Visual Poetics and Cinematic Images in Nabokov's Invitation To A Beheading

VISUAL POETICS AND CINEMATIC PATTERNS IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S
INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature
San José State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
Alesya Zvereva Petty
August 2014
UMI Number: 1568005
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
UMI 1568005
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346
© 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled

by
APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE
SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY
August 2014
Dr. Paul Douglass Department of English and Comparative Literature
Dr. Robert Cullen Department of English and Comparative Literature
Dr. Noelle Brada-Williams Department of English and Comparative Literature

ABSTRACT

by Alesya Zvereva Petty
This thesis investigates the use of visual elements and stylistic devices in
Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel Invitation to a Beheading (1936) that foregrounds
cinematic qualities of his fiction. The use of filmic devices and the narrative structure
similar to that of a screenplay makes this novel suitable for adaptation to film. Besides
that, this analysis looks at possible obstacles in adapting the novel to a film medium due
to the inability to translate its complexity of style to film. Nabokov’s brilliant technique
as a writer and the versatility of his style allow the reader to visualize characters and
settings and to create three-dimensional mental images, which make for interactive
reader-writer relationships. Chapter One explores Nabokov’s idea of a visual narrative
and cinematic patterns in relation to certain methods of screenwriting. Chapter Two
examines the role of visual poetics in characterization and delineates the concept of
mediated perception, which is closely related to the questions of character creation.
Chapter Three investigates how certain stylistic devices that function as elements of
visual poetics produce a multi-sensory effect on the reader, establish reader-writer
relationships, and fulfill the artistic purpose of Nabokov’s prose.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to the people who supported me and this
project: Dr. Paul Douglass for his invaluable guidance, which helped refine my research
and writing skills, Dr. Robert Cullen for his insightful comments and tireless attention to
detail, Dr. Noelle Brada-Williams for inspiring me to grow as a scholar and for advising
me throughout my academic studies and work on this thesis.
v
Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………...1
Chapter One
Visualizing a Narrative: Nabokov’s Conception of Cinematic Patterns
in Invitation to a Beheading ……………………………………………………………..6
Chapter Two
The Dichotomy of Nabokovian Characterization: Mediated Perception
and its Role in Character’s Aesthetic Perspective ………………………………………39
Chapter Three
Semantics of Transcendence: Visual Content and Multisensory Experience
Through Style and Language in Nabokov’s Prose …...…….....….……………………..69
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..100
Works Cited ..…………………………………………………………………………..105
vi
Introduction
Perhaps nothing can express a desired reaction of a grateful reader better than the
words of Nabokov himself: “I think that what I would welcome at the close of a book of
mine is a sensation of its world receding in the distance and stopping somewhere there,
suspended afar like a picture in a picture” (Strong Opinions 73). However, this kind of
response requires some degree of insightfulness and attentiveness, demanding Nabokov’s
reader to be attuned to the author’s artistic vision if not to be an artist himself although,
admittedly, the cultural, thematic, and stylistic diversity and power of Nabokov’s
narratives, no matter what language they are written in, Russian or English, tend to bring
out the artist and auteur in his audience. Widely known for the novels of his American
period—Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire among others—Nabokov attests to the change in his
private views and literary aesthetics that has taken place over a span of his writing career.
As he writes in the Forward to the collection of his interviews in 1973:
In result, the present body of my occasional English prose, shorn of its long
Russian shadow, seems to reflect an altogether more agreeable person than the
“V. Sirin,” evoked with mixed feelings by émigré memoirists, politicians, poets,
and mystics, who still remember our skirmishes of the nineteen-thirties in Paris.
(Strong Opinions xiii)
The “long Russian shadow” of Nabokov’s famous English prose covers his early
works written during the twenties and thirties in Europe, which did not get widely
acknowledged until much later when the writer moved to America in 1939. It is not until
after the international success of Nabokov’s Lolita—his English novel, published in Paris
1
(1955) and in New York (1958) and adapted to film (1962)—that the attention of critics
and audiences turned to his earlier works. During the Berlin years (1922-1937), the
novels written in Russian were known only to the small circle of Russian émigré, the
readers of the respectable magazine Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes) in which
many of Nabokov’s works were published as a serial. He never became fond of Berlin,
where he suffered a great personal tragedy —the assassination of his father. However,
this was the place where Nabokov became quite productive in fiction writing and laid the
foundation for his famous literary style. The author’s experiences as an exiled émigré
also became the basis of some of his novels, and while Nabokov’s earlier fiction does not
fully realize the virtuoso performances of the later works, the novels written during the
Berlin period represent the writer’s experiments with novelistic form, a search for a
unique style, distinctive technique, and identifiable language of his own. This research
aims to highlight some of the aspects of Nabokov’s peculiar style that are a characteristic
feature of his early work and that have played a significant role in his later success.
This thesis examines Nabokov’s use of visual elements and cinematic methods in
his early novel Invitation to a Beheading (1936) —originally written in Russian under the
title Priglasheniye na kazn’ [literally translated as Invitation to an Execution]—that
stimulate a deeper understanding of the conflicts, the characters, and the author’s
intended messages in the story. Three major aspects make Nabokov’s fiction
exceptionally visual or, as many critics note, cinematic in its quality. The first concerns
the structure of the narrative that engenders features similar to those of a screenplay,
which makes it a fitting material for film adaptation. The second aspect concerns certain
2
methods of characterization that allow for the creation of a multi-dimensional character,
who has various forms of perception and is perceived by the others as well. The third
aspect concerns the uniqueness of Nabokov’s language and his choice of stylistic devices,
which help create vivid visual images that draw the reader into the narrative and elicit an
emotional response to the story. Nabokov’s use of detail is a distinct feature of his writing
style, which functions as a narrative device as well as an element of Nabokovian
stylistics: it serves to foreshadow the events of the plot, to “paint” the landscapes, to
entrench allusions, and to effectuate ekphrastic moments that transcend the boundaries of
fiction and visual arts. All of these techniques strongly entice the reader’s imagination
and engage him in the story in a way as to partake in a conversation with the author
himself, who tests his reader with mind-bending puzzles.
Invitation shows that even the most philosophical of Nabokov’s novels contains
cinematic qualities that make it suitable for film adaptations, akin to his other earlier
novels successfully adapted to film: Zshchita Luzhina (1930) and Kamera Obskura
(1932) known in their English translations as The Defense (1936) and Laughter in the
Dark (1938) respectively. The latter was the earliest to be translated —first by Winifred
Roy and later by the author himself because he was unsatisfied with Roy’s translation —
and is considered the most cinematic of Nabokov’s novels. It was adapted to film in 1969
with the same title in English and with another title in French—La Chambre Obscure.
The Defense was only recently adapted to film in 2000. Priglashenie na kazn’, first
published in 1935-36 as a serial like the other two novels and then as a book in 1938 in
Paris, became known as Invitation to a Beheading in its English translation, made by
3
Nabokov’s son Dmitri under the writer’s supervision in 1959. The film Einladung zur
Enthauptung, released in West Germany in 1973, is based on the novel. Yet the film is
virtually unknown to English-speaking audiences. The lack of scholarship in regard to
Invitation and particularly to its cinematic qualities becomes obvious when major critical
works such as Alfred Appels’ Nabokov’s Dark Cinema (1974) and more recent Barbara
Wyllie’s Nabokov at the Movies (2003) hardly mention the novel in their extensive
analyses of the writer’s fiction. One reason may be the complexity of genre in Invitation,
which represents an amalgam of allegorical, metaphysical, political, and other subgenres.
Another reason is the versatility of its style, which mixes serious matter with parody,
irony, and farce, which makes it difficult for screenwriters and filmmakers to fully
transfer to film medium. The way the novel approaches the questions of morality, ethics,
and aesthetics presents certain challenges but does not deny its amenability as being
adaptable to film.
The research for this thesis, carried out in both Russian and English, focuses on
the three major aspects that make Nabokov’s writing visual and cinematic in its quality.
Chapter One analyzes various “cinematic patterns,” a term applied by the author to his
early writing, that often follow varied schemas of screenwriting, which in turn make the
structure of the novel’s narrative similar to that of a screenplay. It argues that the visual
and cinematic content in the writer’s early work is the manifestation of Nabokov’s own
experience with cinema that shows his understanding of it as an art form and as a
commercial industry. Chapter Two investigates various means of characterization in the
novel that include the application of character creation theories, analysis of thematic and
4
structural interdependency, and the influence of filmic techniques such as the use of
different camera shots, the concept of mediated perception, and approaches to rendering
alternate realities. Chapter Three explores the language of Nabokov’s prose, dwelling on
its visual features that help create setting and scenes, be it a landscape, an interior décor,
or a cover of a magazine. It also analyzes the role of language in developing thematic
content and constructing an intricate composition of the novel, infused with multiple
predictions and details of foreshadowing, which can be deciphered under the scrutiny of
linguistic investigation. The conclusion illuminates the role of visual poetics within the
writer’s conception of art, highlights the relationship between the author and the reader,
and attempts to explain the reasons for the incessant interest to Nabokov’s writing that is
so appealing to filmmakers, viewers, and readers alike.
5
Chapter One
Visualizing a Narrative: Nabokov’s Conception of Cinematic Patterns
in Invitation to a Beheading
The current generation of Nabokov’s readers seem to be taken by his visually
evocative fiction and his ability to convey serious subject matter in an amusing way. On
the one hand, the release of a film in 2000 based on Nabokov’s novel The Defense shows
that the interest in Nabokov’s work has not faded away in spite of the challenges
presented by his style and language and that attempts to adapt the writer’s work have not
ceased. On the other hand, there are those who consider Nabokov’s writing ill-suited for
film adaptation regardless of the visual qualities of his prose, the opinion grounded in
comparing Nabokov’s style to that of modernist writers like Joyce, Woolf (“Thinking in
Literature: Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov” by Michael Lackey, 2013), or Proust (“Nabokov,
Dostoevsky, Proust: ‘Despair’” by Timothy L. Parrish 2004). This ongoing debate about
the adaptability of Nabokov’s prose to other media due to the multivalence of
Nabokovian narrative and its vivid imagery has much to do with the peculiarities of the
screenplay-like structure of his early novels and the writer’s conception of cinematic
patterns in his fiction, which will be the focus of this chapter.
