Editing Isaac Babel (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Ilya Ehrenburg Russian writer.jpg|thumb|upright|Soviet author and former Babel protégé [[Ilya Ehrenburg]]]]
According to [[John Updike]], Maxim Gorky said to André Malraux that Babel was "the best Russia has to offer." A quarter of a century later, Babel's contemporary Konstantin Paustovsky wrote in his reminiscences, "He was, for us, the first really Soviet writer."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Updike |first=John |date=2001-10-28 |title=Hide-and-Seek |language=en-US |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/11/05/hide-and-seek-2 |access-date=2023-10-05 |issn=0028-792X}}</ref>

Judith Stora-Sandor, one of Babel's first biographers, wrote in 1968, that Babel's "literary sensibility was French, his vision Jewish, and his fate all too Russian."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ehre |first=Milton |title=Isaac Babel |publisher=Twayne Publishers, G.K. Hall & Co |year=1986 |isbn=0-8057-6637-5 |edition=1st |location=Boston |pages=1 |language=English}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Stora-Sandor |first=Judith |title=L'Homme et l'oeuvre |publisher=Klincksieck |year=1968 |location=Paris |pages=18 |language=French}}</ref>

After her husband's return to Moscow in 1935, Yevgenia Gronfein Babel remained unaware of his other family with [[Antonina Pirozhkova]]. Based upon statements made by [[Ilya Ehrenburg]], Yevgenia further believed that her husband was still alive and living in exile. In 1956, however, Ehrenburg told her of her husband's execution while visiting Paris.  After also informing Mrs. Babel of her husband's daughter with Antonina Pirozhkova, Ehrenburg asked Yevgenia to sign a false statement attesting to a pre-war divorce from her husband. Enraged, Yevgenia Babel spat in Ehrenberg's face and then fainted.

Her daughter, [[Nathalie Babel Brown]], believes that Ehrenburg did this under orders from the [[KGB]]. With two potential contenders for the role of Babel's widow, the Soviet State clearly preferred Babel's common-law wife Antonina to his legal wife Yevgenia, who had emigrated to the West.

Although she was too young to have many memories of her father, Nathalie Babel Brown went on to become one of the world's foremost scholars of his life and work. When [[W. W. Norton & Company|W.W. Norton]] published Babel's [https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Complete-Works-of-Isaac-Babel Complete Works] in 2002, Nathalie edited the volume and provided a foreword. She died in [[Washington, D.C.]], in 2005.<ref>{{cite news|last=Saxon|first=Wolfgang|date=2005-12-13|title=Nathalie Babel Brown, 76, Dies; Edited Isaac Babel|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/arts/13babel.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134572748-RSE5HIxeweXwnATLoTcYvQ|access-date=2010-05-05}}</ref>

Lydia Babel, the daughter of Isaac Babel and Antonina Pirozhkova, also emigrated to the [[United States]] and currently resides in [[Silver Spring, Maryland]].<ref>''Ibid''</ref>

Although Babel's play ''[[Maria (play)|Maria]]'' was very popular at Western European colleges during the 1960s, it was not performed in Babel's homeland until 1994. The first English translation appeared in 1966 in a translation by Michael Glenny in ''Three Soviet Plays'' (Penguin) under the title "Marya". ''Maria'''s American premiere, directed by [[Carl Weber (theatre director)|Carl Weber]], took place at [[Stanford University]] in 2004.<ref>Michelle Keller: [http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1014062 Babel’s ‘Maria’ makes U.S. debut at Pigott] ''The Stanford Daily'', 27 February 2004.</ref>

Several American writers have valued Babel's writings. [[Hubert Selby]] has called Babel "the closest thing I have to a literary influence." [[James Salter]] has named Babel his favorite short-story writer. "He has the three essentials of greatness: style, structure, and authority." [[George Saunders]], when asked for a literary influence said "There's a Russian writer named Isaac Babel that I love. I can drop in anywhere in his works, read a few pages, and go, Oh yeah, language. It's almost like if you were tuning a guitar and you heard a beautifully tuned one and you say, Yeah, that's what we want. We want something that perfect. When I read him, it recalibrates my ear. It reminds me of the difference between an OK sentence and a really masterful sentence. Babel does it for me."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1217.George_Saunders?ues=a|title=Interview with George Saunders|date=6 February 2017}}</ref>

===Memorials===
[[File:Памятник Исааку Бабелю (Одесса).JPG|thumb|Memorial in Odesa, sculptor {{illm|Georgy Frangulyan|ru|Георгий Франгулян}}]]
A memorial to Isaac Babel was unveiled on the north-west corner of the intersection of Rishelievska Street and Zhukovskoho Street in Odesa in early September 2011, and, in conjunction with the inauguration of the memorial, a commemorative reading of three of his stories held, with musical interludes from the works of [[Isaac Schwartz]], in the Philharmonic Hall in [[Italiiska Street, Odesa|Pushkinska Street]] on September 6, 2011. The city also has an already existing Babelya Street in the Moldavanka.