Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

A. Moudrov. “Nabokov’s Invitation to Plato’s Beheading”
precision of poetry and the intuition of science” (“Good Readers” 6) to find it comparable
to the spirit of Plato’s works which merge philosophical pursuits with artistic endeavors.
On the day of Socrates’ execution, a friend caught him writing poetry. One cannot
imagine Socrates writing in the first place, let alone writing poetry. Socrates responds by
saying that he “tried to find out the meaning of certain dreams and to satisfy my
conscience in case it was this kind of art they were frequently bidding me to practice. The
dreams were something like this: the same dream often came to me in the past, now in
one shape now in another, but saying the same thing: ‘Socrates,” it said, ‘practice and
cultivate the arts’” (60e-61a), the message which Nabokov, if only he had noticed it,
would have been inclined to accept at least privately—but deny it in print.