Nabokov was never fond of critics’ comparisons of his work to the writing of
others. In the Foreword to Invitation to a Beheading, the author remembers the reaction
of émigré reviewers who found a “Kafkaesque” strain in the original novel Priglashenie
na kazn’ when it was published in 1934 in Paris, which makes him wonder why every
book of his “invariably sends reviewers scurrying in search of more or less celebrated
6
names for the purpose of passionate comparison” (6). After Nabokov’s death, his son
Dmitri continued to answer his father’s critics. In “A Few Things That Must Be Said on
Behalf of Vladimir Nabokov,” Dmitri tried to dispel some misconceptions about his
father’s writing, particularly when some reviewers compared Nabokov’s manner with
that of Sartre and Dostoevsky. Dmitri comments that the writer “despised” Sartre and had
“little esteem” for Dostoevsky (37). The belief that Nabokov should not be adapted to
film stems from the stylistic complexity of his prose. Although conflict and
characterization can be grasped by the screenwriters and directors, the subtle variations in
tone and mood as well as layers of meaning of figurative devices cannot be rendered
cinematically and often go unapprehended.
Nabokov’s attitude towards the film industry was highly ambivalent. He saw
many examples of what he called poshlost’ on screen, a vulgar, tasteless pop culture
powerful enough to influence an audience too willing to fall into its trap. As Alfred Appel
discerns in his book Nabokov’s Dark Cinema, the root meaning of obscura in the title
Camera Obscura “survives and persists in Nabokov’s vision of a popular cinema that is
dark indeed” (29). Nabokov’s writing is full of references to the world of cinema, and, as
the writer’s biographer Andrew Field notes, some film experiences of the author found
their way into his writing. For example, during his Berlin years, Nabokov did not just go
to the movies with friends, but, “like many young Russians” in that community he
frequently “worked as a movie extra” (112). Once Nabokov’s friend did not recognize
him on the screen; a similar scene occurs in his novel Mary when Mary’s husband is not
noticed by the ladies he brought to the movie.
7
But Nabokov’s interest in cinema goes deeper than just incorporating random
occurrences into his fiction. As Field observes, “Nabokov needn’t have known much
German at all in order to be greatly influenced by German art in Berlin. He was from the
first not only a working extra but a film buff and Berlin was, of course, the Hollywood of
its time” (118). Field believes the influence of Berlin filmmaker Fritz Lang stretches from
Nabokov’s early novels such as King, Queen, Knave —“written with a clear eye on the
possibility that it might be made into a film” —all the way to the stylistic
conceptualization of Lolita decades later (118). Nabokov even switched to German
characters in Camera Obscura (or Laughter in the Dark as the novel is known in the
English translation) whom he thought to be not as plain as the Russian cast in his
previous novels. Though many Nabokovians claim the writer was quite a connoisseur of
movies, Nabokov did not consider himself as such. Later in life, in response to Appel’s
then newly-released book, the author would write:
Your basic idea, my constantly introducing cinema themes, and cinema lore, and
cinematophors into my literary compositions cannot be contested of course, but
your readers may be inclined to forget that I know very little about avant-garde
German and American pictures of the 1930’s and that my wife and I have
virtually not been to the cinema more than two or three times in fifteen years, nor
do we have TV at home (except when soccer competitions take place). (Letters
537)
This passage attests to Nabokov’s general interest in competition, as in The Defense,
whether it is a competition in chess or with life. The writer also notably played tennis and
8
even earned his living in his earlier years in Berlin by giving tennis lessons. The
testimony regarding cinema is perhaps as true as it is modest. Nabokov perhaps did not
realize how versatile an experience he had had with movies as a viewer, a critic, and a
writer of screenplays and how much presence that medium has in his work. It might have
been years between his visits to the movie theater by the time he wrote his letter to Appel
in 1974, but back in his Berlin days, most of his earlier novels carry a strong imprint of
cinema culture. The writer’s self-evaluation gains more credibility when his experience
both as a novelist and a screenwriter comes into consideration: working on a screenplay
for Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita provided him with an insider’s look at the movie industry
and allowed him to go behind the scenes of cinema.
Nabokov’s insightful judgment of character, including his own, prompted him to
exercise caution not to assume connections to contemporary authors or works for his own
sake; he knew the varieties of his audience, and while he trusted “other Nabokovians”
who would not be influenced by a critic’s slant in approaching his work, he was not sure
about the reaction of “less subtle people” who might erroneously conclude that he had
“simply lifted” his characters from films (Letters 538). The wirter’s remark about his lack
of interest in movies later in life, however, does not undermine the idea that cinematic
features are omni-present in his fiction, especially his early novels, from the depiction of
characters desiring to become part of the glamorous world of movies —Margo in
Laughter in the Dark “dreamed of becoming a model, and then a film star” (27) —to a
structure that is very like a screenplay, and visual images within the text that create near-
perfect movie scenes. Wyllie attests to the fact that Nabokov’s “manipulation of the
9
modes and themes of cinema has received very little critical attention” with the exception
of a few “overtly cinematic” texts such as Laughter In the Dark (1938) and The Assistant
Producer (1943). She notes that “in many other texts, however, an implicit deployment of
cinematic detail serves as an integral dimension of narrative structure, exposition of
character, theme, motif, even metaphysical discourse” (5).
Yuri Leving, in his essay “Filming Nabokov,” makes an assumption that
Nabokov’s texts are attractive to the writers of screen adaptations not only because of
“the power of the author’s imagination” but because of “certain narrative mechanisms
[that] render the Nabokovian discourse suitable for translation into the cinema idiom” (6).
Cinematic devices are embedded into Nabokov’s narratives in a variety of ways,
tempting critics to search for connections between his novels and films. However, my
interest lies with recognizing more general cinematic qualities and principles that are
already at play in Nabokov’s writing and that make his novels amenable to film
adaptations, in spite of certain complexities characteristic of the writer’s style and
language.
Nabokov once said in an interview that “a wonderful movie could be made” of the
novel Invitation to a Beheading (Appel 188). Of the author’s seventeen novels, however,
it remains one of those challenging works that has not been adapted to screen. Invitation
to a Beheading is purposefully chosen for this study for its unique combination of
cinematic traits conducive to the novel’s adaptation to a screenplay/film as well as its
qualities that might hinder a successful adaptation and scare away screenplay writers.
Invitation to a Beheading was held in high esteem by the author himself, and by the
10
testimony of his wife, Nabokov wrote the novel in a very short time, driven by sudden
inspiration to interrupt work on his autobiographical novel The Gift. Interestingly,
Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, adapted in 1969 and considered by many critics the
most cinematic of his novels, was not favored by the writer: in a letter to the publisher
James Laughlin, the writer called it “one of my worst novels” (Letters 35). Some critics
assume this judgment is based on the novel’s somewhat trivial plot and flat
characterization. According to Appel, Nabokov’s low opinion of Laughter “tacitly
acknowledges his failure to control or realize fully its ‘cinematic pattern’” (262). We
should not, however, forget Field’s remark that it is possible to argue that the novel could
not have been at the bottom of the author’s list, for it renders a lot of his personal
experiences of the writer’s life in Berlin. Comparison of form, style, and characterization
in Invitation to other early novels that are considered cinematic demonstrates Nabokov’s
achievement of a fuller realization of the novel’s cinematic pattern.
One of the reasons Nabokov’s prose in Invitation presents suitable material for
screen adaptations is seen in the similarity of principles used by the writer for structuring
his novel and those applied to screenplay writing. David Trottier’s Screenwriter’s Bible
states that a screenplay is different from a novel or a stage play in the following way:
A novel may describe a character’s thoughts and feelings page after page. It is a
great medium for expressing internal conflict. A stage play is almost exclusively
verbal; soap operas and sitcoms fit into this category. A movie is primarily visual.
Yes, it will contain dialogue —it may even deal with internal things —but it is
primarily a visual medium that requires visual writing. (4)
11
The visual quality Trottier is talking about is achieved by the presence of a certain
mixture of elements that make for a great screenplay. Though the strength of any novel
lies with revealing an inner conflict, Nabokov, nonetheless, succeeds in creating the
visual and emotional aspects of scenes and characters, which enhance a screenplay-like
quality to his writing. Observing this quality of the author’s writing in Laughter in the
Dark, Appel writes:
Although Nabokov says he was not thinking of the form of a screenplay, the
American edition interpolates many parenthetical remarks that at first glance seem
to imitate the stage directions of a scenario (“they were finishing supper,” p.11).
Other parentheses contain wry authorial asides (“mirrors were having plenty of
work that day,” p.61) or old-fashioned omniscient revelations (Margo’s thoughts
on p. 227). The inconsistency of these effects flaws the design of the novel as well
as its cinematic surface (263).
Beverly Gray Bienstock, in her analysis of film imagery in Nabokov’s fiction, remarks
on the unique qualities of film in its reflection of reality:
Film, it seems, has two contradictory dimensions. It is both an artificial construct
and a momentary capturing of reality. …The same holds true, of course, for
theater, but the acute realism of the cinematic close-up, when played off against
our sense of a film as a made object, helps us to feel the paradox more keenly.
