| Title | : | Invitation to a Beheading |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0679725318 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780679725312 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 223 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1938 |
here
Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.
Invitation to a Beheading Reviews
-
Nabokov’s Cave
In his allegory of the Cave, Plato suggests a limit on human knowledge: that we see only shadows of reality. Immanuel Kant went Plato one better two millennia later and claimed that we can’t even apprehend the shadows properly, that even these in their ‘true selves’ are beyond comprehension.
Invitation to a Beheading offers an alternative to these classical philosophical, and inherently dismal and nihilistic, views. For Nabokov the world is not hidden beyond an epistemological veil. On the contrary, reality is so much in one’s face, “a tumult of truth,” so rampantly and fecundly ‘there,’ that it is effectively infinite. It is not erroneous perception that we experience but an abundance of perception that is too great to adequately describe.
Nabokov’s equivalent of Plato’s Cave is a prison cell in a fortress, at some indeterminate time in the future. But this is no ordinary prison; nor does it contain an ordinary prisoner. The prison provides three squares a day and a good roof over the head of Cincinnatus, the condemned protagonist. This is only as to be expected. But Cincinnatus’s cell is described as ‘deluxe’; his food is the same quality as the director’s. And the prison houses an outstanding library of which he makes intensive use. The staff are kindly folk who look after his every physical need from entertainment to regular bathing.
One could get attached to such a prison. Nabokov hints at the opinion that most do when he writes about “his [Cincinnatus’s] jailers, who in fact were everyone.”
But Cincinnatus is nevertheless stressed. Not because of his death sentence, but because he can’t get a confirmation for the date on which it is to be executed. This he finds intolerable:“... the compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned. However, I am being left in that ignorance which is tolerable only to those living at liberty.”
In short: Cincinnatus’s predicament is universal.
Nevertheless his imprisonment and pending execution provide a sort of focused freedom for Cincinnatus. Among other things, it gives him time to dream, to recollect, and to write about his life. He can “see things clearly through the prison walls” that were previously invisible. And he feels driven to express them, “I have the feeling of boiling and rising, a tickling, which may drive you mad if you do not express it somehow.”
But there is too much to express. Not just of his life, but of the life he has suppressed and the dreams, which is also part of his experiential reality, much of which he has forced himself to forget. Facing death, he feels nonetheless, “I am the one among you who is alive”. But his life is overwhelming in its detail and complexity. It is infinite. Even the biography of an oak tree obtained from the library consists of more than 3000 pages; and it is still incomplete. Therefore, “I have lived an agonizing life, and I would like to describe that agony to you – but I am obsessed by the fear that there will not be time enough,” he informs the reader.
Cincinnatus’s justifiable conviction is for the crime of “gnostical turpitude.” The offense is not one of moral depravity nor a lack of discernment of good and evil. It is his persistent inability to appreciate conventional reality. Driven by either an inherent artistic muse or perhaps guilt on account of his previous attempts to conform, he must write, and write, and write, before it is too late - even though his writing must remain incomplete, composed of merely fragmentary descriptions from his imagination.
The problem that Cincinnatus discovers as he pursues the expression of his perceptual overload is that the world is entirely mad. And not just mad, but evangelistically so. Everyone in it tries to convince him to be reasonable and submit to reality. In conversation, his warden is enticing. He might be reprieved.
But Cincinnatus“does not understand that if he were now honestly to admit the error of his ways... honestly admit that he is fond of the same things as you and I,... if he were honestly to admit and repent –yes, repent –that is my point –then he could have some remote – I do not want to say hope, but nevertheless...”
When he refuses he is rebuked with an apt biblical reference, “You offer him kingdoms, and he sulks.”
Cincinnatus has no Freudian Death Wish. Quite the opposite. His fear of death overwhelms even his drive to write. Ultimately it is the conquering of this fear that gives him some sort of freedom. This is unlikely to be a pleasing ending for “the disciples of the Viennese witch-doctor [and] their grotesque world of communal guilt and progressive education.” Nor is it likely to be satisfying for those philosophers who contend that the world is alien to perceptive human beings. -
It is amazing how farcical this book is considering the ominous title but it is also amazing how tragic it is considering the omnipresent farce.
Of course there is no better writer at manipulating our emotions than Vladimir Nabokov. In this novel, we are manipulated almost as much as Cincinnatus, the hero, whose emotions are played upon unmercifully not only by every character in the book but also by the author.
Nabokov takes delight in using vocabulary and phrasing that seem perfectly innocent at first glance. It’s only moments later that the axe drops, and the axe drops often, as in those ‘curio’ Russian toys where the bear chops the block over and over. It might be a simple remark that is made to the hero about the slenderness of his neck, or a comment about the odd shadow cast on it by the light. It might be the description of a beautifully sharpened pencil, as long as the life of any man except Cincinnatus, and with an ebony gleam to each of its six facets, or it might be the mention of the river Strop which seemed to curve like a sickle across the valley. In fact that curving river was mentioned so frequently that I looked up the word ‘strop’ — and discovered that it is a strip of leather used to sharpen a blade.
Nothing in this book is innocent. Not even Cincinnatus’s tendency to suffer from syncope or momentary lapses of consciousness. What’s the origin of that word, I wondered? Oh, right, to strike or cut off. And cope sounds like Kopf, the German for ‘head’.
Not to mention the jokes the characters like to tell each other: ‘Take the word “anxiety”,’ Cincinnatus’s brother-in-law, the wit, was saying to him. ‘Now take away the word “tiny”, eh? Comes out funny, doesn’t it?
Cincinnatus’s anxiety is actually less about the axe and more about knowing the moment it will fall. As a condemned man (but for what crime we are not told), he feels he has a right to the very thing that is the special privilege of the condemned: knowing the exact moment of death, and therefore how much time he has left.
But everything in the book conspires against that knowledge in the most absurd fashion, the walls, with their arms around each other’s shoulders like a foursome discussing a square secret in inaudible whispers, the chairs that moved about by themselves, the interchangeable prison director and warden, the child who flits about like a butterfly, the greedy velvet spider with hazel eyes which somehow resembled the prisoner’s wife.
And meanwhile there’s the absurdly interfering bong of the prison clock, it struck eleven times, thought for a moment, and struck once more, or it struck some unknown hour, now with banal dreariness, now with mounting exultation, finally with a hoarse rattle.
Some aspects of this story reminded me of Gogol’s
The Overcoat or
Diary of a Madman. In fact, more than in previous Nabokovs I’ve read, this book reminded me very much of Russian literature. Gogol’s shadow was all around but also Dostoyevsky’s. I frequently thought of Rodion Raskolnikov’s room in
Crime and Punishment, and of all the strange people coming and going while Rodion lay silent and impervious to their efforts to make him speak. And there just happens to be a character here called Rodion.
Of all the absurdities in the book, not the least absurd is the situation of the reader at the beginning. The first page reads like it should be the last: the death sentence pronounced on the prisoner. What motivation have we to read on, knowing the outcome in advance? But we do, because, like Cincinnatus, we cannot resist hope.
As for the last page, when I finally got to it, I jumped up and ruffled my hair!
I hope Nabokov’s ghost is happy. -
3.5 stars
Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, which largely takes place within the cramped confinements of a jail cell is possibly his most indubitable examination of a theme which seemed to have followed him throughout his career. That being the idea of a citizen who aspires to be different, the person who fails to assimilate, and the ways in which society either forces that divergent voice to join in unison, or ends up extinguishes it.
I have loved most of his work, simply down to that superlative prose, but this one felt a little different from the rest, with a bit of Kafka thrown in, and also George Orwell springs to mind. It also featured less of his dark sense of humour than some of his other novels, and as a whole, even though I wouldn't consider this near his best work, it's still Nabokov, and having read this twice now, I would say it was better the second thing around.
The set-up is quite simple - a man called Cincinnatus C awaits for the day of his execution, and through his eyes Nabokov demonstrates not only the mechanics of a totalitarian state, but the way in which any one of us can have our dignity stripped by the force of conformity. All Cincinnatus wants to know is when the time has come when he is going to die, but he is instead played around with mentally in one big game. He is constantly irritated by the jailers as they go about eating his food, turning his cell into their own office, trying to crack jokes, with one even wanting to dance with him to lighten the mood. And the thing is, they never at any time act with any cruel intentions towards him. They are seemingly befuddled by Cincinnatus, and vice-versa. Through their sprightly antics, Cincinnatus simply refuses to accept this role of playmate, and is holding out to his last breath against indignity.
