on behalf of the soldiers of the second platoon to “deal mercilessly with all traitors.”
In the story “Betrayal,” Balmashev is the hero-narrator, the author of a statement to the investigator, in which he tells how, together with fellow soldiers Golovitsyn and Kustov, he ended up in the N hospital in the town of Kozin. When Dr. Yavein offers to hand over their weapons, take a bath and change into hospital clothes, the fighters respond with a decisive refusal and begin to behave as if under siege. However, after a week, due to wounds and overwork, they lose their vigilance, and the “merciless nurses” manage to disarm them and change their clothes. A complaint to the pre-militiaman Boyderman remains unsuccessful, and then the cavalrymen on the square in front of the hospital disarm the policeman and shoot at the glass of the hospital storage room with his revolver. Four days after this, one of them - Kustov - “was supposed to die from his illness.” Valmashev qualifies the behavior of everyone around him as treason, which he anxiously declares to the investigator. Bratslavsky Ilya - son of Zhytomyr rabbi Mot; ch:> Bratslavek; For the first time, Lyutov hangs out with him in his father’s house (“Rabbi”): he is a young man “with the powerful forehead of Spinoza, with the stunted face of a nun,” he demonstratively smokes in the presence of those praying, he is called “the damned son, the disobedient son.” After some time, he leaves home, joins the party and becomes a regiment commander (“Son of a Rabbi”); when the front is broken through, Balmashev’s regiment is defeated, and the hero himself dies of typhus.
Galin is one of the employees of the newspaper "Red Cavalryman", "narrow in the shoulders, pale and blind", in love with the laundress Irina. He tells her about Russian history, but Irina goes to sleep with the cook Vasily, “leaving Galin alone with the moon.” The character’s emphasized frailty contrasts sharply with the willpower he demonstrates: he calls Lyutov a “slut” and speaks of “political education by Nerpa Horse” - while Irina and Vasily’s legs “stick out into the coolness” from the opened kitchen door.
Gedalp - hero story of the same name, an old blind Jewish philosopher, owner of a shop in Zhitomir. In a conversation with Lyutov, he expresses his readiness to accept the revolution, but complains that there is a lot of violence and few “good people”. Gedali dreams of an “International of Good People”; he cannot understand the difference between revolution and counter-revolution, since both bring death with them.
Dyakov is the head of the division's horse reserve, a former circus athlete. When the cavalrymen forcibly exchange their exhausted horses for fresher peasant horses (“Chief of the Reserve”), the men protest: one of them tells D. that the horse he received “in exchange” cannot even stand up. Then Dyakov, who has been given a romantic theatrical appearance (a black cloak and silver stripes along red trousers), approaches the horse, and the horse, feeling “the skillful strength flowing from this gray-haired, blooming and dashing Romeo,” inexplicably rises to its feet.
Konkin is the hero of the story of the same name, a former “musical eccentric and salon ventriloquist from the city of Nizhny,” now “a political commissar of the Y-. cavalry brigade and a three-time holder of the Order of the Red Banner.” At a halt, he “with his usual buffoonery” tells how once, wounded during a battle, he pursued a Polish general, who wounded him twice more. However, Konkin overtakes the Pole and persuades him to surrender; he refuses to surrender to the lower chip, not believing that in front of him is a “supreme boss.” Then Kok-shsh, “but the old fashioned way” - without opening his mouth - curses the old man. Having learned that Konkin is a commissar and a communist, the general asks the hero to hack him to death, which he does; at the same time, Konkin himself almost loses consciousness from loss of blood.
Vasily Kurdyukov is a cavalryman, a boy of the Political Department expedition, dictating a letter to Lyutov to his mother (“Letter”), in which he dispassionately tells about the fate of his brother Fedor, a Red Army soldier, brutally killed by their father, Timofey Rodionovich Kurdyukov, a company commander under Denikin; Timofey tortures Kurdyukov himself, but he manages to escape. He gets to Voronezh to see his other brother, Semyon, the regiment commander at Budyonny. Together with him, Vasily goes to Maykop, where Semyon, using his authority, gets his father, who was taken prisoner along with other Denikinites, at his disposal, subjects him to a severe flogging, and then kills him. Kurdyukov, dictating the letter, is more concerned about the fate of his abandoned mine, Stepka, than the fate of his father and brothers. Having finished dictating, Vasily shows Lyutov a photograph of his family - Timofey “with the sparkling gaze of colorless and meaningless eyes”, “monstrously huge, stupid, wide-faced, pop-eyed” Fyodor and Semyon and “a tiny peasant woman with stunted, light and shy features” - the mother whom letter addressed.