(128)
The paradox Bienstock is talking about —“between life and art”—is an indispensable
part of the artistic aspect of Invitation: Nabokov’s protagonist is caught between the two
12
planes of existence, the physical world of courtroom, jail cell, and execution and the
internal world of self-reflection, memories, and redemption.
This idea of character development within the system of parallel storylines is what
Trottier identifies as the Outside/Action Story that is driven by the character’s goal and
the Inside/Emotional Story of the character’s relationships that is driven by the need. The
latter is also referred to as the heart of the story or the emotional through-line (34). A
successful screenplay should have both stories going on at the same time, examples of
which we see in Nabokov’s Invitation. The action story is motivated by the protagonist’s
goal to write down a “true” account of his life to the world that accused him before his
time runs out. In agony to finish a “project” that was interrupted, the prisoner constantly
inquires about how much time he has left until his execution. The emotional story
progresses due to the hero’s need for indispensable forms of human interaction —his
yearning for love, friendship, and understanding —that have been denied to him all his
life. By comparison, the goal of the protagonist in Laughter is to have a passionate love
affair with a much younger mistress, an affair he can only daydream about; however, it is
rooted in a very human desire to be loved, which is the hero’s need that drives the
emotional development of the character and the story. This juxtaposition of characters’
goals and needs underscores the depth of study of human nature in Invitation and the
novel’s appeal to better understanding human experience.
To effectuate a more complex story-layering, the dual mode of story-telling and
character development should be interlaced with thematic progression and reinforcement
of dominant ideas, which in turn are carried out by the recursive images and concepts
13
embedded in the language of a particular work. Bienstock comments on the language of
Nabokov’s prose which has many metaphors that “can apply either to stage or to screen”
(128). The writer’s style is characterized by rich figurative language, esoteric allusions,
and multi-meaning descriptions that beget vivid imagery and emotional intensity;
however, because of its density, his language becomes an obstacle for rendering those
images and emotions into another format or medium like a screenplay or film. Due to
cinematic qualities ingrained in Nabokov’s Invitation, a closer examination of the visual
poetics in tandem with the principles of screenplay writing foregrounds the potential of
the most philosophical of the writer’s novels for adaptation to film.
To achieve a certain level of visualization of the text, every story should possess
necessary components that can create a “perfect drama.” According to Trottier’s
classification, such components include: the Catalyst, an event that helps to create a
“hook” and is part of a story’s set up; the Big Event that forces an unavoidable change on
the character and moves his story forward; the Pinch, a midpoint, which can be described
as a “point of no return” or “a moment of deep motivation” for the central character; the
Crisis, a moment when a decision about the story’s end takes place; the Showdown or
climax that is the final “face-off” between the character and his opposition; the
Realization that is part of the denouement where “all the loose ends are tied together”
(24). Of course, there is more to it than just a well-thought plan for a story’s plot: visual
and emotional aspects applied to characterization, scene setting, and background story
become features of a great screenplay. Adapting the above classification as a guideline
14
for the analysis of Invitation aids our understanding of the integral criteria that constitute
“the perfect drama” (Trottier 9).
When it comes to creating the beginning of a story, making “a good first
impression,” in Trottier’s terms, is crucial for creating the hook that captures the reader’s
attention. What makes Nabokov a resourceful writer is his use of effective techniques in
constructing a scene. The writer’s creative process, as noticed by his son Dmitri and
various critics, is akin to that of a film director who is to piece together a story out of
separate scenes. The problem of form and content, which every writer faces, is resolved
in Nabokov’s Invitation by what Leona Toker classifies as “the structural indeterminacy”
that “consists in recurrent fantastic transformations of characters, situations, and themes;
in conflicts between details of the plot; in logical incompatibility of contiguous scenes”
(135). Rhetorically, it focuses the reader’s attention on a “particular component of the
episode’s complex meaning” (135). This method parallels the cinematographic style of
the prominent filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Nabokov’s contemporary, who did not
adhere to conventional dramatic structure and combined takes of various lengths to
render metaphysical concepts.
An innovative director, Tarkovsky was described by Ingmar Bergman, a Swedish
director and admirer of his work, as one of “the greatest [directors], the one who invented
a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a
dream” (Nostalgia np). Tarkovsky concedes the meaning of cinema in juxtaposing a
person with a boundless environment and with a countless number of people in order to
15
relate him to the whole world. In his lecture on cinematographic idea and its realization,
Tarkovsky asserts:
Художник начинается тогда, когда в его замысле или в его ленте возникает
свой особый образный строй, своя система мыслей о реальном мире и
режиссер представляет ее на суд зрителя, делится ею со зрителем как
своими самыми заветными мечтами. Только при наличии собственного
взгляда на вещи режиссер становится художником, а кинематограф —
искусством. (“Замысел и его реализация” н. с.)
An artist begins when in his conception or in his film emerges its own imagery, its
own system of thinking about the real world and the director submits it to the
judgment of the audience, shares it with his audience as he would be sharing his
innermost dreams. Only by obtaining his own perception of things, does a director
become an artist, and cinematography become art. (“Conception and Its
Realization” n. p.) [My translation]
What the filmmaker did in film is similar to what we witness in Nabokov’s
writing, particularly in Invitation to a Beheading: he pushes the boundaries of narrative
conventions, whether by using “structural indeterminacy” or by relating his hero to the
whole world, and creates fiction that captures life as a reflection and as an illusion, the
idea that penetrates the novel from beginning to end. In addition, Nabokov’s language
becomes art in itself: aptitude for clever word-play, alliterations, and assonances express
the essence of all art, in the words of Petr Bitsilli, that “like culture in general, is the
16
result of the effort to free oneself from actuality and utilizing, nonetheless, the empirical
data as material, to rework them so as to touch another, an ideal, world” (67).
Nabokov arranges Invitation by placing the middle at the beginning, thus
plunging his readers into the conflict of the story and into the inner world of his
protagonist all at once. Early in the novel Cincinnatus is pronounced guilty for the crime
of a mysterious nature described as “gnostical turpitude.” If the events of Cincinnatus’
life were to happen in chronological order, this episode, a major turning point in the
character’s life, would occur much later in the story and might be considered the Big
Event. However, by placing it first, Nabokov not only uses it as a part of his set up but he
hints that Cincinnatus’ story is not about his sentence per se but about the turmoil of a
man desperately craving redemption before his untimely death. Nabokov creates
suspense that intrigues us, inciting our desire to read further, and he makes every
sentence count, thus producing a “first good impression” on the reader: “In accordance
with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose,
exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close to his ear, panted for a moment,
made the announcement and slowly moved away, as though ungluing himself” (11). In
this description, a lot of things do not add up, and this confusion makes us question what
is going on in the scene: what kind of law makes the judge “whisper” the death sentence
to the defendant, and why would the audience be “exchanging smiles” in a tragic
situation? We also question the meaning of “hoary,” the attribute given to the judge: in
addition to its primary meanings of “old” and “grey-haired” or “venerable,” it also means
17
“moldy, musty; corrupt” (OED), which is telling of the judge’s dull and apathetic attitude
towards the juridical process and his own role in it.
By comparison, the absence of structural indeterminacy and its effects in the
opening of Laughter in the Dark makes for the flat beginning: “Once upon a time there
lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy: one day
he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and
his life ended in disaster” (7). The “once upon a time” formula that often opens a
moralistic tale anticipates a kind of disappointment about the premise of a familiar story
of a trivial love triangle. The use of short phrases bereft of any descriptive elements
foretells the seeming simplicity of the plot.
Perhaps, the writer’s choice for such a blunt opening in Laughter can be explained
by the changes between the Russian original and its English translation, which throw
light on certain issues in the writer’s attitude towards his own work. In Laughter in the
Dark we witness drastic changes in Nabokov’s translation of the novel. The original
novel begins with the description of a fad that happened around 1925 —the world-wide
popularity of a post-card image of a “cute being” [in the original “милое, забавное
существо”] named Cheepy. This opening is followed by an introduction of Cheepy’s
inventor, New York artist Robert Horn, who is to become one of the key characters in the
story. However, none of this exists in the English translation. Nabokov cuts out Cheepy’s
story and instead starts off with a concise description of a trivial life of some Albert
Albinus in a purposefully simplistic language: “Once upon a time there lived in Berlin,
Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned
18
his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in
disaster” (7).
This kind of beginning confuses the reader, making him wonder about the
purpose of the story. According to Christine Raguet-Bouvart, the author of the article
“Camera Obscura and Laughter in the Dark, or, The Confusion of Texts” (translated
from the French by Jeff Edmunds), the differences between the texts show that the writer
intended to make “improvements” in his translation. She notes that the first two
paragraphs of Laughter in the Dark contain three essential ideas: one is about the
predictability of a plot, so simple it can be expressed in a couple of sentences, that “risks
being of little interest”; the second one concerns the form of the novel that reveals the
ending of the story before it even begins, thus removing the usual motivation for further
reading, and “comprises at once prologue, epilogue and a summary of the events, and
from which only the ups and downs, the chance occurrences, of an adventure that is, all
in all, quite banal, are excluded”; the third point “reflects Nabokov's analysis of the act of
reading” or, in this case, the act of rereading which implies certain familiarity with the
previous story Camera Obscura and its text save the changed names of the characters.
In contrast with Laughter, the opening of Invitation hardly shows any
modifications between the two texts—the novel’s English translation, done by Dmitri
under his father’s supervision, is very close to the Russian original:
Сообразно с законом, Цинцинату объявили смертный приговор шёпотом.
Все встали, обмениваясь улыбками. Седой судья, припав к его уху,
подышав, сообщив, медленно отодвинулся, как будто отлипал. Засим
19
Цинцината отвезли обратно в крепость. Дорога обвивалась вокруг ее
скалистого подножья и уходила под вотрота: змея в расселину. (Priglashenie
7)
In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in
a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close to
his ear, panted for a moment, made the announcement and slowly moved away, as
though ungluing himself. Thereupon Cincinnatus was taken back to the fortress.
