Бас кесуге шақыру

1935 novel by Vladimir Nabokov

Invitation to a Beheading (Приглашение на казнь) is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian from 1935 to 1936 as a serial in Sovremennye zapiski, a Russian émigré magazine. In 1938, the work was published in Paris, with an English translation following in 1959. The novel was translated into English by Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, under the author's supervision. The novel is often described as Kafkaesque, but Nabokov claimed that at the time he wrote the book, he was unfamiliar with German and "completely ignorant" of Franz Kafka's work. Nabokov interrupted his work on The Gift in order to write Invitation to a Beheading, describing the creation of the first draft as "one fortnight of wonderful excitement and sustained inspiration." Some scholars have argued that the central plot of Invitation to a Beheading has its roots in Chernyshevski, a character from The Gift. Another view is that the novel functions as a roman à clef with the Platonic Socrates as its target. While Nabokov stated in an interview that while, of all his novels, he held the greatest affection for Lolita, it was for Invitation to a Beheading that he held the greatest "esteem".

The novel takes place in a prison and relates the final twenty days of Cincinnatus C., a citizen of a fictitious country, who is imprisoned and sentenced to death for "gnostical turpitude." Unable to blend in and become part of the world around him, Cincinnatus is described as having a "certain peculiarity" that makes him "impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produces when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent to one another." Although he tries to hide his condition and "feign translucence," people are uncomfortable with his existence, and feel there is something wrong with him. In this way, Cincinnatus fails to become part of his society. While confined, Cincinnatus is not told when his execution will occur. This troubles him, as he wants to express himself through writing "in defiance of all the world's muteness," but feels unable to do so without knowledge of how long he has to complete this task. Here, Nabokov ascribes the following French proverb to the fictitious Pierre Delalande: "Comme un fou se croit Dieu, nous nous croyons mortels (As a fool believes himself to be God, we believe ourselves to be mortal"). The quote can be said to directly foreshadow Cincinnatus' world and its inept inhabitants, whom the third person narrator constantly labels as "transparent". This is in stark contrast to the narrator's description of Cincinnatus, who is considered "opaque" and "impervious to the rays of others".