SOURCE: Maguire, Robert A. “Ekphrasis in Isaak Babel.” In Depictions: Slavic Studies in the Narrative and Visual Arts in Honor of William E. Harkins, edited by Douglas M. Greenfield, pp. 14-23. Dana Point, Calif.: Ardis, 2000.

In the following essay, Maguire examines Babel's use of ekphrasis, or elaborate description, in the stories of Red Cavalry.

Toward the beginning of Babel's “Pan Apolek,” one of the longest and most complex stories in Red Cavalry, the narrator, Liutov, pauses to describe a painting he sees hanging on the wall of a fugitive priest's house in Novograd-Volynsk:

I remember: the spiderweb stillness of a summer morning hung between the straight and bright walls. A straight shaft of light had been placed at the bottom of the picture by the sun. In it swarmed sparkling dust. The long figure of John [the Baptist] was descending straight down upon me out of the dark-blue...