The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

208 Pages·2010·1.1 MB·English

by  Elif Batuman

ELIF BATUMAN
The Possessed

ELIF BATUMAN was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now
lives in San Francisco. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’
Award. She teaches at Stanford University.
The Possessed
The Possessed
ADVENTURES WITH RUSSIAN BOOKS
AND THE PEOPLE WHO READ THEM
Elif Batuman

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2010 by Elif Batuman
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2010
Some of these essays have appeared, in slightly different form, in Harper’s Magazine, n+1, and The New
Yorker.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Batuman, Elif, 1977–
The possessed : adventures with Russian books and the people who read them / Elif Batuman.
—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-374-53218-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Russian literature—Appreciation. I. Title.
PG2986 .B33 2010
891.7'09—dc22
2009025416
Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott
www.fsgbooks.com
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents

INTRODUCTION
BABEL IN CALIFORNIA
SUMMER IN SAMARKAND
WHO KILLED TOLSTOY
SUMMER IN SAMARKAND (CONTINUED)
THE HOUSE OF ICE
SUMMER IN SAMARKAND (CONCLUSION)
THE POSSESSED
Works Consulted
The Possessed
Introduction

In Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, a young man named Hans Castorp arrives
at a Swiss sanatorium to visit his tubercular cousin for three weeks. Although
Castorp himself does not have tuberculosis, he somehow ends up staying in that
sanatorium for seven years. The plot of The Magic Mountain mirrors the history
of its composition: Mann set out to write a short story, but ended up producing a
1,200-page novel. Despite the novel’s complexity, its central question is very
simple: How does someone who doesn’t actually have tuberculosis end up
spending seven years at a tuberculosis sanatorium? I often ask myself a similar
question: How does someone with no real academic aspirations end up spending
seven years in suburban California studying the form of the Russian novel?
In The Magic Mountain, it all happens because of love. While visiting his
cousin, Castorp becomes infatuated with another patient: the estranged wife of a
Russian officer. Her high cheekbones and her gray-blue “Kirghiz-shaped eyes”
recall to him a childhood fascination with Slavicness—specifically, with an
idolized older boy at school, from whom the hero once, in the happiest moment
of his life, borrowed a pencil. The Russian lady’s eyes, in particular, “amazingly
and frighteningly resemble” those of this schoolboy; indeed, Mann emends, “
‘resembled’ was not the right word—they were the same eyes.” Under their
mesmerizing influence, Castorp is seized by a passion to learn about samovars,
Cossacks, and the Russian language, colorfully characterized by Mann as “the
muddy, barbaric, boneless tongue from the East.” One afternoon, Castorp attends
a lecture titled “Love as a Pathogenic Force,” in which the sanatorium
psychoanalyst diagnoses his entire audience as so many victims of love:
“Symptoms of disease are nothing but a disguised manifestation of the power of
love; and all disease is only love transformed.” Castorp recognizes the truth of
this lecture. He ends up so terribly in love with the married Russian woman that
he develops a fever and appears to have a damp spot on one of his lungs. This
real or imagined damp spot, combined with the hope of glimpsing his beloved at
mealtimes, is what keeps him on the Magic Mountain.
Of course, there are many differences between my story and that of Hans
Castorp. But there are also similarities. The seven years I ended up spending in
the Stanford comparative literature department were also a matter of love, and
fascination with Russianness. This love was also prefigured during my
schooldays by a chance encounter with a Russian person, and developed in an
institutional setting.
The first Russian person I ever met was my teacher at the Manhattan School
of Music, where I studied the violin on Saturdays. Maxim wore black
turtlenecks, played a mellow-toned, orange-colored violin, and produced an
impression of being deeply absorbed by considerations and calculations beyond
the normal range of human cognition. Toward the end of one lesson, for
example, he told me that he had to leave ten minutes early—and then proceeded
to spend the entire ten minutes unraveling the tortuous logic of how his early
departure wasn’t actually depriving me of any violin instruction. “Tell me, Elif,”
he shouted, having worked himself up to an almost amazing degree. “When you
buy a dress, do you buy the dress that is the most beautiful . . . or the dress that is
made with the most cloth?”
Another time, Maxim instructed me to listen to a particular Soviet recording
of the Mozart violin concerti. Sitting in a wooden library carrel, I listened to all
five concerti in a row: a fluid, elegant performance, with passages of singing
intensity through which one seemed to glimpse the whole cosmic pathos of
Mozart’s life on earth. But as I listened, I found myself distracted by the CD
case, by the slightly blurred three-quarters photograph of the soloist, who looked
literally indistinguishable from my violin teacher. The stiff posture, the
downturned mouth, the intent and melancholy eyebrows—everything was the
same. His name was even Maxim, although he had a different surname.
The following week, Maxim specifically asked whether I had noticed
anything unusual about the violinist.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, let’s say, his appearance. In Moscow, at the conservatory, people used
to say that he and I looked alike . . . very much alike. More than the brothers.”
“Actually, yeah—I did sort of notice that from the photograph.”
At this innocuous remark, an expression of gloom descended upon him, as
abruptly as if someone had dropped a black cloth over his head. “It’s nothing,
nothing,” he said, sounding almost angry.
Probably the strangest episode with Maxim involved the yearly juried
examinations at the music school. In the weeks before the exams, Maxim was