The main issue: to study Red Cavalry as a phenomenon of metaphoric, ornamental prose. A non-conventional point of view concerning the book's contents is presented: the later created Kiss and Argamak must not be included into Red Cavalry. The structure of Babel's novella is studied in its main varieties: the traditional fable novella and novella-sense. The composition dynamics, landscape specifics, types of narration and the composition conflicts (the four-eyed kinderbalsam in the Centaur land) are also studied. The Red Cavalry novellas are compared to Babel's newspaper articles and his 1920 Red Cavalry diary. Cultural context: Lev Tolstoy, Guy de Maupassant, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yury Olesha.