The road wound around its rocky base and disappeared under the gate like a snake
in a crevice. (Invitation 11)
The imagery, the fast switches in scenery, the dynamics of the language —all of it is
preserved in almost word-by-word translation. Perhaps, Nabokov, recognizing his own
successful craftsmanship in this novel, aspired to preserve these features in the English
translation.
In spite of these differences in Nabokov’s approaches to write a captivating
beginning, there are inconspicuous similarities of thematic nature in many of his novels.
Though the writer does not create an opening scene in Laughter and instead writes the
narrator’s address to the audience in a theatrical manner of “removed fourth wall,”
psychologist Nabokov, counting on human curiosity, manages to “hook” the reader by
providing one peculiar detail about the central character and his “beautiful idea”: Albert
Albinus is an art critic who writes a little essay upon the “art of cinema” (8). The
sarcastic undertone of this remark is apprehended by those who know of the writer’s
dismissive attitude towards the movie industry or remember his remark in The Defense
20
about the world of “jaunty, quick-talking, self-important con-men with their patter about
the philosophy of the screen, the tastes of the masses and the intimacy of the movie
camera, and with pretty good incomes at the same time” (93). Many of Nabokov’s
characters who come in contact with that ruthless world of pretense experience its
devastating effect on their lives: Luzhin in The Defense is pushed to the line that
separates sanity and obsession; Albinus, as Appel notes, “casts himself into what he had
hoped would be a love story, but instead finds himself trapped in a fatal thriller, the blind
victim, literally, of cheap romance and his own movie shoot out, death’s slapstick” (52).
Nevertheless, despite the author’s prediction about the character’s end, the reader remains
engaged in reading his story. In this respect, Laughter and Invitation are much alike: we
are told from the beginning about the gruesome fate of a hero, yet we follow him through
his vicissitudes to the bitter end. What makes Nabokov’s texts so captivating? Perhaps, a
careful reader can find the answer by paying attention to how the author introduces his
subject.
In any piece of fiction, key words and images incur multiple interpretations, and
in Laughter this is the case with the phrase about "profit and pleasure in the telling" (7).
The drastic difference between the texts in the openings in the original and in the
translation begs an explanation: the changes in translation can be viewed as an
improvement that would “afford substantial profit and pleasure as much to the author-
translator as to the reader” (Raguet-Bouvart n.p.). Or, perhaps, they manifest Nabokov’s
coming to terms with his “worst” novel, trying to accept its flaws (when translating the
novel himself after the unsatisfactory attempt by Winifred Roy) while preserving its
21
valuable and uniquely Nabokovian “detail” that is “always welcome” (Laughter 7). If the
latter is true, “detail” is what Nabokov excels in, no matter what story he tells. A similar
observation is provided by Leving, who calls Nabokov “the king of detail,” and points
out that “the magnification of everyday details and the saturation of the prose with visual
effects are hallmarks of Nabokov’s narrative technique in general” (8). And “detail” is
what follows the brief yet stylistically different openings in both stories as it introduces
the protagonists characterized by very peculiar descriptions that ignite our imagination.
Albinus’ beautiful idea that “had to do with colored animated drawings” acquires
cinematic rendition in his imagination when “some well-known picture” of “a pot-house
with little people drinking lustily at wooden tables and a sunny glimpse of a courtyard
with saddled horses” comes to life with action as if in a shooting of a scene with “a little
man in red putting down his tankard, this girl with the tray wrenching herself free, and a
hen beginning to peck on the threshold” (8). In Invitation, in the middle of a hodgepodge
of stream-of-consciousness and miscellaneous descriptions, when Cincinnatus, under a
spying eye of his jailer, is getting dizzy watching the moving horizon line, a trivial detail
(“feet walking, a spider —official friend of the jailed —lowered itself on a thread from
the ceiling”) introduces a motif of friendship that later enters the main theme of
loneliness caused by Cincinnatus’ “opaqueness” (13).
Unlike characters in Laughter or The Defense, Cincinnatus in Invitation does not
have a direct connection to the movie world, or so it seems: the whole narrative is set up
to give the impression that we are watching Cincinnatus’ whole life in front of our eyes
—the reader becomes the viewer who lives through the cinematic experience. We watch
22
every scene from various vantage points, as if we are following a filmmaker’s camera,
whether we are spying on Cincinnatus in his hours of solitude through a peephole like his
jailer Rodion zooming in so close that he feels “a chill on the back of his head” (13), or
following our hero in his surreal dreams when he escapes from his cell, “leaving behind
the misty mass of the fortress” to catch “a wave of fragrance” from the Tamara Gardens
(19). At the beginning of Invitation, we find ourselves in the courtroom, but that scene is
cut short, and the next moment we see a shot of a snake-like road, and the next —a shot
of Cincinnatus, supported by unidentified figures, on his “journey through the long
corridors” (11). The writer does not let us dwell on those questions about the law, the
judge, and the audience, though he does not leave them as cold cases but returns to and
develops them throughout the novel. Nabokov’s portrayal of his hero is full of
provocative details that are polysemous, to borrow Dante’s term, which means they
combine several senses, the one that is “contained in the letter” and the other that is
“signified by the letter” and is called “allegorical, or moral or anagogical” (Alighieri
122). Such an amalgamation of a direct literary sense of a word or phrase with its
figurative or allegorical sense is seen in the following extract:
He was calm; however, he had to be supported during the journey through the
long corridors since he planted his feet unsteadily, like a child who has just
learned to walk, or as if he were about to fall through like a man who has dreamed
that he is walking on water only to have a sudden doubt: but is this possible?
(Invitation 11)
23
The comparisons and figurative language exacerbate our initial puzzlement. The
implications of comparing Cincinnatus to a child or to a man “walking on water” stretch
deep into the psychological and theological themes of self-reflection and redemption.
These comparisons introduce major themes of the novel as well as the events of
Cincinnatus’ life: we learn of his pure childlike attitude to the cynical world that he
managed to preserve throughout his misunderstood existence and how that attitude
safeguards Christ-like love to humanity seen in his relationship to those who want to be
close to him for the wrong reasons and betray him in the end.
The image of a man “walking on water” evokes a strong allusion to Christ;
Cincinnatus is accused of an undefinable crime, betrayed by his close family, and
deceived by those who falsely give him hope (Emmie) and those who pretend to be his
friends but become his executioners (M’sieur Pierre, Rodrig). In spite of his misfortune,
Cincinnatus is able to redeem himself, and in a way his spirit is resurrected after his
physical body exists no more. In addition, the allusion to Christ leads us to a possible
interpretation of Cincinnatus’ death as a sacrifice of an innocent man by those who
crossed him and whose wrongdoings he is going to right by his death. What we learn
from such an opening is that the protagonist is “morally superior” to the other
personages, who turn out to be his offenders. And, perhaps, we can predict that his
disarming childlike innocence, a rare quality in the world in which he exists, is going to
be exactly the thing that would provoke the opposition, as we find out later, represented
by the community of people who feel threatened by his personal qualities. From such
24
comparisons attentive readers can infer what the type of a hero Cincinnatus is —an
outcast who evokes our sympathy.
Two images created in the aforementioned passage foretell what we are yet to
learn about the protagonist. The writer initiates comparisons that will haunt this character
throughout the novel. What Appel notes as “the childlike exploration of being and
nonbeing that is so touching in Invitation to a Beheading” (174) becomes one of the
major themes in the novel that is entwined with the image of the protagonist:
Cincinnatus, introduced as someone moving “like a child who has just learned to walk,”
later is carried by Rodion who was “embracing him like a baby,” and this unexpected
tenderness from a jailer is sensed by Cincinnatus who “did his best not to cry” (29). The
hero’s antagonist, M’sieur Pierre, also treats Cincinnatus like a child: he become
particularly explicit about it when he prepares Cincinnatus for his execution, speaking to
him in the manner of an adult caring for a helpless boy —“we shall first of all remove our
little shirt…That’s the boy…now I shall show you how to lie down” (221). But the most
striking comparison occurs in the scene that reveals M’sieur Pierre’s true identity when
Cincinnatus walks in on the tea party at the director’s house. To understand the thematic
and structural significance of this scene, we have to backtrack to the earlier moment of
M’sieur Pierre’s introduction.
As soon as Nabokov establishes an intimate connection between the reader and
his misunderstood hero, we are beguiled into the whirlwind of Nabokovian “twists and
turns” (Trottier 6). Just as we thought that Cincinnatus is doomed to a lonely existence in
his last days, a prisonmate by the name of M’sieur Pierre is brought in, without
25
reasonable explanation, to stay in a neighboring cell. He seems to be trying hard to
become Cincinnatus’ one and only friend, assuming an amiable rapport with the prisoner
by frequent visits, talks, and games of chess (being a keen chess player, Nabokov often
incorporates references to the game in his writing; his novel The Defense explores the
idea of the game as an allegory of life and reality). Surprisingly, Cincinnatus does not
embrace this opportunity for the reasons yet unknown to us, which intensifies the
situation’s tension and creates suspense worthy of a literary master, Nabokov, who is
often compared to another master of suspense —Alfred Hitchcock. Apart from
Nabokov’s notable physical resemblance in his later years to the prominent director (see
Ellendea Proffer’s Vladimir Nabokov: A Pictorial Biography, 1991), his stylistic devices
as a writer are very similar to those used by Hitchcock in his work. Bienstock discerns
the parallel, acknowledging the presence of the writer in many of his works in a variety
of roles as an impresario, “as both puppet master and magic lantern projectionist,” but
most of all as a producer-director:
We might also acknowledge that the ideal dictator-director as outlined in the
foreword to the Lolita screenplay comes close to being a portrait of the filmmaker
Alfred Hitchcock, who shared with Nabokov a hearty mutual admiration.