Lyovka is a cavalryman, the division commander's coachman, and a former circus performer. In the story “The Widow,” L. begs Sashka, the “regimental wife” of the regimental commander Shevelev, to surrender to him (Shevelev himself is mortally wounded). The regiment commander gives Sashka and Levka the final orders; as soon as he dies, Levka demands from the “widow” that she fulfill the order and send Shevelev’s mother his “clothes, companions, order”; In response to Sashka’s words about the untimeliness of this conversation, Levka breaks her face with her fist so that she “remembers the memory” of the deceased.
Lyutov - main character- the narrator of the series, appearing in most of the stories. "Kirill Lyutov" - Babel's pseudonym as a war correspondent cavalry division 1st Cavalry Army; Naturally, the image of the hero clearly has an autobiographical element. Lyutov is a Jew from Odessa abandoned by his wife; candidate of rights of St. Petersburg University: an intellectual trying to reconcile the principles of universal humanism with reality revolutionary era-cruelty, violence, rampant primitive instincts. His “terrible” surname does not go well with sensitivity and spiritual subtlety. Having received an appointment to the headquarters of the 6th division, Lyutov appears to the division commander Savitsky (“My First Goose”), making a negative impression on him with his intelligence. The lodger escorting Lyutov to his place of accommodation for the night says that the only way to become “one of our own” among the Red Army soldiers - to be as brutal as they are. Having met a very unkind reception from the fighters, the hungry Lyutov pushes his fist into the chest of the old housewife, who refused to feed him, then kills the master's goose, crushing its head with his boot, and orders the old woman to fry it.
Correspondent of the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" Lyutov (narrator and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, led by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a campaign through Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You are from Kinderbalsam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a lousy one! They send you away without asking, but here they cut you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being seconded to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. They are not used to standing on ceremony here and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving literate man, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, hungry, demands that the mistress feed her. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose staggering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry it. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost like his own, and only his heart, stained with murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.
Death of Dolgushov
Even having fought and seen enough of death, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephone operator Dolgushov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to spend my cartridges,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He moves to the side, pointing to Dolgushov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide who jumped up. Dolgushov and Afonka talk briefly about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the compassionate Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You bespectacled people pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”
Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich
Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the cavalrymen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. Here is the red general talking about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and now Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “By shooting a person... you can only get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you will not reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself.”
Salt
Cavalry soldier Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman; he approaches her, rips off the child’s diapers and discovers “a good pood of salt” underneath them. Balmashev delivers a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bagwoman down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”
Letter
The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his White Guard father, Denikin’s company commander, “a guard under the old regime.” He slaughtered his son until dark, “saying - skin, red dog, son of a bitch, and all sorts of things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished.” And after some time, the father himself, who tried to hide by dyeing his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.
Clothes
The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, kvass jars and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having placed the collected things in their places, he locks himself in -
at his father's house and for two days he drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.
Squadron Trunov
Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the Poles and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov stabs the prisoner to death. Immediately, cavalry marauder Andryushka Vosmiletov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads to the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he and Vosmiletov enter into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.
The story of one horse
Passion rules in art world Babel. For a cavalryman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. Divisional commander Savitsky took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is dismissed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the return of his horse. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, resolutely refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment at Communist Party, who cannot return “his hard-earned money”, and a week later is demobilized as an invalid with six wounds.
Afonka Bila
When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset cavalryman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trace of Afonka’s robbery, getting his horse. Only when the division enters Berestechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of the freeman has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.
Pan Apolek
The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the history of an unheard of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other,” a war that lasted three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people saints. He, who presented a diploma of completion of the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes Holy Scripture(“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine”), the Novograd priest was entrusted with the painting of the new church. Imagine the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church as the lame cross of Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - Jewish girl Elku, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children at home. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place does not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Janek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for fifty marks. He also tells him the blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.
