学者中罕有可靠的文学向导。吸引书呆子们阅读某些书籍的魔力往往遭到理论、术语和故弄玄虚的威胁。这使《着魔》成了一本读来特别有趣的书。在几篇关于俄国著作及其读者的随笔中（去年在美国出版），土耳其裔美国教授、斯坦福大学博士艾丽芙·巴图曼富有感染力地传达了俄国文学梦幻般的神秘莫测。巴图曼写到了关于托尔斯泰学术会议的个人亲历的趣闻、圣彼得堡的冰城堡和在撒马尔罕度过的一个夏天，也捕捉到了生活可以像这些书一样既神秘又深奥的方式。
Ms Batuman describes her route to a PhD in comparative literature with unusual verve. Perhaps this is because her explanation feels slightly defensive. An aspiring novelist, she had long assumed that fiction must come from experience, not from the study of other books. But there was something about Russian literature, indeed about “Russianness”, that tugged at her ever since her first violin lessons with a fascinatingly odd Russian man named Maxim. Something of a contemporary Eugene Onegin, Maxim wore black turtlenecks and appeared “deeply absorbed by considerations and calculations beyond the normal range of human cognition”. Mercurial and unpredictable, he was the kind of man who could only be explained by Pushkin or Tolstoy, if by anyone at all.
巴图曼小姐以不同寻常的神韵记述了她获得比较文学博士学位的过程。也许这是因为她的解释让人觉得有些采取守势。她是一位很有抱负的小说家，一直认为小说必须源自经历、而非对其他著作的研究。但是一些跟俄国文学有关的东西，实际上是跟“俄国性”有关的东西，在她第一次跟一位迷人又奇怪的俄国人马克西姆上小提琴课时就吸引了她。马克西姆有点像当代的叶甫盖尼·奥涅金，穿着一件黑色的高领绒衣，看上去像是“深深地沉浸在超出了人类认知的正常范围的思考和计算中”。他反复无常，令人捉摸不透，是那种只能由普希金或托尔斯泰来解释的人，如果有人能够解释他的话。
But it was at university that Ms Batuman came around to the idea that Russian — the language and the literature — was the best way to comprehend “the riddle of human behaviour and the nature of love”. When she describes the “otherworldly perfection” of “Anna Karenina”, her pulse quickens: “How had any human being ever managed to write something simultaneously so big and so small…so strange and so natural?” She marvels that the heroine doesn’t turn up until chapter 18, and the book goes on for 19 more chapters after her death. She recalls her first Russian- language textbook, which featured a story about a woman who goes to visit her boyfriend only to discover a note saying, “Forget me.” Intent on exploring how literature echoes and influences experience, is it any wonder that Ms Batuman chose to “immerse” herself in this world of compelling ambiguity?
但巴图曼是在读大学时，想到Russian——俄语和俄国文学——是理解“人类行为和爱的本质之谜”最好的途径。当她描写《安娜·卡列尼娜》“超自然的完美”时，她的心跳加快了：“怎么能有人能够写出这样既如此宏大又如此细腻……如此奇怪又如此自然的东西？”令她感到惊奇的是，女主人公直到第18章才出现，在她去世后该书还又继续写了19章。她回忆说，她的第一本俄语教科书中有一则故事，说一位小姐去看望她男朋友，只看到一张纸条，上面写着“忘掉我”。立志要探索文学如何回应和影响经历的巴图曼小姐选择“沉浸”在这一惊人地暧昧的世界中，这有什么让人不解的吗？
With a keen ear for the absurd, Ms Batuman is at her liveliest when recounting the quirky pageantry of academia. In one of the finest essays, “Babel in California”, she not only gives shape to the literary legacy of Isaac Babel, a lesser-known 20th-century Russian author, but also sends up the giddy “Alice in Wonderland” weirdness of an academic conference. At one particularly strained meal, Babel’s elderly daughter asks a Babel specialist in her “fathomless, sepulchral” voice, “Is it true that you despise me?” In another fine essay, “Who Killed Tolstoy?”, Ms Batuman describes how Aeroflot lost her luggage, forcing her to deliver her paper at a conference on Tolstoy’s estate wearing sweatpants and flip-flops. Days later, still wearing the same “Tolstoyan” costume, Ms Batuman calls the airline again, only to hear from a clerk: “Are you familiar with our Russian phrase, ‘resignation of the soul’?”
巴图曼小姐对荒谬有着敏锐的感受力，她对学术界奇诡的大场面的记述最为生动。在她最精彩的随笔《巴别尔在加州》中，她不仅描述了不太知名的20世纪俄国作家伊萨克·巴别尔文学遗产的概貌，还讽刺了一场学术会议“爱丽丝漫游奇境”式的令人眩晕的怪异。在一场特别不友善的宴席上，巴别尔的长女用她那“深不可测、阴森森的”声音问一位巴别尔专家，“你是不是真的瞧不起我？”在另一篇精彩的随笔《谁杀害了托尔斯泰？》中，巴图曼小姐描写了俄罗斯航空公司怎样弄丢了她的行李，迫使她只好穿着运动裤和夹趾拖鞋在托尔斯泰庄园举行的会议上做报告。几天后，仍旧穿着同样的托尔斯泰式装束的巴图曼小姐再次致电航空公司，只听见一位职员说：“你熟悉我们俄国人常说的一句话吗，灵魂的顺从？”
The motor of this book is in Ms Batuman’s erudite enthusiasm for big, chunky, gloomy and occasionally illogical fiction. With humour and a sense of romance, she has written an intellectually bracing travelogue of literary adventures. Whether or not Ms Batuman ends up spinning out a novel, with “The Possessed” she has revealed her powers as a storyteller.
该书的推动力在于巴图曼小姐对宏大、厚实、阴郁、有时不合逻辑的小说广博的热爱。她带着幽默和浪漫感写出了一部令人心智振奋的文学历险记。不管巴图曼小姐最后能不能写出一部小说，她已经用《着魔》显示了她讲故事的本领。