Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

A. Moudrov. “Nabokov’s Invitation to Plato’s Beheading”
the day of his death (Crito, 44a-b). 3 Later on Nabokov makes a jocular reference to “the
new comic opera Socrates Must Decrease” (220) which was performed right on the day
of Cincinnatus’ execution. Finally, as if evoking Socrates’ beliefs in the afterlife,
Cincinnatus apparently reaches the realm beyond after his execution.
Nabokov’s persistent but notably inconsistent adaptation of Platonic references
appears to symbolize the writer’s conflicted attitude toward the philosopher. At times,
Nabokov clearly satirizes Plato—often simplifying and actually misreading his ideas the
way he did it with Freud. At other times, however, in this novel and elsewhere, we can
discern clear signs of “a conscious Platonism” in this and other works, particularly when
in one of his essays he compared an artist to “the enchanter in his cave,” both partaking
“in the same sacred danger” (“Art of Literature” 372). Such an inconsistency of Platonic
references bespeaks some fundamental and yet unexplained tensions in Nabokov’s prose
which this essay attempts to unravel. In contrast to the efforts of other commentators who
occasionally pointed out Platonic elements in his writing, 4 my goal in this essay is to
explain the Platonic theme of Invitation to a Beheading precisely in terms of the
conflictedness and tension between Nabokov’s artistic sensibilities and his interpretation
of Plato—a great example of a Modernist writer in conflict with Antiquity.
3 Plato’s texts are quoted from the following translations: Crito, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in The Last
Days of Socrates (New York: Penguin, 1993). Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1977). Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992). Timaeus, trans.
Benjamin Jowett, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961:
pp.1151-1211).
4 Vladimir Alexandrov explored the “metaphysical” and, to a lesser extent, “Neoplatonic” aspects of
Nabokov’s prose in Nabokov’s Other World. Dieter E. Zimmer’s notes to the German edition of Invitation
to a Beheading (Reinbeck be Hamburg: Rohwohlt, 1990) briefly discuss a few Platonic references as well.