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NABOKOV'S
INVITATION
TO A BEHEADING
A Critical Companion
Edited by Julian W. Connolly
Northwestern University Press
The American Association of Teachers of
Slavic and East European Languages
NABOKOV'S
INVITATION
TO A BEHEADING
A Critical Companion
Northwestem University Press
Evanston, Illinois 60208-4210
Copyright c:> 1997 by Northwestem University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-8101-u71-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nabokov's Invitation to a beheading; a critical companion I edited by Julian W.
Connolly.
p. em - (NorthwestemlA ATSEEL critical companions to Russian literature)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN o-8Iol-u71-X (pbk. ; alk. paper)
I. Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977. Priglashenie na
bzn'. I. Connolly, Julian w. II. Series.
PG3476.N3P7335 1997
891·73'42-dc2I 97-23097
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984
Contents
Acknowledgments, vii
I. INTRODUCTION
Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov's "Violin in a Void", 3
Julian W. Connolly
II. CRITICISM
Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics, 47
Robert Alter
Nabokov's Invitation: Literature as Execution, 66
Dale Peterson
The Otherworld in Invitation to a Beheading, 93
Vladimir Alexandrov
The Alpha and Omega of Nabokov's Invitation to a
Beheading, 119
D. Barton Johnson
III. PRIMARY SOURCES
"Welcome to the Block": Priglashenie na kazn' I Invitation to a
Beheading, A Documentary Record, 141
Brian Boyd
IV. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 181
Contributors, 195
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following individuals and organiza
tions for their help in the production of this volume: The Modern
Language Association of America, for permission to reprint Dale
Peterson's article, "Nabokov's Invitation: Literature as Execution,"
which originally appeared in PMLA 96 (1981): 824-36 (Copyright ©
1981 by The Modern Language Association of America); Robert
Alter, for permission to reprint his article, "Invitation to a Beheading:
Nabokov and the Art of Politics," which first appeared in TriQuarterly
17 (1970): 41-59; Vladimir Alexandrov and D. Barton Johnson, for
their willingness to rework and revise earlier studies of Invitation to a
Beheading for this volume; Brian Boyd, who collected and annotated
the source material related to the genesis of Priglashenie na kazn' and
its subsequent literary transformations; and Dmitri Nabokov, who
gave his permission to publish excerpts from his parents' correspon
dence (Copyright © 1996 by the Article 3 b Trust under the Will of
Vladimir N abokov). I also would like to express my appreciation to
Barry Scherr, who initially encouraged me to take on this project.
Finally, lowe a special debt of gratitude to my family - Sandra,
William, and Thomas - for their boundless support and good cheer.
A Note on Transliteration
I have followed the recommendations outlined by J. Thomas
Shaw in his The Transliteration ofM odern Russian for English-Language
Publications (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). In bib
liographic citations and in the transliteration of Russian words I have
used the Library of Congress transliteration system with the diacriti
cal marks omitted (Shaw's System II). In the main body of the text I
have made further modi cations (see Shaw's System I) to render Rus
sian names in forms that may be more familiar to an English
speaking audience (e.g., Andrey for AndreI).
I INTRODUCTION
Invitation to a Beheading: N abokov's
"Violin in a Void"
JULIAN W. CONNOLLY
We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the
creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study
that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand
new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know.
When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let
us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.
