At the First Soviet Writers' Congress held in Moscow in 1934, the Soviet short story writer Isaak Babel proclaimed himself the 'master of silence'. Like Olesha and Erdman, Babel could not bring himself to compromise with the demand for subservience to the Party line, with the demand that writers step up production just like any other sector of the economy, and that they churn out long novels praising Stalin and the achievements of intensive industrialisation and forced collectivisation. But then silence was in a sense essential to Babel's creativity and to his public image.

Silence, the Talmud says, is a fence around wisdom. Silence is, of course, built into the white spaces between the lines and allusions of the literary text. Mallarmé has emphasised the need for mystery and enigma in poetry and in Silentium the Russian poet Tyutchev has written,

A thought uttered is a lie;
Stirring up the springs will cloud the
water,
Drink of them - and be silent.

The subtext of Babel's Russian prose has foxed most of his translators and commentators, for its clarity conceals extensive word-play and an ironic, ambiguous play on parallels and contradictions which though complex, is not as esoteric as in Symbolist poetry.

'The wise rebbe',