Contos que são poemas longos

And the image of southern Jews flares up in my memory - jovial, potbellied, sparkling like cheap wine. There is no comparasion between them and the bitter aloofness of these long bony backs, these tragic yellow beards. In their fervent features, carved by torture, there is no fat or warm pulse of blood. The movements of the Galician and the Volhynian Jew are abrupt, brusque, and offensive to good taste, but the power of their griff is filled with dark grandeur, and their secret contempt for the Polish masters is boundless. Looking at them I understood the fiery history of these faraway interlands, the stories of Talmudists who leased out taverns, of rabbis who dabbled in moneylending, of girls who were raped by polish mercenaries and for whom polish magnates shot themselves.

Isaac Babel, Red Cavalry, Nathalie Babel (ed.), Peter Constantine (trad.), Norton, 2003