STUDY QUESTIONS 

This entertaining essay is a tongue-and-cheek assessment of Russian literature which contains allusions to the potentially "fructifying" influence of Russian Jewish culture.

1) How does Babel describe -- albeit ironically -- the Jews of Odessa?

2) Why does Babel insist Russia is in need of a Maupassant? What, in other words, do the great Russian writers to which Babel refers fail, by contrast, to offer?

3) What aspects of Odessa as a breeding ground for "a new national writer" does Babel choose to emphasize?

4) How can Odessa be simultaneously "sad and monotonous" as well as "interesting"?

5) Why does Babel choose the "sun" as a subject he feels has not been adequately portrayed in Russian literature? What does he mean when he asserts that Gorky's writings about the sun, despite their "excitement and enthusiasm," were not the "real thing"?

6) Of what, according to Babel, did Gorky at the time of his writing promise to be a "precursor"?

7) Why does Babel predict that Russians will be "drawn to south"?

8) Would you describe Babel's phrase "literary messiah" as a whimsical burst of poetic license or a carefully chosen allusion? If the latter, in what sense?