帕慕克六年來首出小說 呼愁延續

A Turkish word for melancholy is huzun, and Orhan Pamuk’s writing soaks in it. Certain jazz musicians excepted, few artists conjure sweet sadness as unremittingly.

帕慕克的行文中總是浸透着一個格外傷感的土耳其字眼：“呼愁”(huzun)。除了少數幾個爵士樂手，幾乎沒有任何藝術家能夠創作出這樣綿綿不絕的甜蜜憂傷之情。

Mr. Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006, sought to tap into “the huzun of an entire city” in his nonfiction book “Istanbul: Memories and the City” (2005). His sprawling new novel is after something similar.

帕慕克是2006年諾貝爾文學獎得主，在他2005年的非虛構文集《伊斯坦布爾：一座城市的記憶》(Istanbul: Memories and the City)一書中努力寫出了這種“整個城市籠罩的呼愁”。他最新一部篇幅鋪漫的小說也是在追尋類似的東西。

“A Strangeness in My Mind,” Mr. Pamuk’s first novel since “The Museum of Innocence” (2009), is a minor-key epic about life in Istanbul over the past half-century. It floats on a cushion of huzun, the way an air-hockey puck hovers above the game table.

《我意識裏的怪癖》(A Strangeness in My Mind)是帕慕克自2009年的《純真博物館》(The Museum of Innocence)後的首部小說。它如同一曲小調史詩，吟詠伊斯坦布爾在過去半個世紀裏的生活。它漂浮在一層呼愁之上，就像桌面冰球在球桌上方懸浮。

The first thing to know about “A Strangeness in My Mind” is that it ranks with “A Confederacy of Dunces” as a major street-food vendor novel. Its primary character is Mevlut Karatas, who walks Istanbul’s neighborhoods at night calling out: “Booo-zaaaaa. Goooood boozaaaaa.”

關於《我意識裏的怪癖》，你要知道的第一件事就是它和《笨蛋聯盟》(A Confederacy of Dunces)一樣，堪稱一本經典的路邊食攤小販小說。它的主角名叫梅弗盧特·卡拉塔斯(Mevlut Karatas)，一到夜裏就在伊斯坦布爾沿街叫賣：“卜——茶——，好喝的——卜茶——”

Boza is an ancient fermented beverage, made in Turkey from wheat. It’s yellowish and thick and often topped with cinnamon and roasted chickpeas. Boza has a low alcohol content — so low that, as one character comments, it is “just something someone invented so Muslims could drink alcohol.”

“卜茶”(Boza)是土耳其一種古老的發酵飲料，用小麥製成。顏色澄黃，口味濃郁，上面往往點綴着肉桂和烤鷹嘴豆，其中略含酒精，不過含量很低，正如書中一個角色評論的，“它被髮明出來就是爲了讓穆斯林也能喝酒。”

Boza sellers, Mr. Pamuk notes, have mostly disappeared from Istanbul. By the 1960s and ’70s, Mevlut is among the last of a breed. His call is ripe with huzun. One customer says, “You have a lovely voice, like a muezzin.” He replies, “It’s the emotion in the seller’s voice that really sells the boza.”

帕慕克指出，卜茶小販已經在伊斯坦布爾近乎絕跡。20世紀六七十年代，梅弗盧特是其中的最後一代人。他的叫賣聲中充滿了呼愁。一個顧客說，“你的聲音真美，好像清真寺塔上的宣禮人。”他答道，“卜茶就是靠着小販聲音裏的情感才能賣出去的。”

“A Strangeness in My Mind” is not merely Mevlut’s story. This novel relates, through multiple voices, each jostling for airtime, the lives of a frazzled and often very funny cast of characters. Most are members of Mevlut’s extended family.

《我意識裏的怪癖》不僅僅是梅弗盧特的故事。這部小說通過許許多多的聲音將一系列疲憊而又往往非常風趣的角色們的生活聯繫起來，而每一個聲音都在力爭更多的亮相時間。大多數角色是梅弗盧特大家庭中的親戚。

They arrive in Istanbul from poor villages in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. They move into crumbling houses on the city’s outskirts before being raked by modernity into tall and disorienting apartment buildings. From this handful of people, Mr. Pamuk evokes the flow of generations of hopeful immigrants into the teeming city.