Through the narrative (which, when I think about it could have worked as a play) Nabokov explores the ways in which a society can force mortification upon its members. Having no means of escape from his incarceration, all Cincinnatus can do is keep an astute stiff upper lip, and doggedly refuse to be a pawn in the tomfoolery of others. He, like any non-conformist in a society full of conformists, is in a no-win situation. If he conforms — plays his role in the little games that the jailers construct for him — he loses his dignity. If he refuses to conform he is treated like a child and must abide by in vexation.
Nabokov creates an absurd but scary vision of an irrational world, and while the nature of the writing here is somewhat Kafkaesque, Nabokov never actually read any Kafka when he wrote Invitation to a Beheading. In addition, neither Kafka, nor any writers dabbling with these themes combine their philosophy with surrealism in the same way or to the same degree as does Nabokov does in this novel. He is also clever in the way, that under the surface, there is more going on than meets the eye.
While I liked it, it's not anywhere near his best work. -
We are all sentenced to death right from the start… right at birth. And all our life we wait for an execution which will come, sooner or later…
And instead of the clear and precise work that is needed, instead of a gradual preparation of the soul for that morning when it will have to get up, when – when you, soul, will be offered the executioner’s pail to wash in – Instead, you involuntarily indulge in banal senseless dreams of escape – alas, of escape…
While it may seem at first that Invitation to a Beheading echoes
The Trial by
Franz Kafka actually this novel is its opposite… And in fact Vladimir Nabokov contemplates the nature of earthly existence – everyone is free to turn one’s existence into a gaol and live as a prisoner of conventions or escape conformity and enjoy true inner liberty… -
Invitație la eșafod este un roman excelent și, ca atare, dificil. Nu-l poți citi dintr-o sorbire, e mai bine să-l străbați în doze mici. Dați-mi un singur exemplu de carte bună, care se citește ușor! Eu nu cunosc o astfel de capodoperă.
Nu știm unde și cînd se petrec întîmplările relatate de naratorul omniscient al romanului. Dacă ne luăm după numele proprii, probabil în Rusia. Oricum, într-o țară onirică, sau, mai bine, într-o lume pe dos, carnavalescă și abjectă. Personajele masculine folosesc din belșug parfumul, respectă o politețe exemplară și au o grijă înduioșătoare față de bunăstarea victimei. Funcționarii sînt foarte manierați. De exemplu, pentru a-l feri de un șoc nemeritat, Judecătorul îi divulgă acuzatului Cincinnatus C sentința în șoaptă (după cum prescrie Legea). Va fi decapitat cu binișorul. E transportat în fortăreață și închis într-o carceră (relativ) comodă.
Gardianul - un anume Rodion - îl primește cu nedisimulată bucurie, chipul lui e mereu „luminat de bunătate”. Pentru început, îl invită pe Cincinnatus la vals. Personalul închisorii trăiește un moment festiv. Directorul îi urează „Bun venit!”. C primește o celulă cu pereții de un galben necruțător, cu fereastra de un ocru aprins, cu un bec în tavan. Auster, dar confortabil.
Treptat, în narațiune se insinuează absurdul. Vizita directorului devine vizită la director: directorul Rodrig Ivanovici intră în celula condamnatului și, la sfîrșitul discuției, prizonierul iese din cabinetul lui. Altă dată, Cincinnatus C. se plimbă liber prin temniță, pe coridoare și scări, iese într-o curte mică. Și fiindcă parola e tăcerea, trece prin mai multe porți fără să fie oprit de nimeni. Părăsește nestingherit „colosul cețos al fortăreței” și merge în oraș, ajunge acasă, urcă scara, împinge ușa și intră din nou în celula din fortăreață. Cum ar veni, a străbătut un cerc vicios...
Firește, C stă în celulă într-un halat negru, pătat de cenușă, poartă pe cap o tichie neagră de filosof și, cînd nu e vizitat de director și de gardian, își face notații în jurnal. Știe că nu are talent la scris, nici vocație de poet, dar s-a născut cu „o intuiție criminală” în așezarea cuvintelor în propoziții. Nu insist. În acest univers, totul e anapoda.
Firește, nu mai e nevoie să spun: Cincinnatus va muri fără a afla cu ce a greșit. Am găsit cîteva sugestii. El însuși spune că a comis o „mîrșăvie gnoseologică”, suferă, așadar, de „turpitudine cognitivă”. În sfîrșit, Concinnatus nu e transparent precum ceilalți oameni, e impermeabil la lumină. Păcatul lui e de a fi diferit.
În ajunul execuției, notabilitățile orașului dau un banchet în cinstea condamnatului. Stă în capul mesei. Cincinnatus e slujit de călău, musiu Pierre. Mai are rost să spun că romanul lui Vladimir Nabokov e de un umor demențial? -
Приглашение на казнь = Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian from 1935 to 1936 as a serial in Contemporary Notes (Sovremennye zapiski), a Russian émigré magazine. In 1938, the work was published in Paris.
The novel opens with Cincinnatus C., a thirty-year-old teacher and the protagonist, being sentenced to death by beheading for the crime "gnostical turpitude" in twenty days' time (though this timescale is undisclosed to Cincinnatus).
After being taken back to a "fortress" by the cheerful jailer Rodion, Cincinnatus talks to his lawyer and dances with Rodion, before inscribing his thoughts on paper, as a spider dangles from the ceiling.
Throughout the plot, Cincinnatus repeatedly inquires of various characters about the date of his execution, but to no avail. Cincinnatus is displeased to learn from the prison director, Rodrig, that he will be getting a cellmate.
Cincinnatus soon meets Emmie, Rodrig's young daughter, and then reads the foolish prisoner's rules etched into the wall, flips through a book catalogue, and is brought by Rodrig down the hall to observe his incoming cellmate through a peephole. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه می سال 1992 میلادی
عنوان: دعوت به مراسم گردن زنی؛ نویسنده: ولادیمیر ناباکوف؛ مترجم: احمد خزاعی؛ 1370؛
عنوان: دعوت به مراسم گردنزنی؛ نویسنده: ولادیمیر ناباکوف؛ مترجم: لادن کاظمی، بابک حقایق، تهران: انتشارات قاصدک صبا، 1396؛
داستان در داخل زندان و سلول مجرم جریان دارد.؛ مجرم «سین سیناتوس»، به جرم متفاوت بودن با دیگران (شفاف نبودن، نفوذ ناپذیری)؛ محکوم به اعدام میشود.؛ حکم اعدام طبق قانون درگوشی به او ابلاغ میشود، و او را به سوی سلول زندان، در یک دژ عظیم میبرند.؛ زندانبان برای باز کردن در سلول تمام کلیدها را امتحان میکند، و وقتی در سلول باز میشود، وکیل مدافع داخل سلول به انتظار او نشسته است!؛ زندانی از دیگران میخواهد تنهایش بگذارند، و همه تعظیم کنان میروند!؛ روی میز وسط سلول، کاغذهای سفید، و مداد تراشیده شده، گذاشته شده است، زندانبان داخل میشود و پیشنهاد رقص والس میدهد، و آن دو با هم در سلول و راهروها میرقصند!؛ مدیر زندان خطابه ی رسمی خوش آمدگویی میخواند، و نگران غذا نخوردن زندانی است...؛ و زندانی هم در انتظار زمان مراسم گردن زنی که زمانش نامشخص است...؛
راوی دانای کل، پاراگراف دوم را این گونه آغاز میکند: «باری به پایان نزدیک میشویم.؛ قسمت چپ رمان، که هنوز مزه اش را نچشیده ایم، و به هنگام خواندن دلنشینمان، غیر ارادی، میسنجیم ببینیم هنوز خیلی از آن مانده یا نه.؛ (و انگشت هایمان ذوق میکرد که از حجمش کم نشده است)، ناگهان، و بی هیچ دلیل، کاملاً نازک میشود: چند دقیقه سریع خواندن، و سرازیری، و چه وحشتناک!...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 13/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی -
“I suppose the pain of parting will be red and loud.”
Okay not better than Lolita, but I don't know why it isn't Nabokov's second most read novel here. He himself said that while he held the greatest affection for Lolita, it was Invitation to a Beheading that he held in the greatest esteem. Just check out this for an opening sentence:
"In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper."
And there you have in the two quotes the color red, loudness, and secrecy - in short a feel of Soviet Russia. But Nabokov doesn't want you to think of Soviet Russia while reading it. And it is in protogonist, Cincinnatus' crime we discover what it is really about. He was "accused of the most terrible of crimes, gnostical turpitude, so rare and so unutterable that it was necessary to use circumlocutions like “impenetrability,” “opacity,” “occlusion” - the crime, in brief of being someone difficult to know. That could a crime in Soviet Russia too, which wanted the public and private life to be same, which effectively means no privacy, no secrets etc.