Hitchcock is known for his iron grip on the reins of a production, and for a
distinctive, baroque style somewhat akin to Nabokov’s own. His famous walk-ons
—in the bit part of guest, or ghost —further suggest Nabokov’s own predilection
for personal appearances in his fiction. Nabokov shows up in several of his novels
and gives himself the cameo role of a butterfly hunter in his (as opposed to
26
Stanley Kubrick’s) screenplay of Lolita. It is not wrong, then, to see Nabokov as a
filmmaker manqué in the Hitchcock mold. (129)
This resemblance between the two artists, according to Bienstock, is urged by
Nabokov’s remark in the foreword to his Lolita screenplay that if he were to dedicate
himself to the stage or the screen, he would “pervade the entire show with the will and art
of one individual” (128). Though the role of a show director is hidden behind the scenes,
the presence of a master is felt from beginning to end in Invitation. Nabokov’s
pervasiveness is apprehended in a way he chooses his scene settings and the camera
shots, the look of his actors and their actions. And the scene at the tea party is an
exemplary representation of how all the mentioned features are submitted to the will of
the auteur. The scene starts with the depiction of Cincinnatus’ building excitement from
the expectation of freedom that is just around the corner of the prison wall and climaxes
in a shocking silent revelation when Emmie, his only hope for salvation, leads him into a
trap set up in the director’s apartment:
Emmie led him into a dining room where they were all sitting and drinking tea at
a lighted oval table. Rodrig Ivanovich’s napkin amply covered his chest; his
wife—thin, freckled, with white eyelashes—was passing the pretzels to M’sieur
Pierre, who had dressed in a Russian shirt embroidered with cocks; balls of
colored wool and glassy knitting needles lay in a basket by the samovar. A sharp-
nosed little old crone in a mobcap and black shawl was hunched at one end of the
table. (166)
27
The juxtaposition of a casual manner of the party with the high intensity of Cincinnatus’
exhilaration creates a sharp contrast that achieves its climactic effect within both the
Action and the Emotional story. The description of the scene and “the actors” occupies
the place of a great pause, a moment of silence that is needed to realize the full extent of
what is happening, which applies to Cincinnatus as much as to the reader. Though the
silence is broken by the voice with “a slight German accent” of the director’s wife, the
intensity of the scene is not: while Cincinnatus’ is going through the agony of this
realization, M’sieur Pierre is just “stirring his tea” and “demurely” lowers his eyes (166).
The behavior of the participants in the scene reveals their standing in the story: if Rodrig
tries to regain his authority (“What’s the meaning of this escapade?), though his worry
about the regulations sound ironic and ridiculous, the true authority belongs to M’sieur
Pierre who “without raising his eyes” pronounces the most powerful judgment: “Let them
be…After all, they are both children” (166). This phrase not only captures the essence of
M’sieur Pierre’s attitude to Cincinnatus but becomes a pivotal point in characterization
and conflict development.
The mysterious appearance of M’sieur Pierre and his forced friendship on the
prisoner represents the Big Event, that creates a necessary complication for the hero
motivating him to act on his goal —escape to freedom. The episode when Cincinnatus
discovers M’sieur Pierre’s true identity and his status as a spy within the web of
conspiracy around him is the moment of epiphany that raises the stakes in achieving the
ultimate goal; thus, it is the Pinch. This moment also triggers the Crisis that follows later:
Cincinnatus’ plan of escape and hope for freedom crash like a house of cards. The
28
complexity of this realization makes it is hard to assess what is more devastating to
Cincinnatus: the betrayal of Emmie, who was supposed to be an innocent child and the
least suspected character whom Cincinnatus perceives as the embodiment of his hopes
and expectations up until the moment of escape; the cunning nature of M’sieur Pierre’s
false friendship and his undeniable authority, to which everyone submits, including the
director of prison himself; or the apprehension of everyone’s involvement in the preset
scenario of deception of which only Cincinnatus did not know.
The reaction of M’sieur Pierre seems counter to the effect of the occurrence: he
does not gape or drool out of astonishment like Rodrig but exhibits a cold-blooded
composure. He knows that it is not him who got caught in the wrong; it was Cincinnatus.
The revelation of M’sieur Pierre’s identity, though it may be a coincidence in this
situation, is something that has been predestined to occur sooner or later. M’sieur Pierre
lets him be because he is convinced Cincinnatus has no place to run to, and in
acknowledgement of that Cincinnatus’ silence speaks volumes. M’sieur Pierre’s phrase
“They both are children” further develops the concept of Cincinnatus as a child and
advances our understanding of Nabokov’s theme of innocence in the novel.
In this moment, the foreshadowed image of a child, introduced on the first page,
comes back reinvented: M’sieur Pierre’s comparison of Cincinnatus and Emmie inverts
the notion of innocence. Emmie might appear as a carefree child who bounces a ball and
draws pictures in a magazine, but her seemingly naïve playfulness covers astute cruelty
that permits her to “play a prank” on Cincinnatus while fully aware of her wrong-doing
and its consequences. In this respect, she is no better than the executioner (or the others)
29
who pretended to be his friend and gave him false hope. Rhetorically, the signs of her
forthcoming betrayal disseminated in the narrative have been there all along: like M’sieur
Pierre’s sudden appearance in the jail, Emmie’s entrance in the scene of escape is
unexpected as she “darted out” from “behind a projection of a rampart, where a black
bramble bush rustled its warning” (165). Nabokov is using the same set up and
development for two different characters; and not only does he get away with this
redundancy but uses it to highlight essential qualities of his characters and to intensify the
conflict and themes throughout the novel.
Cincinnatus’ trust in Emmie’s deceptive child-like qualities leads him down the
wrong path towards the most shocking discovery. The devastating revelation of M’sieur
Pierre’s true identity provokes the realization of a narrowing ring of conspiracy around
the prisoner. With his last hope for escape gone, Cincinnatus has reached the point of no
return —the Crisis —and his body pays a high toll for this realization: “Cincinnatus was
a mass of scrapes and bruises” (169). Interestingly, the structural crisis in the story is
expressed through the physical and emotional crisis experienced by the protagonist. To
alleviate the prisoner’s condition after his heart-breaking disappointment, M’sieur Pierre
comes to visit Cincinnatus to pay tribute to another strange tradition of asking for
forgiveness from the prisoner to be executed. It seems that M’sieur Pierre intends to
apologize for his previous “innocent deception,” as he puts it, and extends his hand to
Cincinnatus as a gesture to patch up their friendship, but the director immediately
reminds us that the whole matter is a pure formality, done in the presence of a lawyer.
Thus, even the crisis of deceivers is a deception in itself. The concept of crisis seems to
30
transcend the boundaries of the narrative, becoming larger than the crisis of a character or
a situation: it grows into a philosophical concept that tests the limits of human
conscience. The Crisis of the story culminates in the “informal supper” episode where we
witness the final face-off between the protagonist and his opposition, also known as the
Showdown. Chapter Seventeen sets up the stage for the action:
Tradition required that on the eve of the execution its passive and active
participants together make a brief farewell visit to each of the chief officials;
however, in order to shorten the ritual, it was decided that those persons would
assemble at the suburban house of the deputy city manager (the manager himself,
who was deputy’s nephew, was away, visiting friends in Pritomsk) and that
Cincinnatus and M’sieur Pierre would drop by for an informal supper. (180)
This strange tradition to invite the sentenced prisoner to a feast on the eve of his
execution reminds us of the same questionable law that lurks in the background behind
every action taken against Cincinnatus. The last supper acquires phantasmagoric
qualities, when Cincinnatus seems to be caught in a whirlwind of unexplainably excited
looks and tactless, suffocating curiosity from which there is no escape. With the sharper
focus on the audience, the prisoner’s opposition —the same one that was so pleased with
the guilty sentence at the beginning —becomes more defined and we can finally
distinguish more faces in the society that is afraid of Cincinnatus’ “opaque” non-
transparency (24).
Though Cincinnatus is supposed to be a “guest of honor,” M’sieur Pierre takes
center stage with his amusing demeanor and anecdotes. Cincinnatus feels not only lonely
31
but uncomfortable because of his sense of invaded personal space, from which even his
non-transparency cannot save him. At the beginning of the novel, this feeling was
produced by an image of the peephole in the door “placed in such a way that in the whole
cell there was not a single point that the observer on the other side of the door could not
pierce with his gaze” (24-25). This superficial detail carries strong allusion to the idea of
panopticism, introduced by Michel Foucault in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the
Prison that determines “a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism” as
This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals
are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in
which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the
center and the periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according
to a continuous hierarchical figure. (197)
Foucault’s model also “underlines projects of exclusion” or cutting off from all human
contact which is the essential idea of Nabokov’s story. By the end of the novel, this sense
being under constant observation develops into inescapable despair when Cincinnatus
comes to understand the proportions of this conspiracy that threatens to eliminate his
identity. This opposition of a man against overpowering authority has given way to
literary criticism exploring the “hidden” political subtext of “a crime against the
totalitarian state” (Johnson 158). David Rampton, in his critical study of Nabokov’s
novels, summarizes a variety of critical positions on the account of the novels’ political
and social commentary, concluding that earlier criticism insisted on interpreting the
influence of the epoch of totalitarianism while the views of more recent critics treat the
32
novel as a work that is “essentially about something other than twentieth-century politics”
(31). Perhaps this change in opinion was due to Nabokov’s warning against political
assumptions expressed in the Foreword to Invitation:
I composed the Russian original exactly a quarter of a century ago in Berlin, some
fifteen years after escaping from the Bolshevist regime, and just before the Nazi
regime reached its full volume of welcome. The question whether or not my
seeing both in terms of one dull beastly farce had any effect on this book, should
concern the good reader as little as it does me. (5)
When introducing the English translation years later, the author reminds his readers to see
the value of the novel not for any political message but for its universal humanism,
creative endeavor, and artistry. Nabokov chooses to create a hero who is first of all an
artist, a representation of his idea of a writer who is trapped between his inability to
express the complexity of his vision and the incapability of society to understand his true
nature and aspirations. This thematic conflict is central in the novel, reaching its climax
in the episode of the last supper.
