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31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gnostical turpitude!, April 6, 2002
By A Customer
"Invitation to a Beheading" is a strange book. First of all, it sports a brilliant preface by the author, and truth be told, this preface is superior to the contents of the novel itself. In response to just a few pages, you feel compelled to buy the author's "Lectures on Literature", which are only a poor substitute for the real experience of listening to Nabokov in person. The author explains the intricacies of translation, done by his son, Dmitri, under the father's supervision, with particular emphasis put on the title. If you are lucky to know Russian, you will be able to appreciate the importance of the problem at hand, and in addition you will see how well this book is translated into English. At different points in his life Nabokov wrote in three different languages, and "Invitation to a Beheading" dates from 1934, in a period where the author still wrote in his beautiful and melodic mother tongue. This is an early book by this author, and ever since its publication it was compared to Franz Kafka's "The Castle", which annoyed Nabokov a little, which he ironically expresses in the aforementioned preface."Spiritual affinities have no place in my concept of literary criticism, but if I did have to choose a kindred soul, it would certainly be that great artist [Kafka - the Moose] rather than G. H. Orwell or other popular purveyors of illustrated ideas and publicistic fiction. Incidentally, I could never understand why every book of mine invariably sends reviewers scurrying in search of more or less celebrated names for the purpose of passionate comparison. During the last three decades they have hurled at me (to list but a few of these harmless missiles) Gogol, Tolstoyevski, Joyce, Voltaire, Sade, Stendhal, Balzac, Byron, Bierbohm, Proust, Kleist, Makar Marinski, Mary McCarthy, Meredith (!), Cervantes, Charlie Chaplin, Baroness Murasaki, Pushkin, Ruskin, and even Sebastian Knight. One author, however, has never been mentioned in this connection - the only author whom I must gratefully recognize as an influence upon me at the time of writing this book; namely, the melancholy, extravagant, wise, witty, magical, and altogether delightful Pierre Delalande, whom I invented." Any type of plot summary will not give this book justice, for you must know that this book is not about the plot. In the case of Invitation to a Beheading, writing a blurb is much like writing a blurb with a summary of an Emily Dickinson poem. Well, once upon a time ago, in the paralell universe of the fantasy realm of Nabokov's imagination, Cincinnatus C. is captured, and found guilty of gnostic turpitude, a crime escaping definition. Cincinnatus has visions. He writes about them. His family visits him in the fortress, where he is locked. And he does not understand a thing of all this mess he found himself in. Yet he does not lose his wit, and tries to manage his fate as best he can. And it turns out that he can manage pretty much, considering. The book is Russian to the bone. Nowhere else are born authors with such a specific sense of humor and absurd. Mother Russia gave us many writers with unique, inimitable style. Nabokov is one of them, although a at the same time having been a prodigal son who never returned to his native land. Like Trevanian, he carried the kernel of culture within himself, he was the culture. Like any other escapist fantasy, Invitation to a beheading can be interpreted in many ways, and that has been done for the last 60 years, and then some, but submissing myself to the author's will, I will leave the story without any further comment. Suffice it to say that this novel is a difficult book, but if you happen to be so inclined, you will jump up, ruffling your hair, to paraphrase the author. I hope you will!
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by Vladimir Nabokov
by Vladimir Nabokov
by Vladimir Nabokov
by Vladimir Nabokov
by Vladimir Nabokov
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