イサーク・バーベリのオデッサ神話

概要

論文の詳細を見る
I. E. Babel's <<Guy de Maupassant>> written in 1932, emerged from the ideas presented in his earlier essay <<Odessa>> (1916). In the story the author himself hints at this by using the coincidence of the story's chronology with the time and the place in which the essay was published, and also by the fact that Maupassant's story <<Confession>> plays a key role in these both works. <<Odessa>> is now considered as Babel's literary manifesto. In this essay, he criticized Russian literature up to his time because of its "stiflingness" and "distortion", a prime example being the myth of "foggy St. Petersburg"; he insists instead on the creation of a new myth, the myth of "sunny Odessa". In this new myth, Babel attempts,unsuccessfully, to realize a life-giving, material-physical based value.The "myth of St. Petersburg" had been put into the consciousness of the literary world by the postimpressionists. The insistence on a new myth in <<Odessa>> formed a link in the chain of the literary endeavors in the 1910's: the return from the impressionists' metaphysics to the material-physical basis. However, the Odessa myth of Babel's, which was purposely created as the opposite of the St. Petersburg's myth, was greatly influenced by the synchronic paradigm of the impressionists; and so, this made him fix Odessa into the eternal phase at about 1905. In addition, in spite of the fact that "values" are essentially born from the difference between various belief systems, Babel embraced a "single-absolute value" (a life-giving, material-physical basis), and refused the intrusion of other values into his literary world. These are the reasons why in the process of the realization of the Odessa myth, Babel fell into a cut-de-sac, from which it was almost impossible to escape. In <<Odessa tales>> (1921-24), written by Babel as the manifestation of his myth, we can find such attempts to avoid contradictions by excluding the historical time from the main stage of Moldavanka, by avoiding a conflict in the plots, and by creating "a vacuum of values" by means of offsetting various values, which inevitably accompany discourses in literary works. But Babel's attempt to realize his Odessa myth soon failed; with his insistence on the "single-absolute value", which necessitated denial of the historical time, this myth essentially aspires for the return to the past. Therefore, it rapidly lost its force in the process of the modernization in Russian society and literature from 1917. The structure of <<Guy de Maupassant>> precisely reproduces the bipolarity presented in <<Odessa>>: the conflict of the "foggy St. Petersburg" with the "sunny Odessa". It also clearly points out the triumph of the former over the latter. This story, written almost at the same time as <<Froim Grach>> which depicts the tragic death of the <<Odessa tales'>> heroes, is considered as Babel's requiem devoted to the already ruined literary ideal of his youth.
1999-03-31

イサーク・バーベリのオデッサ神話

スポンサーリンク

概要

著者

関連論文

スポンサーリンク