But C, is not shallow like others. He is conscious of depths in himself that he himself hasn't penetrated. And so. this crime, that is, the lack of transparency, was to show up sooner or later. He is accused, found guilty, and an execution is ordered. The sentence is welcomed with smiles, masses seem to derive a kind of sadistic pleasure from idea of an execution. The ease and lack of seruousness with which people treat him and his sentence is appaling.
In such a world, C. finds himself, an outsider, looking for escape. Smacks of Kafka's alienated characters? Is but there is no cause-and-effect relationship. Apparently, Nabokov hadn't heard of him when he wrote it.
It is hardly saying anything new that people who are different (hardly a virtue in itself, but not a vice either), who don't have that false virtue of being normal, the golden mean of mediocrity in all qualities are often persecuted by society in all parts of the world - and even where they are not they do always feel persecuted -
"I am here through an error—not in this prison, specifically—but in this whole terrible, striped world; a world which seems not a bad example of amateur craftsmanship, but is in reality calamity, horror, madness, error—and look, the curio slays the tourist, the gigantic carved bear brings its wooden mallet down upon me. "
The images of golden cage and a spider devouring its prey add to this atmosphere where feeling of being unnessarily persecuted gathers strength. And he tries hard, hard to make sense of this world around him
"Involuntarily yielding to the temptation of logical development, involuntarily (be careful, Cincinnatus!) forging into a chain all the things that were quite harmless as long as they remained unlinked, he inspired the meaningless with meaning and the lifeless with life."
But it is useless, all his attempts to make himself understood by these shallow people (or at least, shallow to him) fail:
"I myself picture all this so clearly, but you are not I, and therein lies the irreparable calamity."
since he is surrounded by people who are more puppets than human beings - full of acting and role plays.
“I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.”
Yes, there seems to be a superiority complex about him but that is an understandable reaction in someone who hasn't met a like minded soul in his life - it is difficult tobe always understanding when no one understands you. There is nothing for him but to scorn inwardly as his prison mate charges into generally admired eloquence saying cliche things with cliche phrases or his executioner who is a sort of celebrity.
And so, C. turns to the last resort of all those misunderstood souls - writing
"I am chained to this table like a cup to a drinking fountain, and will not rise till I have said what I want. I repeat (gathering new momentum in the rhythm of repetitive incantations), I repeat: there is something I know, there is something I know, there is something … When still, a child, living still in a canary-yellow, large, cold house where they were preparing me and hundreds of other children for secure nonexistence as adult dummies, into which all my coevals turned without effort or pain; already then, in those accursed days, amid rag books and brightly painted school materials and soul-chilling drafts, I knew without knowing, I knew without wonder, I knew as one knows oneself, I knew what it is impossible to know—and, I would say, I knew it even more clearly than I do now. "
but even that doesn't console his soul:
"The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”
“...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.”
BIG SPOILER AHEAD READER DISCRESTION IS ADVISED
The twist in the end suggests that C. was a willing participitant of his own execution - there is something to think about for those who find themselves presecuted by the world for being different. -
I know it irritated Nabokov when his novel was compared to that of other authors, in particular to Kafka’s The Trial (1915) and/or The Castle (1926), since as he claimed in his Foreword, he did not know anything about the Czech’s work when he wrote his novel in 1934. My Kafka remains at the very back of my mind; years have passed since I read him and the impressions have receded, so even without Nabokov’s comment I would not necessarily have thought of him. But I did think, strongly, of Gogol, for its absurd element and for the humour, and now that I have just begun Dostoevsky's
The Double , I can also see a certain literary air flowing through these Russian writers.
The other work I thought of, and this time not because of the absurd setting, but because of its metaphysical content and its retake of Plato’s Cave was the much later Saramago’s
A Caverna (2000). Both are however very different. Saramago’s has no feeling of enclosure – just the striving for knowledge; his potter Cipriano evokes ideas of ‘The Maker’. While Nabokov’s Cincinnatus, in spite of avidly borrowing books from the prison’s library, has one major obsession that he wants to learn: the date for his execution.
Indeed, one of the pulsating forces of the narration is precisely Cincinnatus’ uncertainty, which made me think in a somewhat ironic manner that as a reader who gradually turns the pages of a book part of the tension cannot be shared with the protagonist as one can feel in one’s fingers that the end is approaching.
On the metaphysical theme I will not detain myself any further; it could fill the pages of several PhD theses. It possibly interests me less than the literary issues that absorbed his Real Life, which I read recently. Reading this during the dreadful pandemic, against which we have little to do other than to imprison ourselves, and in which our known society has become a shadow of its previous presence, I found that I was a less well-disposed reader for these issues than I would have been had I been sitting in a pandemic-free cave. Turning my attention then to the literary, I felt that I was again facing elusive shadows, for apart from the (obvious) literary links pointed at already, in a typical Nabokov manner, there must have been many conscious literary allusions, that regrettably were too dim for me to make some sense out of them.
Nonetheless, in spite of these obstacles, I enjoyed the novel, and most particularly the actual writing. Even if this is a translation, it was transposed into English by Dimitri, Vladimir’s son, and with the father supervising every word choice peeking over the shoulder of his son. Especially I relished the imagery of transparency versus density; as the pervasive presence of doubles (doppelgänger); the portrayal of a Totalitarian state (which again reading it during the pandemic had a greater resonance) .
I shall then continue my gradual exploration of Nabokov’s works. They will be signposts in my reading future. -
Don't fall into the lazy-readers' trap of thinking that Invitation to a Beheading is just some pastiche of Kafka. This was my misconception for the first 70 pages or so. Nabokov claims not to have read The Trial before writing this work, and I am inclined to believe him, given the limited availability of Kafka's text outside of the German language at that time (Nabokov did not read German). But the close kinship these texts have is very apparent . . .
. . . at first.
It is not too long, however, before Nabokov's softer "touch" becomes apparent. The protagonist, Cincinnatus, is held captive under what may or may not be a trumped-up charge that really is not a charge at all, or at least not one that has a slippery definition, if any definition at all. Some readers excoriate his lack of emotion, his stupidity, but I felt some deep pity for the man. Again, things are not quite as they appear on the surface. A more careful reading reveals a man who is paralyzed by his fear of execution, but who buffers himself from that fear by probing for the answer to the question "when?". This dissociation of emotion is Cincinnatus' central conceit. But what appears on the surface as a lack of emotion is really a manifestation of his subconscious attempts to stifle the fear of death within him. By asking the question "when?" and receiving no answer, his attempts to know when "his time" will come serve to heighten his fears, rather than ameliorate them . . .
. . . at first.
The style throughout is varied. If pinned down to use one word to describe the oeuvre of the work, I would use "dreamlike". In fact, Cincinnatus, who sometimes acts as the directly stream-of-conscious narrator (but only sometimes), himself admits his penchant for dream:
But then I have long since grown accustomed to the thought that what we call dreams is semi-reality, the promise of reality, a foreglimpse and a whiff of it; that is, they contain, in a very vague, diluted state, more genuine reality than our vaunted waking life which, in its turn, is semi-sleep, an evil drowsiness into which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and sights of the real world, flowing beyond the periphery of the mind.
This preference for the dream-state is another defense mechanism used by Cincinnatus to push away the angst brought on by his very real situation. Through this intentional dulling of the waking world's reality, Cincinattus shields himself from the lingering background horror of his sentence . . .
. . . at first.
But one of the more poignant scenes, for me, a heartbreaking scene, wherein Cecilia C., a woman who may or may not be his actual mother, enters the cell to speak with him, heralds the implosion of his shields, not by crushing his hopes. Not initially. But by giving him hope. Hope here, is the enemy, and ultimately, it opens the abyss of disappointment beneath him. As part of their awkward conversation, he asks "What's the point of all this? Don't you know that one of these days, perhaps tomorrow . . ."
He suddenly noticed the expression in Cecilia C.'s eyes - just for an instant, an instant - but it was as if something real, unquestionable (in this world, where everything was subject to question), had passed through, as if a corner of this horrible life had curled up, and there was a glimpse of the lining. In his mother's gaze, Cincinnatus suddenly saw that ultimate, secure, all-explaining and from-all-protecting spark that he knew how to discern in himself also. What was this spark so piercingly expressing now? It does not mater what - call it horror, or pity . . . but rather let us say this: the spark proclaimed such a tumult of truth that Cincinnatus's soul could not help leaping for joy. The instant flashed and was gone. Cecilia C. got up, making an incredible little gesture, namely, holding her hands apart with index fingers extended, as if indicating size - the length, say, of a babe . . . Then she immediately began fussing, picking up from the floor her plump black bag, adjusting the lining of her pocket.