他們從土耳其安納托利亞中部貧困的村莊來到伊斯坦布爾，搬進城市郊區破舊的房子，然後又在現代化大潮中被拋進令人迷失的高樓大廈。帕慕克從這一小羣人着手寫起，描述出一代代充滿希望的移民是如何涌入熙熙攘攘的城市。

The primary theme in Mr. Pamuk’s work, powerfully evoked in his eerily fine novel “Snow” (2004), is mental dislocation — life lived between the competing attractions of Western and Eastern values, between secular doubt and religious conviction.

帕慕克在2004年那本怪異而精緻的小說《雪》(Snow)中強有力地寫到了精神錯位這個主題——生活在相互衝突的東西方價值觀魅力之間、生活在世俗的懷疑與堅定的信仰之間。

That’s true here, too. Mevlut is pulled, at trying moments, toward a deeper engagement with Islam. But “A Strangeness in My Mind” wears this topic lightly. The book is a hymn to life’s physical and mental chaos, not to the harmonies faith would impose.

這個主題亦存在於《我意識裏的怪癖》之中。在某些令人痛苦的艱難時刻，梅弗盧特被更深地推向伊斯蘭信仰。但這本書對這個話題涉及不多，它是一曲對生活中靈與肉的混亂的讚歌，而不是信仰所能帶來的身心和諧。

A lot happens in “A Strangeness in My Mind.” There are timely births and untimely deaths, feuds and frauds, heartaches by the number. At its center is an unconventional love story.

《我意識裏的怪癖》中發生了很多事情。有適時的生育與過早的夭亡、世仇與欺騙、無數心痛。而故事的核心是一個不合傳統的愛情故事。

Mevlut is hoodwinked into eloping with the wrong girl, the less attractive older sister of a woman he admired. Theirs becomes a blissful marriage anyway, though they never quite make it out of poverty.

梅弗盧特受到欺騙，和錯誤的女孩私奔，她是他愛慕的那個女人的姐姐，長相也不好看。不過他們畢竟是成了有福的一對，儘管一生都在受窮。

There are many things to praise in “A Strangeness in My Mind,” which I’ll get to in a moment. What first needs to be said about this amiable novel is that, like boza, its alcohol content is not very high.. At nearly 600 pages, it has the stretch of an epic but not the impact of one. Like boza, it leaves a bit of film on your lip.

《我意識裏的怪癖》中有很多值得讚美之處，我會馬上講到。首先，它是一本溫和的小說，和卜茶一樣，酒精含量不是太高……它有着史詩般的篇幅，接近600頁，但沒有史詩的衝擊力。和卜茶一樣，只是在你脣邊留下一絲回味。

Melancholy is a hard emotion to sustain; over the long run, it cloys. Reading this novel, I was reminded of a passage in Elif Batuman’s lovely nonfiction book, “The Possessed” (2010). Ms. Batuman, an American writer born to Turkish parents, described how few people in Turkey read novels, and how the melancholy Mr. Pamuk seemed somewhat miserable writing his.

憂鬱是一種很難去保持的感情，從長遠角度來看會顯得發膩。讀這本小說的時候，我想起艾麗芙·巴圖曼(Elif Batuman)可愛的非虛構作品，2010年的《附體》(The Possessed)。巴圖曼是美國作家，她的父母是土耳其人，她在書中描述很少土耳其人讀小說，而憂鬱的、寫小說的帕慕克有時候看上去真是可憐。

About his novel “The Black Book” (1994), she writes: “It was about a man who had lost a woman called ‘Dream.’ This guy was walking around the streets of Istanbul calling: ‘Dream! Dream!’ I remember reading this on a bus in Turkey and feeling deeply, viscerally bored.”

