Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

A. Moudrov. “Nabokov’s Invitation to Plato’s Beheading”
obviously felt no appreciation for the theories expressed in Republic. Neither could he
appreciate Plato’s apparent view of art as merely a vehicle for expressing abstract ideas
or serving the welfare of the state. There is a certain anti-Platonic sentiment in Nabokov’s
praise of “the supremacy of the detail over general” (“Art of Literature” 373). In all
likelihood, it was Plato’s suspicion of the “irrational” which Nabokov had in mind when
he stated that art is a deceptive game in which its “irrational standards” favorably
compliment “the precision of poetry and the intuition of science” (“Good Reader” 6).
Another point of contention, at once personal and philosophical, was the subject
of death. In part because of their personal experiences, both writers made it an
unavoidable theme in nearly all of their works. In his dialogues Plato for his part
repeatedly paid tribute to the trial and execution of Socrates, whom he considered a
friend and mentor. His preoccupation with afterlife, which was inspired by these
experiences, was also incorporated into his numerous discussions of metaphysics, thus
making the subject of death virtually unavoidable in all of his works. Nabokov was
equally preoccupied with the subject, largely because of his own experiences. The
assassination of his father in 1922, when the writer was just twenty three years-old, had
an undeniable impact on his life and artistic development. As a result, many of his works
can be read as artistic contemplations of the mystery of death. Ultimately this subject
acquired, for both Plato and Nabokov, a symbolic meaning that, Nabokov believed,
reflected two essentially different sensibilities. Considering the thematic proximity of
their works, Nabokov’s conflict with Plato’s lasting influence was therefore inevitable,
and it focused precisely on the subject of death.