-Vladimir Nabokov, "Good Readers and Good Writers"
More than thirty years after writing Invitation to a Beheading
(Priglashenie na kaznj, Vladimir Nabokov told an interviewer that
this work was his "dreamiest and most poetical novel," and that of all
his novels he felt the "greatest esteem" for it.l Initially drafted "in
one fortnight of wonderful excitement and sustained inspiration"
(SO, 68) during the summer of I934, Invitation to a Beheading was
certainly the most unusual of the eight novels he had written up to
this point in his career.2 The work focuses on the impressions of a
man sentenced to death for the mysterious crime of "gnostical turpi
tude," a crime so terrible in the eyes of the other characters that they
must refer to it through such circumlocutions as "impenetrability,"
"opacity," and "occlusion."3 On closer inspection, however, it ap
pears that the essential crime for which this man has been con
demned is that he is different from those around him. In his words, he
is the only one among them who is truly "alive" (51162). The result
ing conflict between the protagonist, Cincinnatus c., and his jailers
has engaged and intrigued readers ever since the novel first appeared
in the emigre journal Sovremennye zapiski in I935-36.4
4 : Introduction
Upon opening this book, the reader steps into a strange, even
bizarre world. In the novel's first lines, the death sentence is an
nounced to Cincinnatus, and all in the courtroom rise, "exchanging
smiles" (IIIz5). This sense of satisfaction or pleasure at the an
nouncement of a death sentence may seem out of place, but the
peculiarity of that moment pales before a scene that soon follows -
the entrance of the prison director into Cincinnatus's cell. The scene
begins with a description of the entering figure:
He was dressed as always in a frock coat and held himself
exquisitely straight, chest out, one hand in his bosom the other
behind his back. A perfect toupee, black as pitch, and with a waxy
parting, smoothly covered his head. His face, selected without
love, with its thick sallow cheeks and somewhat obsolete system of
wrinkles, was enlivened in a sense by two, and only by two, bulg
ing eyes. Moving his legs evenly in his columnar trousers, he
strode from the wall to the table, almost to the cot - but in spite of
his majestic solidity, he calmly vanished, dissolving into the air. A
minute later, however, the door opened once again, this time with
the familiar grating sound, and dressed as always in a frock coat,
his chest out, in came the same person. (14-151z8)
Not only are the director's movements perplexing (he enters the
room, dissolves, and then reenters), but the narrator's handling of
descriptive detail is also puzzling. When the narrator notes that the
director's face was enlivened "by two, and only by two, bulging eyes"
[emphasis added], the reader wonders: why "only" by two? Does the
narrator think there should be more? And in what sense is the direc
tor's face "selected without love"? Selected by whom?
Having been exposed to such an odd scene, the reader soon en
counters further puzzles. In chapter z, the narrator describes Cincin
natus dragging a table in his cell over to a wall in which a window is
set high above him. Cincinnatus climbs onto a chair on the table and
tries without success to look out the window. He is apprehended
there by his jailer, Rodion, who lifts him down from the table and
moves the table back to its original position (z8-29/40-42). On the
Nabokov's "Violin in a Void" : 5
very next page, however, the narrator again describes Cincinnatus
attempting to move the table, but this time the narrator notes: "alas,
the legs had been bolted down for ages" (30/42). One might be
tempted to interpret the first scene in which Cincinnatus moved the
table as a kind of fantasy or dream on Cincinnatus's part, but the
jailer later recounts this very scene to Cincinnatus's lawyer (40/51).
Thus the reader is left with two contradictory impressions, and the
narrator makes no attempt to reconcile or explain the disparity.
"What kind of world is this? "What are Nabokov's readers meant to
make of the material presented to them? The critical responses to
the work have been numerous and varied, and a brief survey of these
responses would be useful.
The Critical Response to Invitation to a Beheading
The earliest reviewers of the novel (those who commented on it
as it was being published serially in Sovremennye zapiskt) were under
standably hesitant to make definitive evaluations.s They took note of
the peculiarities of Nabokov's vision, but they generally preferred to
withold judgment until they had seen the finished product. Some
readers, however, expressed consternation at what they found in the
novel. One critic wrote: "The first and most sincere reaction after
reading through Invitlltion to a Beheading is perplexity. "What is this?
"Why was this book written? Perplexity and bitterness come over the
reader. It's clear that Sirin [Nabokov's pen name-Ed.] is seeking
new paths. But it is no less clear that he has wandered into a blind
alley. ... An inexorable book, a terrifying and tormented book."6
Over time, however, a series of cogent and coherent interpreta
tions of the novel emerged, each one accenting some aspect of
Nabokov's vision. Perhaps the most straightforward line of inter
pretation concentrated on the plight of the individual persecuted by
a collective that uses force to coerce its members into conformity.
Such interpreters, of course, were mindful of the totalitarian regimes
that ruled the Soviet Union and Germany at the time the novel was
written. The emigre critic Vladimir Varshavsky, for example, viewed