Gedali
Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness recalls Jewish life, now dilapidated by the war, recalls his childhood and his grandfather, stroking the volumes of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gilded shoes and ship ropes to a broken saucepan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of an “International of Good People”. The narrator confidently instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly tells him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they cry there...”.
Rabbi
Lyutov feels sorry for this life, swept away by the whirlwind of the revolution, trying with great difficulty to preserve itself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky, whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the mighty forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi urges the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov is relieved to go to the station, where the propaganda train of the First Horse stands, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station, the persistent running of cars in the printing house and an unfinished article for the newspaper await him. Red Cavalryman."
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He became famous for his works Soviet writer and playwright Isaac Babel. "Cavalry" ( summary consider below) is his most famous work. First of all, this is due to the fact that it initially contradicted the revolutionary propaganda of that time. S. Budyonny and received the book with hostility. The only reason the work was published was the intercession of Maxim Gorky.
Babel, “Cavalry”: summary
"Cavalry" is a collection of short stories that began publishing in 1926. The work is united by a common theme - the civil war of the early 20th century. The basis for writing was the author’s diary entries during the service in which S. Budyonny commanded.
"My first goose"
The collection “Cavalry” opens with this story. The main lyrical character and narrator Lyutov, who works for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman", falls into the ranks of the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Budyonny. The 1st Cavalry is fighting with the Poles, so it passes through Galicia and Western Ukraine. Next comes a depiction of military life, where there is only blood, death and tears. They live here one day at a time.
The Cossacks mock and mock the intellectual Lyutov. And the owner refuses to feed him. When he became incredibly hungry, he came to her and demanded to feed himself. And then he went out into the yard, took a saber and killed the goose. After which he ordered the hostess to prepare it. Only after this the Cossacks began to consider Lyutov almost one of their own and stopped ridiculing him.
"The Death of Dolgushov"
The collection of stories by Isaac Babel continues the story of telephone operator Dolgushov. One day Lyutov comes across a mortally wounded colleague who asks him to finish him off out of pity. However, the main character is not capable of killing even to ease his fate. Therefore, he asks Afonka to approach the dying man. Dolgushov and new assistant they are talking about something, and then Afonka shoots him in the head. The Red Army soldier, who has just killed a comrade, angrily rushes at Lyutov and accuses him of unnecessary pity, which will only cause harm.
"Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich"
Babel (“Cavalry”) pays a lot of attention to its main character. The summary again tells about the mental anxieties of Lyutov, who secretly envies the determination and firmness of the Cossacks. His main desire is to become one of them. Therefore, he strives to understand them, listens carefully to the general’s story about how he dealt with the master Nikitsky, whom he served before the revolution. The owner often pestered Matvey’s wife, so as soon as he became a Red Army soldier, he decided to take revenge for the insult. But Matvey did not shoot Nikitsky, but trampled him to death in front of his wife’s eyes. The general himself says that shooting is mercy and pardon, not punishment.
"Salt"
Babel reveals the fate of ordinary Red Army soldiers in his work. “Cavalry” (the summary confirms this) is a unique illustration of post-revolutionary reality. So, Lyutov receives a letter from the cavalryman Balmashev, who talks about the incident on the train. At one of the stations, the fighters picked up a woman and a child and let them into their carriage. However, gradually doubts began to creep in. Therefore, Balmashev tears off the diapers, but instead of a child he finds a bag of salt. The Red Army soldier becomes enraged, attacks the woman with an accusatory speech, and then throws her out of the train. Despite the fall, the woman remained unharmed. Then Balmashev grabbed a weapon and shot her, believing that in this way he washed away the shame from the working people.
"Letter"
Isaac Babel portrays not only adult fighters, but also children. “Cavalry” is a collection in which there is a work dedicated to the boy Vasily Kurdyukov, who writes a letter to his mother. In the message, he asks to send some food and tell him how the brothers fighting for the Reds are doing. It immediately turns out that Fyodor, one of the brothers, was captured and killed by his own father, fighting on the side of the whites. He commanded Denikin’s company, and he killed his son for a long time, cutting off the skin piece by piece. After some time, the White Guard himself was forced to go into hiding, having dyed his beard for this. However, his other son Stepan found his father and killed him.