"There now," she said, in her former prattling tone, "I've stayed a while and now I'll be going. Eat my candy. I've overstayed. I'll be going, it's time."
The solemnity of this scene contrasts sharply with the tone of bureaucratic silliness that pervades the actions of the government officials throughout. There are too many such instances to mention here. Suffice it to say that the utter ridiculousness of these antagonists are somewhat reminiscent of
Toole's Confederacy of Dunces . This is yet more evidence of Nabokov's ability to write in several "voices," startlingly different, yet of a piece. At one point, my reading notes comment on Chapter 8: "Beautiful angst, like
Beckett and
Calvino conspiring on a stream of consciousness riff of awe with baroque frills" - a contrast to the whiffs of
Ubu Roi that I occasionally smelled while reading. Which just goes to show Nabokov's skill in switching from tone to tone in the same novel while maintaining a feeling of wholeness. The man can WRITE! Often, though, I found myself wishing that
David Lynch might do the world a favor and offer up a cinematic version of Invitation to a Beheading. He would be one of the few directors who could actually pull it off. Lynch's ability to portray what I will call "timeslips" on the big screen would be needed and tested. For example, imagine who you would film the following, a scene wherein Cincinnatus is escorted to a "farewell visit" with the city officials:
This nocturnal promenade which had promised to be so rich with sad, carefree, singing, murmuring impressions - for what is a recollection, if not the soul of an impression? - proved in reality to be vague and insignificant and flashed by so quickly as happens only amid very familiar surroundings, in the dark, when the varicolored fractions of day are replaced by the integers of night.
Many have called this novel a work of
existentialism. And this is not incorrect. However, it is not a
nihilistic work. What starts out floundering in captivity and darkness, with an increasing fear of inevitable doom billowing up into storm clouds in the background, resolves (a word you will rarely hear being used to describe a work of existentialist literature) into a manifesto of self-sufficiency ("By myself," becomes Cincinnatus's refrain) and a profound statement on grasping one's own destiny, embracing it, and stepping off into the unknown, with confidence and surety of purpose, with full freedom of being one's self . . .
. . . at last. -
I have played the piano since I was three years old. Thanks to the encouragement of my family and long hours of practice, I have been lucky enough to play large functions, concerts, and sold-out rock shows at venues I grew up dreaming of playing at. I have worked with truly great musicians, and been a part of many professional recordings. It's fostered a life-long love and appreciation for music, and I feel blessed to have had the experiences I've had.
But I have never written a song in my entire life.
I grew up loving to write, spending hours as a child composing ridiculous sports and science-fiction stories. My nose is always in a book, and my parents encouraged me to read anything I could get my hands on. I enjoy writing so much that I went to college for English and Journalism, reporting for newspapers and enjoying poetry and creative writing courses. My professional experience consists entirely of jobs requiring me to create written content, and hopefully it always will. I've wanted to write a novel since I was 10.
But I have not written one piece of creative original material since I graduated six years ago.
It's not that I haven't tried. One night not too long ago I locked myself in a piano studio for hours, with nothing but 88 keys, a sheet of blank paper and a pencil. Nothing came out of it but things that sounded like songs already written. I've attempted to write song lyrics, blog posts, short stories - but nothing that has avoided the trash can or the delete button.
I can't do it. I don't know why. It doesn't seem fair. I love the creative arts so much, and have practiced them almost all my life, but I have nothing to show for it. I'm extremely proud of the collaborative things I have done, but I just have this continually growing worry that I'll never be able to create something myself. I don't know how many New Years resolutions have been along the lines of "THIS year I'll record some songs" or "THIS year I'll try and publish something." Years continue to pass.
After some thought, I realize that I'm my own worst enemy. I don't even want to start something unless it's an idea so brilliant, a style so original, a thought so unheard of, that it can be compared to nothing; that it will be something that totally and completely expresses the uniqueness that I (not-so-humbly, I admit) think I have inside myself. So whenever any kind of inspiration hits, it's almost immediately dismissed as a parody, a copy, inferior. It's made me almost stop trying altogether.
And so years continue to pass.
And then I read Invitation to a Beheading. Cincinnatus C. is arrested and sentenced to death for not fitting in, for failing to become a part of society. Cincinnatus, who wants to express himself so badly, but can't do it because no one will tell him how much time he has left, and he doesn't want to start unless he knows there is time to express himself properly. And then I read chapter 9:
". . . and in the end the logical thing would be to give up and I would give up if I were laboring for a reader today, but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human; I must think only of myself, of that force which urges me to express myself. I repeat: there is something I know, there is something I know, there is something..."
And I cried on the bus.
While the themes of this novel aren't exactly in line with my own writer's block, I couldn't help but get caught up in the desperation of Cincinnatus, as the world around him got crazier and crazier, and his hopes were continually dashed until it was almost the end of him.
Almost the end.
And hopefully, like Cincinnatus, I can discover that something that I know. -
Fifty pages in, I feel like I've given this a good shake and I can move on. You have to care about something when you read a book: the story, a character, maybe even the technique. Something, at any rate. Nothing comes to mind for this one. While Nabokov stated in an interview that of all his novels he held the greatest affection for Lolita, it was Invitation to a Beheading that he held in the greatest esteem, he said at the same time:
My advice to a budding literary critic would be as follows. Learn to distinguish banality. Remember that mediocrity thrives on "ideas." Beware of the modish message. Ask yourself if the symbol you have detected is not your own footprint. Ignore allegories. By all means place the "how" above the "what" but do not let it be confused with the "so what." Rely on the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs. Do not drag in Freud at this point. All the rest depends on personal talent.
What a wanker.
I know I'm in the wild here, not kowtowing to the idea of Nabokov, but the time will come where he is reassessed and found wanting. As far as I can see, he is too clever by half. One needs more than intellect to make writing work, to make it other than banal. He's not only a wanker, but a darn smug one and one wonders why. It isn't enough to pepper everything you write with corny sexual metaphor. Speaking of which, I feel like, as a consequence of reading the first pages of this, my dorsal hairs couldn't get it up with a dose of viagra now.
Tim Winton, get me over this unhappy affair. Cloudstreet is my recovery play.
-
The Light at the End of the Cave
It is not difficult to see why Nabokov was accused of plagiarism when Invitation to a Beheading was first published. At a first view and a very shallow first reading (or, let’s not be mean and say, in Eco's terms, at a first level reading) it is indeed weirdly similar to The Trial, either in the plot construction, the main character attitude and the theme.
However there are so many differences that save the book from being somehow a sequel of Kafka’s novel and put it on the general shelf of masterpieces with common themes – alienation and absurd of the existence that the author’s statement that he was not familiar with Kafka’s works at the time, rings definitely true.
On the one hand, whereas K.’s drama is generated by an accusation he is informed of but never told what it is, Cincinnatus knows very well what crime he was accused of: “the gnostic turpitude” of being opaque in a transparent world, real in a dream, solid among shades – in a word, different:
I am here through an error – not in this prison specifically – but in this whole, terrible, striped world; a world which seems not a bad example of amateur craftsmanship, but is in reality calamity, horror, madness, error – and look, the curio slays the tourist, the gigantic carved bear brings its wooden mallet down upon me.
Therefore, while K. is singularized only by his unknown crime, Cincinnatus is unique from the beginning; a stranger among strangers and this is why he will stand tall when the world crumbles around him whereas K. dies “like a dog”, killed by his own kin.
On the other hand, while The Trial satirizes bureaucracy and was seen as a grim premonition of the Holocaust, Invitation to a Beheading even though can be read as a satire against totalitarianism is more than that: it is a reinterpretation of the myth of the cave. Like a Plato’s hero on his way towards knowledge, Cincinnatus grows tired of watching the shadows on the walls, and longs to discover who and what generated them:It exists, my dream world, it must exist since sure there must be an original of the clumsy copy.
The book describes mainly the struggle within the hero (by using the motive of the Romantic double), between the survival instinct that pushes him to act normal, to integrate, to mimic the others in order to forever remain chained in the apparent world and the call for knowledge that lures him out of the cage:Involuntarily yielding to the temptation of logical development, involuntarily (be careful, Cincinnatus!) forging into a chain all the things that were quite harmless as long as they remained unlinked, he inspired the meaningless with meaning and the lifeless with life.
A world where even “Socrates must decrease”, maybe not real but not less oppressive, since everyone is a dummy, since the whole life is painted on a cardboard, a world where the appearance is taken for essence and the shadows claim to be the solid reality denying altogether any universe outside the cave. A world of imitations, whose theatrical falsity is depicted in that specific, unmistakable Russian way, with big gestures and highfalutin words and pitiful meaningless, a world that collapses into itself the very minute the hero leaves it, in a final image strangely distressing and triumphant at the same time:Everything was coming apart. Everything was falling. A spinning wind was picking up and whirling: dust, rags, chips of painted wood, bits of gilded plaster, pasteboard bricks, posters; an arid gloom fleeted; and amidst the dust, and the falling things, and the flapping scenery, Cincinnatus made his way in that direction where, to judge by the voices, stood beings akin to him.