The idea of the last supper hints at the theological inter-textuality similar to that
contained in an image of a man walking on water in the opening scene. The episode
brings the antithesis of the two worlds in which Cincinnatus exists —one of his own
spirituality, creativity, and memory, and the other one of the reality of one’s earthly
tribulations — full circle thematically and structurally. As Donald Johnson explains it,
“Thematic polarities [such as transparent/opaque, theater/reality, present/non-present]
acquire their significance within the text from being mapped onto the novel’s underlying
33
metaphysical geographic opposition —‘This world/that world’ (etot svet / tot svet)”
(161). The latter opposition is less explicit than the thematic oppositions that have their
“own emotive coloration stemming from the religious and moral connotations of the
contrasting pair.” The “this world/ that world” antithesis denotes the opposition between
the earthly life and the eternal existence of heaven, with death as a boundary between
them. Apart from “this deeply rooted religious mythology,” this antithesis has “a moral
dimension” which is the juxtaposition of evil and good in these worlds.
Moreover, the novel’s conflict does not only involve the protagonist’s opposition
with society but with his love interest; thus, the Showdown includes another major event
—Marthe’s last visit, which becomes the last straw that breaks Cincinnatus’ belief in
people. Structurally, in this episode the Showdown and the Realization overlap:
Cincinnatus faces his misconceptions about idealistic love and realizes his erroneous
perception of Marthe, who is unworthy of his love. Cincinnatus’ somewhat romanticized
memory of his love that has bolstered an idealized image of Marthe sets him up for a
heart-wrenching disappointment: his ideal of love vanishes under his conscious
realization of ruthless reality: the previously captivating image of Marthe in the Tamara
Gardens that exists in Cincinnatus’ memory is far from the callous and licentious Marthe
he meets on the last day before his execution. Their meeting does not really go the way
either of them has imagined it. She keeps talking about a mess into which Cincinnatus
dragged her and the rumors circulating in town. She reluctantly tells him about a strange
visit of a woman who claimed to be Cincinnatus’ mother, whom Marthe dismissed
thinking she was some “kind of a crank” (197). Though Cincinnatus objects “But it was
34
my mother,” Marthe does not consider the incident important for further discussion. All
she cares about is why Cincinnatus is so “dull and glum” and is not happy to see her. She
is absolutely clueless about Cincinnatus’ condition; her comments prove again and again
that she has never understood him and that she is part of the same crowd that sentenced
Cincinnatus to death. Her callousness reaches its apotheosis when she offers herself to
Cincinnatus as “a treat” (198), and as soon as he refuses, she asks him to guess who her
new marriage prospect is. During the visit, we cannot help but notice that everything
about Marthe is fake, including her “short, coarse eyelashes,” her concern, her tears that
“were neither salty nor sweet —merely a drop of luke-warm water” (198). Their meeting
is interrupted by “a red-haired finger” that beckoned Marthe to the door. From the short
phrases of rapid whisper, which reached Cincinnatus’ ear, he could understand what the
terms of the arrangement were for permitting her to visit the prisoner.
When it seems that the fallen woman cannot fall any lower, we are flabbergasted
by another Nabokovian twist: Marthe goes along with a momentary proposition of the
owner of the red-haired finger and cuts short the meeting with her husband promising to
be back in five minutes. Marthe’s behavior is yet another rendition of Nabokov’s
conception of poshlost’, she has done every wrong, tactless, cruel thing one could think
of at the moment that is meant to be a touching and all-forgiving farewell. That is what
leaves Cincinnatus speechless in the face of his blighting realization that inhibits his
mental ability to “formulate those important things” he planned to talk with her about.
When Marthe is back three quarters of an hour later, having spent all her efforts “for
nothing” (199), she tries to avoid talking about the most urgent matter for Cincinnatus,
35
his letter which contains all his innermost thoughts and beliefs. But it misses the
addressee: his words cannot overcome the indestructible wall of Marthe’s carelessness.
All she worried about is not to be considered “in cahoots” with the prisoner. She tells him
he has no right to write to her about anything “criminal.” Between the lines of their
dialogue, Nabokov’s message comes across: in the society that is ruled by fear, a genuine
confession is a crime, and innocence is an acceptance of guilt. Marthe calls for
Cincinnatus to repent, but when Cincinnatus asks her “Repent for what?” she does not
seem to have an answer. She asks him to claim that he is “innocent,” but she does not
understand why he cannot accept it.
At the end of their rendezvous, Marthe confesses that the meeting did not go
according to her expectations and there is nothing left for her to say. Then she “suddenly,
innocently and even cheerfully” remembers that she might not be able to get out of the
cell since she “talked them into giving [her] oodles of time” (201). The concept of
innocence reaches its apogee, its inversion is finalized: Nabokov’s reversal of the notion
of innocence used in regard to all the people who do not possess it and whose actions do
not justify its meaning helps him create a world of illusion in which people guilty of all
kinds of wrongdoings think themselves innocent. Innocence becomes synonymous to
blindness in society that is plagued by prejudice. Cincinnatus realizes that his belief in
redemption would not allow him to join the other “innocent” people, nor does he wish to
become one of “them” —the conspirators, the tricksters, the executioners.
Cincinnatus is well aware that “they” are watching him and before he can even finish his
sentence, Rodion hurried Marthe to the door “kneeing her in familiar fashion” (201).
36
The Realization culminates in the moment of execution when a higher revelation
opens to Cincinnatus and he is not afraid any more to leave his life behind and join
“beings akin to him” (223). The powerful emotional charge of the ending that comes,
ironically, from having a sense of relief for the hero who escapes his unrest attests to the
high artistic value of Nabokov’s writing that appeals to the mind as much as it does to the
heart. In Invitation, Nabokov creates a character-centered narrative in which the
circumstance plays a crucial role generating actions for all the characters involved in the
plot. This type of narrative aids adaptation to the character-centered script favored by
filmmakers. Andrew Horton explains that “the strong circumstance can provide the frame
within which characters can react, interact, grow, transcend, and resolve problems” (99).
Nabokov’s protagonist exemplifies this model as he reacts to his circumstances, interacts
with the people around him and grows internally from a shy, misunderstood outcast to an
enlightened artist with integrity and moral strength, as he transcends the mediocrity,
ethical blindness, and obduracy of society and resolves the question about the purpose of
his own existence. Cincinnatus, like many other of Nabokov’s characters, has a rare
quality of combining realistic features with the awkwardness of a slapstick comedy hero.
This kind of amalgam is hard to achieve in writing, let alone in filmmaking. In addition,
the quality of Nabokov’s rich prose to create a deeper meaning of the story that often
reaches metaphysical proportions makes it difficult for screenplay writers and directors to
render his works through the film medium. As Peter Kobel’s survey of Nabokov’s film
adaptations shows, most filmmakers who worked on adapting Nabokov’s fiction agree
that his style has not been “cracked” yet, though its vivid visual qualities and appealing
37
story lines keep inspiring creative attempts to brave the challenges of adapting Nabokov
to film.
38
Chapter Two
The Dichotomy of Nabokovian Characterization: Mediated Perception and Its Role in
Character’s Aesthetic Perspective
The dual mode of a character-centered screenplay or narrative that incorporates
parallel stories, driven by character’s motivation to achieve a goal and fulfill the need,
translates into the divided nature of characterization that takes various forms in Invitation
to a Beheading: the dichotomies range from juxtaposition of opposing characters to the
contrary hypostases of the protagonist, which remind of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s puzzling
duck-rabbit schema of inseparable counterparts (Philosophical Investigations 204). To
figure out how character-creation works in the novel, we should take a closer look at the
specifics of a character’s aesthetic perspective and see how it differs from the aesthetic
views of the writer. The peculiarities of the latter include the notion of mediated
perception, which comes from the world of cinema and which denotes an empowering
device that either is used by a character to obtain a certain perspective or makes him an
object of perception.
As mentioned above, Nabokov creates a narrative that places one character in the
center of the novel’s thematic and structural composition. In the words of Syd Fields,
who gives advice to new screenwriters in his Screenplay: The Foundation of
Screenwriting, “Character is the essential foundation of your screenplay. It is the heart
and the soul and nervous system of your story. Before you put a word on paper, you must
know your character” (22). Field uses the terms interior and exterior as to identify a type
of characterization process, stating that the interior life is “a process that forms character”
39
which includes all of a character’s life from birth until the beginning of the story, while
the exterior life starts from the beginning to conclusion of the story and is “a process that
reveals character” (23). He goes on to explain that all dramatic characters interact with
other characters and with themselves and “experience conflict in achieving their dramatic
need” (24-25). What makes them multidimensional people is the writer’s consideration of
their professional, personal, and private components, which define a character’s point of
view, personal relationships, and “the area of character’s life when he or she is alone”
(26). In order to define the need of character, there must be dramatic tension, which
happens when character has to overcome obstacles, and action, which is what he does.
When it comes to dealing with a visual medium such as film, it is the writer’s
responsibility “to choose an image, or picture, that cinematically dramatizes his
character” (27). This sense of responsibility comes through in Nabokov’s writing in the
way he employs imagery to construct a character and to render its multivalent quality.
