Discussion about Babel's serpents

[Robert Mann]

I think the little serpents that foretell the future in Babel’s “Odessa” are intended to be interpreted as serpents (rather than lightning or zippers). Babel’s outlook was Nietzschean. In much of his fiction, he portrays the world in the context of Nietzsche’s theory of Apollo and Dionysus. “Odessa” is a sort of hymn to the sun (to Apollo). The narrator longs for a “singer of the sun.” Babel gives this longing a mythical, or religious, coloring, partly by alluding to a “literary Messiah.” The serpents that are “seen” as augurs of the future are probably another way of evoking the realm of Greek myth and the sun god Apollo. The Greeks (and Romans) practiced forms of divination based on the behavior of snakes. Apollo’s temple at Delphi was crawling with serpent lore (Python, Pythia
) and possibly with snakes as well. Babel’s allusive technique is reminiscent of Bely, Bunin and other writers of his time who grew up as Nietzsche became popular in Russia. There’s a little-known book on this topic, called The Dionysian Art of Isaac Babel (Berkeley Slavic Specialties).
  Robert Mann

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