Early Years
Isaak Babel was born in the Moldavanka section of Odessa. His parents were Manus and Feyga Bobel. Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Nikolayev. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odessa in 1906. However, Babel subsequently used Moldavanka as the setting for The Odessa Tales and the play Sunset.
Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed" (as he wrote in the story "In the Basement"), they were in fact relatively well-off. According to Babel's autobiographical statements, his father Manus was an impoverished shopkeeper. According to Nathalie Babel Brown, her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in farm implements and owned a large warehouse.
In his teens, Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Nicolas I Odessa Commercial School. However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials. As a result he was schooled at home by private tutors.
In addition to regular school subjects, Babel also studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick,
"Though he was at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with the traditional texts and their demanding commentaries, he added to these a lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track."
After the Jewish quota also foiled an attempt to enroll at Odessa University, Babel entered the Kiev Institute of Finance and Business. There he met Yevgenia Borisovna Gronfein, a daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She eventually eloped with him to Odessa. Babel graduated from the Institute under his original surname of Babel.
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