However, cinematic dramatization of his characters in Invitation, due to the novel’s
complex and subtle utilization of filmic devices, does not only appropriate screenplay
writing approaches to characterization that Field is talking about, but also deviates from
them to reveal the peculiarities of Nabokov’s literary vision and style.
When it comes to character creation, binary classification often takes place,
though similar terms used by the researchers often take on different meanings. Field’s
notion of interior and exterior echoes Trottier’s concept of outside/inside story applied to
character development within the system of parallel storylines, in which outside refers to
action story that is driven by the character’s goal and inside denotes emotional story of
40
the character’s relationships that is driven by the need. The latter is also referred to as the
heart of the story or the emotional through-line (34). A successful screenplay should have
both stories going on at the same time, the examples of which we see in Nabokov’s
Invitation. The action story is motivated by the protagonist’s goal to write down a “true”
account of his life to the world that accused him before his time runs out. In an agony to
finish a “project” that was interrupted, the prisoner constantly inquires about how much
time he has left until his execution. The emotional story progresses due to the hero’s need
for indispensable forms of human interaction —his yearning for love, friendship, and
understanding —that have been denied to him all his life. By comparison, the goal of the
protagonist in Laughter is to have a passionate love affair with a much younger mistress,
an affair he could only daydream about; however, this goal is rooted in a very human
desire to be loved, which is the hero’s need that drives the emotional development of the
character and the story. This juxtaposition of characters’ goals and needs in the two
novels underscores the depth of study of human nature in Invitation and its appeal to
better understand human experience.
Another dual-mode conception of context and content, proposed by Field,
branches out into a more elaborate classification of character study. Speaking of narrative
point of view, Field states that “CHARACTER IS A POINT OF VIEW —it is the way
we look at the world. It is a context” (32). Taking into consideration Invitation’s status as
a most philosophical novel, the role of the protagonist in terms of reflecting “the way we
look at the world” becomes a multifaceted concept that raises questions about an artist’s
role in society and his painstaking attempts to encapsulate not only his own worldviews
41
but those reflecting his time and place in order to leave an account of an individual as
well as a collective outlook of the world at a particular point in human history.
It is a tremendous task on Nabokov’s part to push towards “testing the nature of
consciousness,” something he has been interested in since his early near death
experience. As Brian Boyd describes it, whenever Nabokov got sick as a child,
sometimes “brushing through death” he had mysterious encounters of “delirium” and
“clairvoyance” that could partially explain his later curiosity as a writer about “the void
of nonexistence before birth[that] might yield clues about the void after death” (71). The
untimely death of his father impelled Nabokov’s concern with the theme of death, which
is pervasively present in the writing of the Berlin years. The writer creates characters that
allow him to explore the concept of death as well as to make sense of death for personal
reasons: particularly, Luzhin’s father in The Defense, who even in death guides his son
through the trials of insanity, and Fyodor’s missing father, Konstantin Kirillovich, whose
presence is strongly felt throughout the novel. Nabokov’s concept about human
consciousness comes from his suspicion that “although consciousness might appear to be
cut off in death, it could well in fact simply undergo a metamorphosis we cannot see”
(Boyd 71).
The writer’s preoccupation with the thought that “something seems to lie beyond
the visible and tangible” (Boyd 153) is personified in the character of Cincinnatus. As we
see in the ending of the novel, a different realm exists beyond the physical world. And the
reason why Cincinnatus is the only one who discovers or apprehends it lies in the
character’s awareness of his consciousness. Boyd pinpoints this difference between
42
Cincinnatus and the rest of the personages by saying that “everyone around the central
character seems two-dimensional, operated by clockwork rather than consciousness, and
only in death does Cincinnatus appear to head toward beings like himself” (310). From
this statement, we can assume that it is particularly the protagonist’s insight into
consciousness that makes him a multi-dimensional character.
To create such a character, Nabokov empowers his character with cinematic
perspective, which also enhances the versatility of his literary style. This is where the
writer’s erudite knowledge of influential and innovative cinematic techniques and his
skill of incorporating filmic devices come together. Wyllie’s study of the impact of
German and Soviet film on Nabokov’s early fiction demonstrates how the stylistic and
technical innovations inspired the dynamics of “perspective and perceptual modes,
emphasizing the importance of the camera as an independent narrative tool” (13). Appel
expresses a similar idea by saying that “consciousness is an optical instrument to
Nabokov” (265). Cincinnatus’ attitude towards other minor characters in the story
follows a similar pattern, and it is always a mediated perception of them, observing these
people from the side, as if watching them as personages in a movie. In the latter sense,
Cincinnatus at times adopts the same voyeuristic technique as the protagonist in The Eye,
Smurov, who uses his alternate state of existence after the alleged suicide to observe
people he had known and to learn about their attitude towards him. Wyllie calls this
mediated perception “kino-eye,” borrowing the term from the Soviet era film by Dziga
Vertov Kinoglaz (Kino-Eye) (1924). Vertov’s replacement of the human eye with a
camera intends to demonstrate the inferiority of flawed human vision to that of “a perfect
43
machine” with “the potential for continual development and improvement” and “a
flexibility and versatility that far surpassed the capabilities of human vision” (23).
Vertov’s cinematic method, emphasizing “the dynamism and disruptive impact of
individual images, is described as “filming documentary-style on streets, in fields,
factories, homes, either from a hidden location, so as to remain unperceived by his
subjects, or quite openly, yet discreetly, as to not to disturb everyday activity” (26).
In Invitation, there are moments when we see Cincinnatus adopting this kind of
documentary-style observation mode. If Cincinnatus is a “point of view,” he is also that
of a camera: surveying a large area, zooming in on a detail, switching angles, and
grasping panoramic scenes. The switching of such “camera shorts” intensifies each time
Cincinnatus’ mind wonders off from the reality of prison to the other reality. For
example, in Chapter Six while waiting for the announcement of his execution date,
Cincinnatus, feeling “a fierce longing for freedom,” imagines life in the city “as it
generally was at this fresh morning hour” (73). And in this flight of imagination, his
camera of an eye zooms in and out, capturing small details and whole scenes, as well as
people and their faces:
Marthe, eyes lowered, is walking with an empty basket from the house along the
blue sidewalk, followed at a distance of three paces by a dark-mustachioed young
blade; the electric wagonets in the shape of swans or gondolas, where you sit as in
a carrousel cradle, keep gliding in an endless stream along the boulevard; couches
and armchairs are being carried out of furniture warehouses for airing, and
passing school children sit down on them to rest, while the little orderly, his
44
wheelbarrow loaded with all their books, mops his brow like a full-grown laborer;
spring-powered, two-seat “clocklets,” as they are called here in the provinces,
click along over the freshly sprinkled pavement …
(73-74)
The description continues for more than a page, switching from Marthe picking
out fruit, to the clouds, to pedestrians, then back to Marthe with her lowered eyes. And as
fast as the snapshots of the streets and people are changing in this whirlwind of
Cincinnatus’ imagination, the falling out of it is more abrupt than anything we read
leading up to the end that starts in the middle of a sentence with ellipsis, followed by a
very brief sequence, “… but then the clock finished ringing, the imaginary sky grew
overcast, and the jail was back in force” (75). The feeling of disappointment, as if being
cut off from watching an enjoyable movie when the film suddenly breaks, is experienced
not just by Cincinnatus, but by the reader as well. The mode of narration changes into a
scant description “moved, stopped, listened” or “rhythmic, quick, blunt” supported by
additional connotation of the words that describe how Cincinnatus moves and what he
feels at the moment when the reality of the jail stops the flow of this highly cinematic
portrayal of city life. As the motifs of illusion and delusion set in at the moment when
Cincinnatus’ vision changes from cinematic flight to the realization of reality and his
doom, the idea of “a perfect machine” gives way to “the inherent unreliability of vision.”
This transition between perceptive modes proves the paradox, as Wyllie notes, of human
vision that, in spite of being flawed, is “the primary means of cognitive perception” (51).
45
The transition in narrative style functions as a shift between a character being a
point of view, as a content, and a character that “is an ATTITUDE —a context —a way
of acting or feeling that reveals a person’s opinion” (Field 33). If cinematic mode was an
objectivized documentary of what Cincinnatus remembers of his life before his
imprisonment, the description of his “return” to the halls of the jail, full of sensory
details, renders his emotional state. From the way he reacts to the sounds, “all his nerves
a-flutter,” we can infer that he is not in control of his environment as “he turned he knew
not how many corners” or of his feelings, no matter how “attentive,” “ethereal and lucid”
he tried to be (75). In a blunt sound he hears “an invitation,” and though he walks to
follow it, the rest of the actions are assigned not to him but to the noise that “seemed to
have flown nearer” and to “the dark passage” that once again “made a bend.” Cincinnatus
is led by this tapping sound, which “like an invisible woodpecker” brings him from
darkness to “pale light” where he sees Emmie “bouncing a ball against the wall” (75).
Without really knowing what an invitation was for, Emmie’s appearance is unexpected
nonetheless, which is representative of the deceptive nature of the visual and cognitive
perception and the idea of self-delusion in the novel.
This interplay between content and context, so seamlessly executed in Invitation,
creates a character that develops as “a personality” (Field 34). Cincinnatus’ personality is
as complex as the ideas and philosophical concepts that he stands for. Many critics agree
that Cincinnatus does not only speak for Nabokov but subsumes some autobiographical
features that establish references between the protagonist and his creator. Though
Nabokov never liked being questioned about the commonality between his protagonists
46
and himself, there are a lot of things that hint at some of his personal battles. The
turbulent events of the writer’s youth —the storm of the Bolshevik Revolution that
obliged the entire family to flee Russia for Germany with only a few jewels and clothing
—caused Nabokov’s unsettling nostalgia about his younger days in Russia and
dissatisfaction with his life in exile, particularly in Berlin, which transferred into his
fiction.