Is literature considered, Plato-style, a second-hand reality, an imitation of imitation? Is Cincinnatus the artist who struggles to give life to his work only to be imprisoned and almost destructed by it? Or, on the contrary, is art the only reality and life a mere imitation the hero frees himself of?
So many challenging questions, but at the end of the day who cares, for an answer, anyway? As long as masterpieces like this one will continue to emerge… -
" Hapishane sakinlerinin görkemli kır manzaraları, dostlarla gezintiler, aile sofraları ve cinsel ilişki gibi içerikleri tutukluluk durumu ve statüsüyle bağdaşmayan gece düşleri görmeleri durumunda bunları anında bastırmaları..."
Nabokov'un Rusça yazdığı kitaplardan biri olan İnfaza Çağrı düş kurmanın dahi kural ve mevzuat ile çevrelendiği bir hapishanede idamı bekleyen Cincinnatus'un hikayesi. Yazıldıktan çok sonra basılma imkanı bulan bu kitap az başını ağrıtmamış Nabokov'un. Edebi çevrelerce Kafka'nın Şato ve Dava'sı ile benzerliği bir intihal söylentisi çıkarmış. Ancak ben böyle bir intihali okurken hissetmedim ki Kafka'nın özellikle Dava'sından sonra bürokratik mekanizmaların ezdiği, hiçleştirip nesneleştirdiği her hikayede, filmde " Kafkaesk" sözünü duyuyoruz zaten.
Son olarak bir temenni ile bitireyim, umarım Lolita yerine İnfaza Çağrıyla hatırlanırsınız bir yüz yıl sonra pek saygıdeğer Nabokov efendi. -
The writing is pretty. Not the right word but I'm too lazy to use the thesaurus. Effective? It was simple but I found my imagination engaged. There was a passage (one of the many) where Cincinnatus was describing his cell, and as his mind wandered my wandered also, not from lack of interest or boredom. I read it over maybe five times before I could bring myself to move on.
This book made me scratch the right side of my head, the underdeveloped nearly concave side, in confusion. My readings usually (besides the floof) have direct practical application, functionality, numbers...none of which are required when it comes to Ahrt.* It reminds me of a glass vase display I saw a long time ago, where the curves of the vases were visible but they had been pulled apart while still molten so that the halves were joined by drooping strands; I'd thought of Venus flytraps with salivary strands but the Ahrtist’s blurb spoke of representing urban deterioration and the torturous agony of our separation from nature...huh? It also reminds me of this ceramic display of heads with phallic noses (ceramic Ahrtists love phalluses) that appeared to be crudely and haphazardly thrown together; but a closer inspection showed careful detailing and my initial reaction of "my four year old could make that!" (if I’d had a four year old) changed into "that's pretty cool" (the Ahrtist's blurb spoke of childhood memories of faces...Ahrtists....) Literature is like that glass and ceramic to me, where I often try to take too literal an interpretation and miss its worth.
Since I can't block out the over-literal tendency, I have two thoughts on what this story means. "Means." 1) One heck of a description of writer's block. Not an original thought since it fell out of C's difficulty with writing a letter. The cell and interchangeable jailers represent publishers who pressure for a cookie-cutter action bestseller, the unfaithful wife is the bestseller plot who gives herself to others while C dawdles (Dan Brown?), the crime is wanting to write Ahrt. Eh? 2) A sinister allegory on social conformity. Again, not original since the book kept referring to his difference from others, an "opaqueness."
I do think I'm missing the point. The significance of the mother's visit and Emmie? The oak novel and the draft in the cell becoming a leafy breeze with an acorn dropping out of nowhere? The references to things being off-center like the peonies being placed off-center on the table before the first interview, the light off-center in the ceiling, the scaffold off-center in the plaza?
All I know is that I don't understand Ahrt, I need the Ahrtist to explain, and sometimes the Ahrtist has no explanation.
Someone give me a math problem, this dunce cap is squeezing the left side of my head and I'd like to take it off.
*Copied from karen's shelf name. -
“Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.”
Despite Vladimir Nabokov's protests, Invitation to a Beheading, with its protagonist awaiting execution for an unknown crime at an uncertain date, feels very Kafkaesque. I liked the beginning of this novel as well as a perhaps unexpected ending, but Invitation to a Beheading didn't have the lyrical virtuosity or the punch of other Nabokov novels. There were some interesting perspectives and humor, but for me, it wasn't enough to really make this memorable. 3.25 stars
... -
I find it difficult to believe Nabokov when in the preface to Invitation to a Beheading he insists that he had no knowledge of Kafka when he wrote this book. This novel echoes The Trial in its plot and themes, not to mention the similarity in the protagonists names. Even the opening sentence appears to be a kind of homage; compare:
"Someone must have been spreading slander about Josef K., for one morning he was arrested, though he had done nothing wrong."
- Kafka, The Trial."In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper."
- Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
Come on, Vladimir, who are you trying to fool? But though these similarities do invite comparison, I can understand his frustration at the facile, reductionist use of the “Kafkaesque” label, as simply equating the two novels would be a mistake: Invitation to a Beheading is a very different novel to The Trial. It is a better novel, in my opinion (though I am a noted detractor of Kafka’s). To begin with, Nabokov’s prose is much more enjoyable to read, and the surreal and absurd elements are more imaginative, and more entertaining. Above all, Invitation to a Beheading continues to develop its ideas as it progresses, rather than simply locking itself and the reader in a cycle of repeated frustration for one hundred and fifty pages. Nabokov’s novel also deals heavily with frustration, but his meaning and implication is more broad than Kafka’s. Invitation to a Beheading is not about the restrictions imposed by the state, but those which we internalise and accept within our own lives. We are all in fact sentenced to live this absurd life, awaiting our own execution, and it is up to us to recognise our jailers.
I’m gradually coming back around to Nabokov, after the lingering disappointment of Bend Sinister, which I read almost two years ago. But in terms of quality, Invitation to a Beheading is certainly closer to Pnin and Pale Fire, than it is to that book. One of his best, I think. -
“...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
Nabokov's violin playing in the void of a totalitarian nightmare. Invitation to a Beheading belongs among those 20th Century novels by Orwell, Huxley, Kafka and Koestler that explore the individual revolting against an absurd totalitarianism. Cincinnatus C is an opaque prisoner being punished by a translucent society for his gnostical turpitude. With a Gogol-like playfulness and a Kafkaesque absurdity and a linqusitic inventiveness that belongs solely to Nabokov, 'Invitation to a Beheading' explores the many ways the state (and society) acts to destroy or force conformity on those whose vision is different. Beware those who transgress social norms, your days are both numbered ... and infinite. -
It would seem that Nabokov entertains the idea that we live under a death sentence, which may be carried out at anytime with or without just cause by forces greater than we are as individuals with our limited scope of power and influence. The book is absurd, of course, in the true sense of the word insofar as it portrays life as essentially beyond our understanding except within the limited sensory confines of everyday life. It is a PoMo classic in the treatment of its themes and Nabokov transports his readers into a dreamlike existence. Cincinnatus would be quite at home with Joseph K. from Kafka and the cast from Beckett. That is, he is a victim of his own inability to understand his life and is trapped in a world far too vast to comprehend with pure reason alone. Yet within the dream state a certain logic prevails in the discourse which lends an air of credibility to the tale: we believe that in some totalitarian state the fate of Cincinnatus is all too real and was in fact inspired by the megalomania of tyrants past in Nabokov's native Russia and elsewhere. He brings to light the shadows of all the Angst of a convict on death row with his unbelief about his circumstances, his regrets for past lapses and failures, false hope of rescue, fear of the final indignity and pain. Yet Cincinnatus ascends the scaffold determined to face his end "By myself" and his redemption seems to be the victory of his will in the final pages of the novel. The engaging style of Nabokov is well worth noting: he is vivid, intelligent, original and credible as a narrator. Like Dostoyevsky in "The Idiot" he stays out of the way of his protagonist insofar as we experience his fate through his eyes. But his fellow characters shape the story line substantially with their own dialogue and actions driven by credible, all-too-human motives. At times, Cincinnatus is simply a silent witness, a felon consumed by dread after his conviction of "agnostic turpitude" of which he barely denies and as an Everyman must certainly be guilty even insofar as it will be the end of him. Nabokov peppers his narrative with nuance and his vision focuses upon a sensual reality which is both compelling and engaging: he really knows how to draw you into this dreamlike tale about the absurdity of life. By now, many of his themes from this novel may seem almost quaint within the PoMo catalogue but he was a force in defining a movement by virtue of the simplicity and power of his narrative gifts. My respect for Nabokov has gone up a notch or two after reading this brief book. Although some may not find satisfaction in the close of this tale, it is well worth reading.