關於他1994年的小說《黑書》(The Black Book)，她寫道：“這是一個男人的故事，他失去了一個名叫‘夢’的女人，於是走遍伊斯坦布爾的街頭，呼喚着：‘夢！夢！’我記得自己在土耳其的公共汽車讀這本書，內心一陣深深的厭倦。”

I was not deeply, viscerally bored by “A Strangeness in My Mind.” But I mostly turned its pages with polite interest rather than real desire. This novel hits its low points in its too frequent nods toward its title, to the strangeness in Mevlut’s mind. This “strangeness” is not so very strange; it comes to seem like little more than a variation on the author’s own brand of huzun.

《我意識裏的怪癖》並沒有讓我內心深深厭倦，但打開這本書的時候，我心中懷着的往往是禮節性的興趣，而不是真正的渴望。這本小說寫得最不好的地方就是它經常呼應標題，寫到梅弗盧特意識裏的怪癖。這個“怪癖”其實並不太怪；最後只不過是作家自己的呼愁的一個變種。

Mr. Pamuk remains an estimable writer. One of his great gifts is for blending what is clearly a large amount of research, on many topics, into alert, humane, nonwonky prose. One example can stand in for many: his writing about street vendors.

帕慕克仍然是一位非常難能可貴的作家。他最好的天賦就是把他對許多題材的大量研究混合在一起，成爲敏銳、富於人文色彩而堅決的行文。舉一個例子就夠了，他對街頭小販的描寫。

He evokes “the golden years of Ottoman-style street food.” He expounds on many dishes, from stuffed mussels and lamb’s head to pan-fried liver. We learn the history of these food sellers. We witness them coping with onerous regulations, fickle customers, mean dogs.

他描述“黃金時代的奧斯曼土耳其風格街頭食物”。他詳細地描寫各種菜餚，從填餡青口、羊頭到煎肝臟。我們通過這些食物小販學到了歷史。我們看到他們如何應付繁重的規則、暴躁的顧客和惡犬。

Mr. Pamuk is a subtle writer on about social class. Once dishes like chicken with chickpeas and rice, eaten outside with plastic cutlery by office workers, begin to be seen as poor people’s food, sales shrivel.

帕慕克擅長細微地描寫社會階層。辦公室職員在外面用塑料餐具吃的雞肉鷹嘴豆米飯一旦被視爲窮人的食物，銷量馬上就跌下來了。

Mevlut is among these sellers. At night, he peddles boza. During the day, he sells whatever he can. His wife, who helps prepare the food he hawks, describes herself as “the head chef of a three-wheeled restaurant.”

梅弗盧特也是這些小販之一。晚上，他兜售卜茶。白天他什麼都賣。他的妻子幫他準備他賣的這些食物，說自己是“三輪餐館的主廚”。

The humor in this novel, which has been lucidly translated by Ekin Oklap, flows freely. The narrators interrupt and contradict one another as if they were talking heads in an early Spike Lee movie.

小說中也包含了大量幽默，由翻譯艾金·奧克拉普(Ekin Oklap)流暢地還原。敘事者們彼此打斷，彼此矛盾，好像斯派克·李(Spike Lee)早期電影裏的旁敘人。

One woman notes the upside of dirt floors: “It took a month before I realized that the more I swept the floor, the higher the ceiling got.” Mevlut, who loves movies, comments on the downside of American and European ones: “You never quite knew who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.”

一個女人說骯髒的地板也有好處：“我花了一個月才發現，我越掃地，房頂就顯得越高。”梅弗盧特愛看電影，他說美國電影和歐洲電影有個缺點：“你永遠都分不清誰是好人誰是壞人。”

Yet “A Strangeness in My Mind” lacks the visceral and cerebral impact of Mr. Pamuk’s best novels, notably “Snow” and “My Name Is Red” (2001). For all its melancholy, it verges on being cute. You can say about it what one character says of Mevlut: “He’s a bit of a weirdo, but he’s got a heart of gold.”

是的，《我意識裏的怪癖》缺乏帕慕克那些最好的小說當中對心靈與頭腦的衝擊力，特別是《雪》和《我的名字是紅》(My Name Is Red)。它雖有悲涼，卻也不無喜樂。你可以用書中一個角色評價梅弗盧特的話來形容它：“他是個怪人，卻有一顆金子般的心。”