"Clothespin"
The next story was dedicated to the young Kuban resident Prishchepa by Isaac Babel (“Cavalry” talks about this). The hero had to escape from the whites who killed his parents. When the enemies were driven out of the village, Prishchepa returned, but the neighbors managed to plunder all the property. Then he takes a cart and goes through the yards to look for his goods. In those huts in which he managed to find things that belonged to his parents, Prishchepa leaves hanging dogs and old women over wells and icons soiled with droppings.
When everything was collected, he puts things back in their original places and locks himself in the house. Here he drinks continuously for two days, chops tables with a saber and sings songs. And on the third night, flames began to rise above his house. Clothespin goes to the barn, takes out the cow left from the parents, and kills it. After that, he gets on his horse and rides off wherever his eyes lead him.
"The Story of a Horse"
This work continues Babel's stories "Cavalry". For a cavalryman, a horse is the most important thing; he is a friend, a comrade, a brother, and a father. Once the chief Savitsky took white horse from the commander of the first squadron, Khlebnikov. Since then, Khlebnikov harbored a grudge and waited for an opportunity to take revenge. And as soon as Savitsky lost his position, he wrote a petition asking that the stallion be returned to him. Having received a positive answer, Khlebnikov went to Savitsky, who refused to give up the horse. Then the commander goes to the new chief of staff, but he drives him away. Then Klebnikov sits down and writes a statement that he is offended by the Communist Party, which is not able to return his property. After this, he is demobilized, as he has 6 wounds and is considered disabled.
"Pan Apolek"
Babel’s works also touch on the church theme. “Cavalry” tells the story of the god Apolek, who was entrusted with painting the Novgorod church in the new church. The artist presented his diploma and several of his works, so the priest accepted his candidacy without questions. However, when the work was delivered, employers were very indignant. The fact is that the artist turned ordinary people into saints. Thus, in the image of the Apostle Paul one could discern the face of the lame Janek, and Mary Magdalene was very similar to Elka, a Jewish girl, the mother of a considerable number of children from the fence. Apolek was driven out, and another bogomaz was hired in his place. However, he did not dare to paint over the creation of someone else’s hands.
Lyutov, Babel’s double from Cavalry, met the disgraced artist in the house of an escaped priest. At the first meeting, Mr. Apolek offered to make his portrait in the image of Blessed Francis for only 50 marks. In addition, the artist told a blasphemous story about how Jesus married a rootless girl, Deborah, who gave birth to a son from him.
"Gedali"
Lyutov encounters a group of old Jews who are selling something near the yellowed walls of the synagogue. The hero begins to remember with sadness the Jewish life, which has now been destroyed by the war. He also remembers his childhood, his grandfather, who stroked the numerous volumes of the sage of the Jews Ibn Ezra. Lyutov goes to the market and sees locked trays, which he associates with death.
Then the hero comes across a shop ancient Jew Gedali. Here you can find anything: from gold-plated shoes to broken pots. The owner himself rubs his white hands, walks along the counters and complains about the horrors of the revolution: everywhere they suffer, kill and rob. Gedali would like another revolution, which he calls “an international of good people.” However, Lyutov does not agree with him; he claims that the international is inseparable from rivers of blood and gunpowder shots.
The hero then asks where he can find Jewish food. Gedali reports that earlier this could be done next door, but now they only cry there and do not eat.
"Rabbi"
Lyutov stopped in one of the houses for the night. In the evening, the whole family sits down at the table, headed by Rabbi Motale of Bratslav. His son Ilya also sits here, with a face similar to Spinoza. He fights on the side of the Red Army. There is despondency in this house and one feels near death, although the rabbi himself calls on everyone to rejoice that they are still alive.
With incredible relief, Lyutov leaves this house. He goes to the station, where the First Horse train is already standing, and the unfinished newspaper “Red Cavalryman” is waiting in it.
Analysis
He created an indissoluble artistic unity of all Babel’s stories (“Cavalry”). Analysis of the works emphasizes this feature, as a certain plot-forming connection is revealed. Moreover, the author himself forbade changing the places of the stories when reprinting the collection, which also emphasizes the significance of their arrangement.
I united the cycle with one composition Babel. “Cavalry” (analysis allows us to verify this) is an inextricable epic-lyrical narrative about the times of the Civil War. It combines naturalistic descriptions of military reality and romantic pathos. There is no author's position in the stories, which allows the reader to make own conclusions. And the images of the hero-narrator and the author are so intricately intertwined that they create the impression of the presence of several points of view.