-
I see that the review on the GR home page for Invitation to a Beheading compares it to Kafka. It's clear that Nabokov heard this rather more frequently than he wanted to, and was very tired of it. In the foreword to my edition, he has the following comment:
"Emigré reviewers, who were puzzled but liked it, thought they distinguished in it a "Kafkaesque" strain, not knowing that I had no German, was completely ignorant of modern German literature, and had not yet read any French or English translations of Kafka's works. No doubt, there do exist certain stylistic links between this book and, say, my earlier stories (or my later Bend Sinister); but there are none between it and Le chateau or The Trial."
It's true that the word "Kafkaesque" is horribly overused. I love the postcoital scene in Annie Hall with Woody Allen and Shelley Duvall:
REPORTER
(Looking down at him)
I hope you don't mind that I took so long to finish.
ALVY
(Sighing)
Oh, no, no, don't be ... tsch ... don't be silly. You know,
(Yawning)
I'm startin' it-I'm startin' to get some feeling back in my jaw now.
REPORTER
Oh, sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience.
ALVY
Oh, tsch, thank you. H'm.
REPORTER
I mean that as a compliment. -
This was great, I love Nabokov when he`s not being so pompous in his prose.
But if I hear one more person label this as `Kafkaesque` I`ll smack them good!
Believe it or not, but generally I am not a fan of the absurd, but I loved the absurdity and helplessness in this novel. Imagine being condemned to death for an undefinable crime and not being told when it is that you will be executed(in Japan apparently pretty much no one knows when someone on death row dies until the actual day, yikes!) and having to put up with quite some quirky characters in one of the most bizarre prisons I`ve ever experienced in reading, and I`ve read The Enormous Room by E.E Cummings!
A few things were easy enough to predict, I won`t say so as to remove the possibility of potential spoilers, but it didn`t really detract from the reading experience. I must say that the ending was unexpected from an author like Nabokov, fans may be a little bit disappointed in that respect.
Anyways, if you`re looking for something a little bizarre but still has literary merit, then this is certainly worth looking into. Others said it drags on here and there, but that`s just how Nabokov is, he grows on you like that. -
Ako Nabokova volite, Poziv na pogubljenje će vam osnažiti ljubav. Ako vas Nabokov nervira (sumnjam da iko Nabokova baš mrzi), ovde se možete podsetiti zašto vas nervira. I ako se premećete od jedne do druge krajnosti – od savršenstva Dara do bespotrebnosti Lužinove odbrane – očekuje vas premetanje. Doduše, mnogo više na dobru stranu.
Nabokov – ko Nabokov: izvodi trikove, postavlja zamke i manipuliše bolje od svih drugih, pa nemate kud nego da coknete ’ajd’, dobro i da mu oprostite, čak i kad pokuša da vam proda fazon ukradenog nosa na koji ste prestali da nasedate sa navršene dve godine, jer znate da će vas već u sledećem redu ražalovati poetičnošću ili preneraziti bizarom.
Spremna sam da razumem najrazličitija tumačenja alegorije zatvora u kome je Cincinat (čak do apologije pisanju), ali zaista ne vidim potrebu piščevog pravdanja da Zamak nije čitao, jer uzbudljivijim od njegovog kafkijanstva (i gogoljstva) nalazim rebuse kojim je minirao tekst, poput imena našeg gnoseološkog gnusobnika, ili onog nedovršenog žitija tristogodišnjeg Quercusa, ili onog pepita koje se pod lupom suze pretvara u cicero (za ovo poslednje mi nije pomogao ni ruski izvor, ni engleski prevod Dimitrija Nabokova rađen pod očevim nadzorom, ni hrvatski, ni dva srpska prevoda!).
Naravno da neću propustiti isticanje erotičnost i svoju sreću što se pisac ovoga puta suzdržao od njenog srozavanja na jeftinu pornografiju. Iako je ona ovde tek u nekom daljem planu, epizodna, pa sva suptilna, zapravo je sirovija nego u Loliti: žmarci su me podilazili svaki put kad se Emicina lopta dokotrljala na scenu. A ono sa Marfenjkom, kanibalkom, koju prijap hrani… breskvom!
Nabokov – ko Nabokov: dobar je i može šta hoće, kad hoće. -
I saw this book as a story about relationships. Cincinnatus is a prisoner for an absurd crime of personality, and his executioner cares for him and dotes on him, completely ignorant of any reason why the spitful Cincinnatus should dislike him. It teaches us about ourselves, and about the blurring of lines in our love relationships.
Sometimes, those who love us most, are the ones that imprison us or act as our executioners. Yet they love us, nonetheless. We think that those who love us will never harm us and those who hate us always will, when actually the reality we experience is that the characters and the behaviors swap fairly often. We cannot hate those who love us simply because they have imprisoned us in some way, nor should we reject the kindness of someone who hates us, just on principle alone.
In one famous scene, Cincinnatus is dancing with his jailer to some sort of waltz, and though he despises the idea of dancing with his executioner, he still feels sad when the dance has ended and he is returned to his cell. We are humans in the end, and the comforts and loves we feel are real even when they come from unlikely or unsavory places. We must come to terms with this and learn to enjoy them for what they are.
I felt it was a great book, even though I'm not particularly into surrealism. -
As I finished the last page of this book, having misty eyes I remembered the foreword of the book.Dear Nabokov I was among the readers who ruffled their hair, who have had been sent into abstract prisons for gnostical turpitude...I too have dreamed of another world, which was full of colors, a world that was more true, more alive...I too have wanted to take off my head like a toupee and then my collarbones like shoulder straps and then my rib cage as a hauberk and then my hips, my legs and my arms and throw them all In a corner and to see what is left of me to gradually dissolve.
-
Although I'm sure Nabakov is correct when he says (in his slightly pompous Foreward) that he had no prior knowledge of Kafka's work this still has certain parallels to The Trial. Cinicinnitus is in jail awaiting the day of his execution, seemingly just for being somehow different to everyone else in society.
Nabakov deploys his usual mordant (and sometimes absurdist) black humour to great effect. -
I feel like I'm cheating Nabokov when I say I've read this book because with a book like the one here, it is an unending experience. One doesn't simply read and move past it but instead is invited by the text to re-read again and again, each time displaying a different layer, which like an onion's, is peeled off by each reading to reveal newer ones still.
Nabokov here plays jump rope with modernist and post-modernist tendencies. at one moment he is sad, at the other mad. While in places he wants to revisit a glorious past, at others he celebrates a complete sense of spatio-temporal linearities. Combined with this masterful command of stylistics is the author's dazzling prose which is, fittingly, as lucid at times as it is near undecipherable at others.
Such novels are not mere publications; they are achievements. I'm more glad than can be that this was my first Nabokov and not Lolita, which is the usual entry point into his oeuvre for most others. -
Nabokov je gde književnost počinje i gde se književnost završava. Takav je i ovaj roman.
Istovremeno i bdenje nad ljudskom smrtnošću, i kritika društva, i meditacija gnosticizma, i aluzija na Sokrata, i divna pesma, i tragikomična predstava, i niz raspletenih, rascvetanih snova jedne lutalice, jednog otudjenika. Sve se može naći. Igra se Nabokov, kako samo on ume, i sa rečima i sa likovima, pa i sa mnom, jer ako nešto mrzim to je izvikanost-to-jest-prepotentnost, a Sinsinatus (kao i sam Nabokov) je na korak od iste, ali on je i odbačen, i ja više ne znam šta da mislim.
Očekivao sam nešto nalik na Kamijevog Stranca, i zato sam toliko odlagao čitanje (jer, uprkos date tri zvezdice, Stranca sa strašću ne gotivim), ili nešto nalik na Kafku (kojeg znam da ne bih gotivio; i Nabokov jasno u predgovoru odbacuje sve sličnosti i sugeriše da ljudi zapravo pročitaju roman), ali zatekao sam nešto potpuno drugačije. Gde je Lolita bila palpi roman analogan šnj produkciji nekog filma, napisan rukom strašnog lutkara, Pozivnica je kaleidoskop, i u njemu se može naći sve, i ništa, jer na to se i sam roman svodi. To je i Nabokov. I (gotovo da, da ipak ne preterujem, ovako u afektu) niko mu nije ravan.
