''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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a Beheading, on which, therefore, this chapter will
concentrate, the apparently political contents gradually
assume metaphysical dimensions, which demand that
one should see these novels, too, in connection with
Nabokov's quest for reality, and just as gradually
the totalitarian theme is "converted into the stuff
19
of
[fables] about art and artifice. "
The metaphysical dimension of Invitation to a Beheading
becomes obvious when one looks at what Cincinnatus'
crime consists in. He is a riddle to the
others, "a lone dark obstacle" (IB, 21) because he has
thoughts that the others do not understand: he is not
content to accept the world in which the others live
quite happi. ly as in any way perfect or beautiful.
The world which to them represents ultimate reality
appears to him ridiculously unreal. It is a world of
"ignorence" (IB, 22), composed of "senseless visions,
bad dreams, dregs of delirium,, the drivel of nightmare"
(IB, 32); it is peopled by "spectres, werewolves,
parodies" (IB, 36); and it is governed by "calamity,
horror, madness... " (IB, 82).
This puts Invitation to a Beheading in a line with
Transparent Things and Ada, which, in the last analysis,
also question the reality of the world in which
we find ourselves, and which are concerned with opening
ways out of the irreality that surrounds, us and discovering
means of coming to an understanding of the
ultimate reality beyond human existence. Invitation to
a Beheading rivals only Ada in the depressing picture
it paints of life, and it resembles Transparent Things