The Brutality of War: A Review of Isak Babel’s Rytterarmeen

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Babel follows soldiers, commissars and officers of the Red Army through a mire of violence and blood, mutilated bodies and wild betrayals in battle against the Polish enemy. The text consists of short sequences with no clear connection, apparently first published individually in Soviet newspapers and magazines. The book appeared in 1926.

Planless

The personal gallery is huge and hopeless to keep track of, not least because people are alternately referred to by first name, nickname, surname or title. It is also a lot about named horses. Most of the fighters – on both sides – are Cossacks, mounted professional warriors often dressed in spectacular clothes with shiny weapons and whips.

The battles take place in places I have never heard of, in small villages, Jewish settlements, out in the woods and on muddy fields. Both geography and chronology play little role, much seems completely planless – and perhaps that is precisely how wars are experienced by those who have to wage them. The one who doesn’t stand in the headquarters and move flags on maps.

This is a good insight into the reality of war, its cosmic horror and apparent meaninglessness. This perspective is important, but it feels a little too thin at a time when we are struggling to understand motives, strategies and possibilities for ending the war. If the war is only as Babel describes it, we might as well take cover and close our eyes.

Cossack phenomenon

Seven years ago, the Oktober publishing house (named after the Russian Revolution) published the second book of Babel, “Tale from Odessa”. For me, it was more interesting with its larger socio-cultural field than the battlefields of the “Rytterarmeen”. There, too, there was a lot of violence and gore, pogroms and crime, but Babel also provided space for depictions of Jewish everyday life.

In this release, the Jewish is less present. Here the action is dominated by Cossacks on horseback, without us getting any depth of field around the Cossack phenomenon. For connoisseurs of Russia, Cossacks are of course a well-known and central term. These bold horsemen, who partly fight for one side, partly for the other, are not as prominent in our time. As a result, the book’s characters are standing at a slightly too great distance.

– An unexploded hand grenade

Spilling language

Well then, we can think that the ravages of the past are related to the bestialities that are now unfolding in Ukrainian districts. Perhaps the Wagner group’s attitudes and methods continue the almost anarchistic use of violence in this book, but Babel’s otherwise linguistically playful fireworks of a book is experienced as more of a museum piece than the previous one. (“Rytterarmeen” also appeared in Norwegian in 1963, but the new one will be a more complete edition.)

The language thus gives the book high value, again excellently handled by award-winning Marit Bjerkeng. Babel always has the ability to coin surprising combinations of words, provocative metaphors, intellectual somersaults and wild leaps. Here’s just a random example of such antics: “… who at that time lived in Radziwillow, this mutilated little town that resembled a shabby, tattered beggar [ …] The saliva lickers from the staffs fished for fried chickens in the army commander’s smile …”.

Despite the gore: rewarding and fun to read.