8 . Invitation to a Beheading: "Nameless Existence, Intangible Substance (original) (raw)
The first draft of Invitation to a Beheading (Priglashenie na kazn', 1935, published in 1938) was written "in one fortnight of wonderful excitement and sustained inspiration" (SO, 68). Like most products of a great writer's burst of creative energy, this novel is characterized by a strong element of overdetermination. Cincinnatus C., a citizen of a totalitarian anti-science-fictional dystopia, is accused of an ob scure crime called "gnostical turpitude" (IB, 72) and described as "opacity" (IB, 21). He is imprisoned in a fortress, condemned to death by beheading, and invited to collaborate in his own execution. The Kafkaesque situation lends itself to a variety of complementary readings-political, metaphysical, aesthetic-but in all these readings Cincinnatus emerges as a Nabokovian avatar of the artist in conflict with his environment. Cincinnatus is not trained for any recognized form of art. What makes him worthy to be called an artist is not even his attempt to produce a written account of his experience; it is his wish to live authentically despite the pressures of the environment on which he depends for the satisfaction of his desires. One by one the objects of his desires fail him, yet their treason also signifies his liberation from commitments and his ultimate freedom to reach out to the transcen dent dimension of whose presence he has long been sporadically aware. This is a significant shift in Nabokov's imagination: whereas in his earlier books the people who betrayed human commitments suf fe red defeat, in Invitation a victim of betrayal wins a victory.
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