Open Access«Ancient Turks» and Armin Vambery: In Search of the Prototype of the Main Character of Babel’s Pseudo-autobiographical Short Stories
Author(s) -
Valery Dymshits
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
judaic-slavic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2658-3364
DOI - 10.31168/2658-3364.2019.1.2.2
Subject(s) - biography , character (mathematics) , literature , orientalism , history , spanish civil war , art , archaeology , geometry , mathematics
Isaac Babel’s essay «The Finns» dealing with the Civil war in Finland was published in 1918. In his essay, the writer strongly emphasizes the similarity between the Finns and the nomads of Asia, the ancient Turks.This unexpected juxtaposition indicates Babel’s familiarity with the books and biography of the Hungarian orientalist, traveler and linguist Armin Vambery. Comparison between the Russian translation of Vambery’s autobiography «My life» and Babel’s pseudo-autobiographical short stories about childhood («Story of My Dovecote», «First Love», «In the Basement», «Awakening») shows that Vambery was the prototype of the protagonist of the famous short stories.