"Cavalry": heroes
Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov is the central character of the entire collection. He acts as a narrator and as an involuntary participant in some of the events described. Moreover, he is Babel's double from Cavalry. Kirill Lyutov was like that literary pseudonym the author himself, when he worked
Lyutov is a Jew who was abandoned by his wife, he graduated from St. Petersburg University, his intelligence prevents him from intermarrying with the Cossacks. For the fighters, he is a stranger and only causes condescension on their part. Essentially, he is an intellectual who is trying to reconcile humanistic principles with the realities of the revolutionary era.
Pan Apolek is an icon painter and an old monk. He is an atheist and a sinner who blasphemously treated the painting of a church in Novgorod. In addition, he is the carrier of a huge stock of twisted biblical stories, where saints are depicted as subject to human vices.
Gedali is the owner of an antiquities shop in Zhitomir, a blind Jew with a philosophical character. He seems ready to accept the revolution, but he doesn’t like that it is accompanied by violence and blood. Therefore, for him there is no difference between counter-revolution and revolution - both bring only death.
"Cavalry" is a very frank and merciless book. The reader finds himself in the usual harsh military reality, in which spiritual blindness and truth-seeking, tragic and funny, cruelty and heroism are intertwined.
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel
"Cavalry"
My first goose
Correspondent of the newspaper “Red Cavalryman” Lyutov (storyteller and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, led by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a campaign through Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You are from Kinderbalsam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a lousy one! They send you away without asking, but here they cut you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being seconded to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. They are not used to standing on ceremony here and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving literate man, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, hungry, demands that the mistress feed him. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose staggering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry it. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost like his own, and only his heart, stained with murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.
Death of Dolgushov
Even having fought and seen enough of death, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephone operator Dolgushov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to spend my cartridges,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He moves to the side, pointing to Dolgushov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide who jumped up. Dolgushov and Afonka talk briefly about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the compassionate Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You bespectacled people pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”
Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich
Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the cavalrymen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. Here is the red general talking about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and now Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “By shooting a person... you can only get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but it’s a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you won’t reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself.”
Salt
Cavalry soldier Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman; he approaches her, tears off the diapers from the child and discovers “a good pood of salt” under them. Balmashev delivers a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bagwoman down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”
Letter
The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his White Guard father, Denikin’s company commander, “a guard under the old regime.” He slaughtered his son until dark, “saying - skin, red dog, son of a bitch, and all sorts of things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished.” And after some time, the father himself, who tried to hide by dyeing his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.
Clothes
The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, kvass jars and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having put the collected things in their places, he locks himself in his father’s house and for two days drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.
Squadron Trunov
Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the Poles and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov stabs the prisoner to death. Immediately, cavalry marauder Andryushka Vosmiletov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads to the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he and Vosmiletov enter into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.
The story of one horse
Passion rules in the artistic world of Babel. For a cavalryman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. The division commander, Savitsky, took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is dismissed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the return of his horse. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, resolutely refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment against the Communist Party, which cannot return “his hard-earned money,” and a week later he is demobilized as an invalid with six wounds.
Afonka Bida
When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset cavalryman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trace of Afonka’s robbery, getting his horse. Only when the division enters Berestechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of the freeman has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.
Pan Apolek
The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the history of an unheard of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other,” a war that lasted three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people saints. Having presented a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes of the Holy Scripture (“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine”), the Novograd priest entrusted him with the painting of the new church. Imagine the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church of the lame cross as Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children from the fence. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place does not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Janek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for fifty marks. He also tells him the blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.
Gedali
Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness recalls Jewish life, now dilapidated by the war, recalls his childhood and his grandfather, stroking the volumes of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gilded shoes and ship ropes to a broken pan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of an “International of Good People”. The narrator confidently instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly tells him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they cry there...”.
Rabbi
Lyutov feels sorry for this way of life, swept away by the whirlwind of the revolution, trying with great difficulty to preserve itself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky, whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the powerful forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi urges the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov is relieved to go to the station, where the propaganda train of the First Horse stands, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station, the persistent running of cars in the printing house and an unfinished article for the newspaper await him. Red Cavalryman."