5+ -
Цинцинат е осъден на смърт, това е сигурно, както е сигурно, че присъдата му ще бъде изпълнена…в неопределен момент в бъдещето. Изглежда, че целият свят знае кога ще настъпи екзекуцията освен самия осъден, който живее в агонията на очакването. През това време в килията му се извървяват върволица от зловещи карикатури – роднини (на жена му), досаден затворник, чудат пазач. Редуват се съновидения, спомени и кошмари. Сякаш този ад няма край.
Набоков е невероятен в описанието на безнадеждни състояния, но като че ли предпочитам по-ведрите му книги – „Поп, дама, вале“ ми е любимата негова засега. -
Ovaj groteskni roman pun apsurdnih dijaloga, i koji povremeno podseća na pozorišni komad, govori o poslednjih 20 dana života utamničenog Cincinata C, koji čeka pogubljenje. Cap, ode glava. Zbog čega je osuđen na smrt, nije ni njemu ni nama potpuno jasno. Ali jasno nam je da nešto s njim "ne valja". Ili možda ne valja sa svetom u kom se nalazi? Cincinat je drugačiji od ostalih likova, slobodnii je u razmišljanju, normalniji prema našim standardima, ali ne i prema standardima ostalih.
Postmodernistički roman treba čitati i razumeti na više nivoa, ali ovde mi se u nekim poglavljima dešavalo da ga ne razumem na nijednom. Ipak, većina Poziva na pogubljenje je zabavna i uživanje ga je čitati. Likovi su manjeviše jednodimenzionalne karikature, koje se izražavaju jednostavno i direktno, a opet su ti dijalozi jako duhoviti i doprinose atmosferi i poruci.
U svoj toj Nabokovljevoj visprenosti (i sam opis izvršenja kazne je čas smešan, čas dramatičan i tužan), desi se da zaboravimo da je tu pred nama čovek koga čeka nasilna smrt i koji je svestan toga: "Znam još jednu glavnu, najglavniju stvar, koju ovde niko ne zna - gledajte, lutke, kako se bojim, kako u meni sve drhti, i zavija, i juri - i sada će doći po mene, a ja nisam spreman, a kako se stidim..." Cincinat želi da sačuva mentalnu slobodu, ali ne uspeva. Kad bi bar znao kad će se kazna izvršiti, mogao bi da razmišlja, da lepše i mirnije piše, da pokrene neki projekat. Ne daju mu, ne kažu mu koliko mu je ostalo i to ga najviše muči.
Ovo je poslednji ruski roman koji je Nabokov objavio pre odlaska u Ameriku (kasnije još
Dar). Pisan je 1934., kao antiutopijski roman za vreme uspona nacizma i staljinizma, ali može se videti i kao svevremenski pogled na sudbinu čoveka u društvu koje ga ne razume - i kao kritiku društva kao takvog. -
A complex, allegorical, existentialist work of fiction. One reading is definitely not enough to fully grasp everything Nabokov was trying to convey here. I find it interesting that Nabokov himself said this is not a political piece, and that this takes place around the year 3000 in Russia, and yet thematically so much of the novel has to do with failure to conform, being different, being hard to predict and understand, being hard to see through—this is the crime of Cincinnatus C. for which he is to be executed. The author takes a personal approach, examining the soul and the individual rather than focusing on any kind of totalitarian rule or harshness of law. In fact, everyone and everything around the main character has a touch of absurdism to it, with somewhat of a comedic touch. However, I don't believe the popular comparisons to Kafka are fair here—they only work on a very surface level, but once you dig deeper Invitation to a Beheading goes for a different focus and meaning. I'm going to revisit Kafka's The Trial though, just to make sure I'm not losing my mind here.
-
Distopie a confronto: Nabokov versus Kafka
Il lettore di Invito a una decapitazione, romanzo scritto da Vladimir Nabokov nel 1934, è subito portato a scorgervi chiari rimandi ai due principali romanzi di Franz Kafka, Il processo e Il castello, entrambi editi una decina di anni prima. Troppo evidenti appaiono alcune analogie tra il romanzo di Nabokov e le opere kafkiane: dall'ambientazione – una impenetrabile fortezza alta su una collina, isolata dalla città, simbolo di un potere oscuro e crudele – alla imperscrutabilità delle accuse mosse al protagonista, alla sua condanna a morte, alla scelta di dare allo stesso un nome seguito dalla sola iniziale del cognome.
Tuttavia, nella prefazione alla edizione statunitense del libro, tradotto dal figlio Dimitri sotto la supervisione dell'autore e pubblicato nel 1959, Nabokov nega qualsiasi ascendenza direttamente kafkiana del suo romanzo, ricordando che all'epoca della sua scrittura: ”… non conoscevo il tedesco, ignoravo del tutto la letteratura tedesca moderna, e non avevo ancora letto traduzioni, francesi o inglesi, delle opere di Kafka.” Poco più avanti, negando di credere all'esistenza di affinità spirituali tra autori, ammette però che se dovesse indicare uno spirito affine a questa sua opera la sua scelta cadrebbe su Kafka, piuttosto che su G.H. Orwell (altro autore cui Invito a una decapitazione è stato spesso associato) ”… o su altri popolari dispensatori di idee illustrate e di narrativa dal taglio pubblicistico.”
Oltre all'implicito giudizio negativo che Nabokov esprime su Orwell, queste frasi – se accettiamo quanto in esse affermato – ci restituiscono l'affascinante idea che due grandi scrittori, diversissimi l'uno dall'altro per radici culturali e modalità di produzione letteraria, abbiano in qualche modo immaginato la medesima metafora di fondo per descrivere la società in cui vivevano e l'oppressione che essa esercitava sul sentire e sulle aspirazioni degli individui, per trasmetterci il senso di angoscia, solitudine, impotenza e incomunicabilità in cui il singolo si trovava immerso in Europa nei primi decenni del XX secolo.
Se molte sono le analogie, altrettante però sono le diversità che possono essere rinvenute. Nabokov scrive il suo romanzo come detto nel 1934, per di più a Berlino. Da più di dieci anni abita nella capitale tedesca, frequentando attivamente – non senza contrasti – i circoli dell'emigrazione russa, di cui ci offre un vivido ritratto ne Il dono, vero manifesto della sua identità intellettuale, opera che interromperà momentaneamente proprio per scrivere Invito a una decapitazione. Il suo viscerale antibolscevismo, il suo rifiuto di matrice liberale dell'esperimento sovietico ha avuto quindi modo di arricchirsi drammaticamente dell'esperienza diretta dell'ascesa di un nuovo totalitarismo, quello hitleriano, ormai trionfante nella Germania del 1934. A differenza che in Kafka, per il quale il contrasto tra l'individuo e la società moderna è in qualche modo insanabile, essendo connaturato alle assurde ed alienati regole di quest'ultima, per Nabokov bolscevismo e nazismo sono due aberrazioni, cui si può contrapporre, come vedremo, l'arma della libertà interiore ma anche quella di altri modelli sociali, nei quali tale libertà interiore non sia conculcata e repressa. Da questa differenza sostanziale ne consegue un'altra, a mio modo di vedere non meno importante, che si riflette direttamente sullo stile, sul tono generale del romanzo di Nabokov quando lo si confronti con quello dei capolavori kafkiani. In Kafka l'assurdità, l'imperscrutabilità delle regole e dei comportamenti con cui il potere si materializza è resa attraverso la loro normalità, la loro descrizione piatta e in qualche modo asettica, il fatto che essi non vengono mai messi in discussione. È in questo modo che Kafka dota le sue opere di una potenza inaudita: se il potere, le assurde regole che lo connotano e che egli ci descrive non hanno alternative, allora queste rappresentano la normalità, e chi cerca di opporvisi e ne è vittima è anormale, in qualche modo portatore di una inaccettabile e inutile eccentricità. Kafka nelle sue opere ribalta il senso comune per farci meglio percepire la forza coercitiva dei meccanismi del potere e la loro capacità di generare alienazione. All'opposto in Invito a una decapitazione, come detto, l'alternativa esiste, ragion per cui l'autore può limitarsi a proporci uno schema narrativo classico: il protagonista , che al pari di Josef K. o dell'agrimensore K. è la vittima, lo è però di un particolare sistema di potere, che noi possiamo subito riconoscere come cattivo anche in virtù della rappresentazione che ce ne dà lo scrittore. Per poter approfondire questo aspetto, che ritengo dirimente al fine di collocare in una giusta prospettiva il problema del rapporto tra il romanzo di Nabokov e le opere di Kafka, è però necessario a questo punto accennare, sia pur per sommi capi, alla trama di Invito a una decapitazione.
Il romanzo si apre con la condanna a morte del protagonista, Cincinnatus C., un insegnante trentenne, a causa della sua turpitudine gnostica e del suo essere opaco rispetto alla traslucidità delle altre persone, i cui pensieri si fanno attraversare dalla sollecitudine pubblica. Cincinnatus è stato un diverso sin dall'infanzia: figlio illegittimo, non ha conosciuto i suoi genitori, è cresciuto in solitudine, amando la letteratura russa del XIX secolo (Puškin, Gogol', Dostoevskij, Tolstoj), e sposando intorno ai vent'anni la volgare Martha, che lo tradisce continuamente, avendogli dato tra l'altro due figli non suoi, ma che lui continuerà ad amare appassionatamente. La sua diversità lo porterà ad essere denunciato e quindi alla condanna.
Cincinnatus viene trasferito in una cella della fortezza cittadina, dove nessuno gli dice quando la sentenza sarà eseguita. Il grottesco direttore del carcere, che apparentemente si prodiga per rendere gradevole il soggiorno del protagonista, gli fa conoscere un altro detenuto, M'sieur Pierre, che cerca di divenire amico di Cincinnatus con giochi e battute e scavando nella sua intimità. Cincinnatus però diffida dei due, palesemente in combutta, e passa il tempo in silenzio, leggendo e scrivendo sui pochi fogli che ha a disposizione, angosciato di non sapere quando la sua vita avrà fine. Dopo pochi giorni riceve la visita della moglie, che però si presenta accompagnata da tutta la famiglia e dal nuovo amante: il tanto atteso incontro con Marthe si risolve perciò in un nuovo dolore per Cincinnatus.
Una sera percepisce il rumore di qualcuno che sta scavando un cunicolo dietro le pareti della cella, e ritrova la speranza di poter essere salvato. I rumori si avvicinano sempre di più, ma quando il muro della sua cella cede dal cunicolo escono il direttore e M'sieur Pierre, che hanno inteso unire in questo modo le celle dei due detenuti. Cincinnatus trova comunque un varco nel cunicolo che lo porta fuori dalla fortezza, ma Emmie, la piccola figlia del suo carceriere, lo riaccompagna al suo interno.
Infine il giorno dell'esecuzione viene fissato: M'sieur Pierre si rivela essere il boia, che per una legge umanitaria deve divenire amico del condannato perché questi non venga decapitato da uno sconosciuto. Nel finale aperto la soluzione del dramma di Cincinnatus evoca la possibilità di un crollo del sistema che lo ha condannato e dell'esistenza di un altrove dove … c'erano esseri simili a lui.
Questi elementi della storia ci consegnano un romanzo a mio avviso dotato di un tasso di convenzionalità sconosciuto alle opere di Kafka, e che per molti versi, checché ne pensasse l'autore, lo avvicinano più alle opere di un autore come Orwell che a quelle dello scrittore praghese. Intendiamoci, la mia non vuole essere una stroncatura di un romanzo senza dubbio molto bello e che fa riflettere a fondo anche su aspetti del totalitarismo non scontati (tanto più nel 1934), quali il conformismo degli individui e delle masse, ma intende essere un piccolo, e del tutto personale, contributo all'analisi comparata della distopia in Nabokov e Kafka.
In questo senso credo davvero che dirimente sia la prospettiva politica nella quale si colloca Nabokov, che con Invito a una decapitazione vuole da un lato descriverci l'essenza, ma anche la stupidità, del totalitarismo (sovietico o nazista non credo faccia molta differenza in questa sede, anche se personalmente avrei molto da dire sulle differenze tra i due sistemi), e dall'altro indicarci comunque una possibile via di fuga basata sulla coscienza individuale e soprattutto intellettuale.
Nella caratterizzazione dei tratti essenziali dei membri della società di cui Cincinnatus C. è vittima abbondano, verrebbe da dire inevitabilmente, tratti caricaturali e satirici, che spesso traggono origine dalla grande tradizione russa (Gogol', per citare l'esempio più eclatante) sapientemente mescolati con la lezione espressionista assimilata da Nabokov per esperienza diretta. Così, nel primo capitolo ci viene detto che il pubblico ministero e l'avvocato difensore del processo al protagonista erano ”… entrambi truccati e molto somiglianti tra di loro (la legge richiedeva che fossero fratelli uterini, ma non sempre era possibile, e allora si ricorreva al trucco) ...”: quale modo più conciso ed efficace di descrivere una giustizia a senso unico? Un passo ci informa che, costruita una biblioteca galleggiante sul fiume, ci si accorse che i libri si inumidivano, cosìcché le autorità provvidero a … deviare il fiume. Gli effetti satirici raggiungono sicuramente l'acme nelle due figure di Rodrig Ivanovič, il direttore della prigione, e M'sieur Pierre, molto caratterizzati anche dal punto di vista fisico e il cui compito è quello di trascinare il protagonista verso una resa incondizionata della coscienza, attraverso l'uso sapiente di veri e propri atti di tortura psicologica mascherati da atteggiamenti amichevoli ed applicazione di norme volte apparentemente a garantire i diritti del condannato. Si tratta forse dei due personaggi più riusciti del romanzo, nei quali Gogol' e l'espressionismo, superficie clownesca e crudeltà di fondo sono amalgamate in una miscela irresistibile. Sicuramente più convenzionale è la figura della moglie Martha, che nelle sue brevi apparizioni è connotata come interessata solo ai suoi amori e al fatto che la disgrazia del marito non si riverberi su di lei. Questa sua preoccupazione è comunque condivisa da tutta la famiglia, che si reca in visita a Cincinnatus in una scena dai tratti quasi felliniani, divenendo il paradigma di quel conformismo sociale che è l'humus indispensabile di ogni totalitarismo ma anche, potremmo dire con il senno di oggi e sicuramente discostandoci in questo dal pensiero di Nabokov, della perpetuazione dei meccanismi del potere al di là dell'aspetto formale che questo assume.
Se questi, assieme a molti altri rinvenibili nel romanzo, sono i punti focali della critica sociale di Nabokov, ad essi l'autore contrappone la figura di Cincinnatus, lo gnostico, l'illuminato, colui che sa, e che quindi, pur tra mille paure, angosce e tentennamenti mantiene dritta la barra della sua coscienza e non cede alle lusinghe e alle minacce del potere. Egli deve la sua vita alla sua mente e al suo pensiero, tanto che una sera in cella può pensare di smontare il suo corpo, descritto peraltro come minuscolo e insignificante. Lo sdoppiamento di corpo e pensiero, la superiorità indiscussa di quest'ultimo, la possibilità di rimanere intellettualmente integri nonostante l'aggressione esterna sono il portato concreto, in questo romanzo, della concezione aristocratica dell'intellettuale tipica di Nabokov, che ritroviamo espressa in dettaglio nel lungo scritto/confessione di Cincinnatus che occupa il capitolo 8 del romanzo. Essa è come detto la sola via di fuga dalla società totalitaria che l'autore ci indica, come diverrà ancora più chiaro nel finale, non essendovi per lui alcuna possibilità di una presa di coscienza e di una azione collettiva, anzi aborrendo egli tutto ciò che ha a che fare con la collettività.
La distopia di Nabokov in Invito a una decapitazione è a mio avviso una distopia doppiamente minore rispetto a quelle kafkiane (ammesso che nel caso dei grandi romanzi e racconti di quest'ultimo si possa parlare in senso stretto di distopia). Essa mette infatti a nudo i meccanismi della società totalitaria, lasciando però trasparire che un altro mondo è possibile, cosa invece sconosciuta nell'universo kafkiano: basterà per rendersene conto confrontare il finale di Invito a una decapitazione e quello de Il processo: alla grande scenografia di cartapesta dell'esecuzione di Cincinnatus, con la sua folla e il crollo finale si contrappone la crudele intimità, l'ineluttabilità minimalista della fine di Josef K., che lascia tutto come prima. Come logica conseguenza di ciò, la distopia presentataci in Invito a una decapitazione non assume un carattere universale: se Cincinnatus in una società diversa non sarebbe sicuramente stato processato e condannato, possiamo dire che il destino di Josef K. sarebbe rimasto sempre lo stesso, perché per Kafka il problema di indicarci una società diversa semplicemente non esiste. Kafka non si fa paladino del liberalesimo aristocratico che informa la visione del mondo di Nabokov, e ciò che scrive mantiene intatta la sua validità anche rispetto alla società dell’oggi, falsamente democratica.
In conclusione, a mio avviso, sono anche queste differenze di fondo che ci permettono di apprezzare un ottimo libro come Invito a una decapitazione ma di tenerlo distinto, quanto a valore assoluto, dai capolavori di Kafka.