Having experienced the hardships of exile, the writer creates his protagonists as
outcasts, people who do not fit in, do not follow conventions, and often do not survive in
the “real” world. His heroes are inept at dealing with the world they live in so they create
their own, which makes them seem bizarre to the others. As the society feels threatened
by them, it becomes either deaf to the needs of its marginalized members or applies
inefficient, inadequate, and often cruel ways of getting rid of them. In The Defense, the
protagonist, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin, sees himself as a failure, though he possesses a
covert genius as a chess player. As soon as his unique ability is discovered, Luzhin is
being taken advantage of until his obsession with chess becomes an alternate reality that
“swallows” him in the end. Albert Albinus, the protagonist of Laughter in the Dark, is a
quite successful middle-aged art-critic who becomes blinded by his passion for a young
seductress. Entangled in a mutually parasitic relationship, he eventually suffers the
consequences of his infatuation, losing his family and in the end his own life. In
Invitation to a Beheading, Cincinnatus struggles through the last days of his life in prison
for committing the crime that has a very ambiguous definition. Running out of time and
47
not knowing the hour of his execution, he sinks into deep self-reflection which conceals
the dangers of an unusual mental state.
The tight-knit connection between the writer’s experience of exile and its
representation in Nabokov’s émigré novel is illuminated in David Morton’s study
Vladimir Nabokov. Speaking of the “gloom and glory of exile” —the approaching danger
of Nazi terrorism and Nabokov’s success as a writer within the émigré community —
Morton illustrates the writer’s belief that “history does not exist apart from the historian”
(39). By analyzing “a clearly observable thematic unity in Nabokov’s Russian novels,”
Morton traces the theme of exile through all of the writer’s early works, pointing out that
Invitation, being the last of the émigré novels, is
nevertheless an appropriate novel for launching the discussions of Nabokov’s
English fiction; for in it Nabokov depicts in the starkest possible terms the basic
tension of all his fiction —the elemental tension between life and death, creation
and dissolution. Even the embracing themes of life and art are subsumed by this
one, for they are simply ways of expressing the life principle and of thwarting
death. From the start Cincinnatus (the protagonist of Invitation) knows that he
must die, why he must die, and how; what he does not know is when. Like the
Russian émigrés in the other novels, he is waiting; but because he knows exactly
what it is he is waiting for, his life is a period of unrelieved tension. His
concentration on that one coming moment and the fact of approaching death
leaves little room for the sense of ordinary reality to develop. (39-40)
48
Morton’s interpretation foregrounds the idea that the emotionally charged Invitation
along with other stories of the Berlin period draws the attention of its readers not just for
the reasons of gaining an insight into the writer’s aesthetics but for the attempt to
comprehend the impact of turbulent personal and contemporary history on his fiction,
which is reflected in the tumultuousness of the character’s inner world.
One way to come close to this comprehension is through the exploration of a
character’s physical appearance and his reactions to situations and other characters,
which are telling of certain inner qualities. As used in film, Wyllie believes, this method
“delivers both visual immediacy and narrative economy,” though it can be misleading
(35). Sometimes, distinct differences in physical appearances point out the undercurrent
of similarities in characters’ worldviews. That is the case with the supporting characters
in Invitation: seemingly innocent Emmie, a twelve-year-old daughter of Rodrig, the jail
director, is as much of a conspirator as her father or as the sweaty and smelly red-beared
Rodion or as smooth-talking M’sieur Pierre or even as ostensibly cautious yet lascivious
Marthe. The first impression we get of Rodrig is expressed simply as “his face, selected
without love” (14). A bewildering sequence of the director “dissolving into the air” in
spite of his “majestic solidity” and a minute later reappearing “dressed as always in a
frock coat, his chest out” (15) is but a glimpse of Cincinnatus’ consciousness, registering
only random visual clues that do not add up to the full picture. This stylistic device brings
in the farcical tone to the scene, reinstating the idea of stagnation and artificiality,
introduced by an old hoary judge in the opening scene, and followed by the images of
Rodion’s unpleasant masculinity and Rodrig’s “solidity,” qualified as “straight,”
49
“perfect,” “thick,” and “waxy” (14). All of these characters are deprived of the aptitude
for self-reflection. And when they come across a situation or person that pushes them
towards self-examination they feel uncomfortable and threatened. That is why all of them
remain deaf to Cincinnatus’ plea to ease his torment when Cincinnatus asks about the
time of his execution. On the other hand, the timid and meek Cincinnatus possesses a
certain moral strength of character that helps him to face the unknown, which is seen in
his explanation:
I want to know why for this reason: the compensation for a death sentence is
knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is
well earned. However, I am being left on that ignorance which is tolerable only to
those living at liberty. And furthermore, I have in my head many projects that
were begun and interrupted at various times…I simply shall not pursue them if
the time remaining before my execution is not sufficient for their orderly
conclusion. This is why… (16)
Of course, Cincinnatus’ concern is just an irritating mumbling. Afraid to be involved in
something that is beyond his faculty for human compassion, all the director wants to do is
to “drown it in what’s left of the rest of this sauce” (17). What is even more shocking and
surprising is that he asks for “any expression of thy [Cincinnatus’] gratitude” in written
form, which only proves his callousness and inhumanity.
The way the reader sees these characters is mostly through the eyes of the
protagonist. We do not get an objective look at them. It is a sort of mediated perception
through the lens of Cincinnatus’ various attitudes towards them: he hopes that Emmie
50
will save him and find a way for him to escape; he holds on to his idolized image of a
younger and more innocent Marthe as his last resort of finding an understanding soul; he
lets M’sieur Pierre talk him into senseless games under the pretense of friendship to
escape his loneliness. On the contrary, Cincinnatus’ gentle and somewhat effeminate
image, as emphasized in the waltz episode discussed earlier, does not go with his public
image of being a threat to society. What makes him bizarre and dangerous in the eyes of
society is “a mind,” as Morton claims, and that is “what others fear and hate. His mind is
“a camera obscura in which the external world is so sharply focused as to reveal its
incredible unreality” (40). It is Cincinnatus’ interior life and “a power of penetration that
no one else understands” that make him a multi-dimensional character, which in turn
requires varied means of representation within the narrative.
Thus, the story exemplifies a multi-layered mediated perception of the character
that does not only perceives others but also is trying to picture himself through the
attitudes of others. The latter echoes the theory of visual perception in narrative cinema,
developed by Laura Mulvey, a British film theorist and a writer, who argues that “the
construction of the ego comes from identification with the image seen” (2088). Perhaps,
in Invitation this concept is not as obvious as it is rendered in The Eye, based on the
question of perspective and perception, where the protagonist adopts an odd aesthetic
perspective and mirrors himself in the consciousnesses of others after he allegedly
commits suicide. Nevertheless, Cincinnatus’ attempt to rewrite his life by recounting how
he is perceived in the eyes of others hints at the similarity of Nabokov’s approaches to the
51
portrayal of his protagonists in both novels. This concept is counter to what seems to be a
reversal of this voyeuristic method when an observer also becomes the observed.
Reflecting on Mulvey’s idea about the implications of power that usually belongs
to the observer, we find that at times a more internalized and invisible to others kind of
power is granted to the object of observation. This distribution of power can be applied to
any cinematic pattern that relies on the dynamics of perception. Invitation offers
examples of characters’ empowerment when Cincinnatus assumes the role of a watching
eye as he is simultaneously being observed: at the “informal supper” on the eve of the
execution, “its passive and active participants together make a brief farewell visit to each
of the chief officials” (180). The choice of words “passive” and “active” suggests that
Cincinnatus, M’sieur Pierre, and the rest of the participants must assume certain roles.
However, those roles are subverted as Cincinnatus, who is being the object of everyone’s
attention, becomes the active observer of the event obtaining the power to prove “this
nocturnal promenade” in reality “to be vague and insignificant” (181). In a very
cinematic scene at the dinner table we recognize the tension created between the
observing and the observed:
M’sieur Pierre and Cincinnatus were seated side by side at the head of a dazzling
table, and everyone began to glance, with restraint at first, then with benevolent
curiosity —which in some began to turn into surreptitious tenderness —at the
pair, identically clad in Elsinore jackets; then, as a lambent smile gradually
appeared on M’sieur Pierre’s lips and he began to talk, the eyes of the guests
turned more and more openly toward him and Cincinnatus, who was unhurriedly,
52
diligently and intently —as if seeking the solution of a problem —balancing his
fish knife in various ways, now on the salt shaker, now on the incurvation of the
fork, now leaning it against the slender crystal vase with a white rose that
distinctly adorned his place. (182)
The details of the description —the glances of curiosity or tenderness, the jackets, the
smile, the eyes, the table setting and décor —all become the elements of poetics that
create rich visual content of Nabokov’s prose and amount to his unique literary style.
This episode shows other examples of the above-mentioned “camera of an eye”
that is characteristic of the perception of everyone else in the room as they notice “the
polite solicitude with which M’sieur Pierre took care of Cincinnatus, immediately
switching from a conversational smile to momentary seriousness, while he carefully
placed a choice morsel on Cincinnatus’ plate” (183). M’sieur Pierre’s switches between
light and playful demeanor in conversations with everyone else and seriousness in his
interactions with Cincinnatus is telling of his covert or repressed feelings that can be
interpreted as a grain of concern for the prisoner, which gives his character a certain
degree of depth and complexity. This kind of descriptive narrative ties together the theory
of the power of observation, the filmic method of mediated perception through the
camera-like eye, and the idea of a character as a personality, which reveals a character’s
internal motives that foster certain patterns of behavior. Within the context of
comparative method of characterization, the conceptualization of a camera as a tool for
creating a mediated perception, a tool that can either empower character by giving it an
“unflawed” vision or disempower it by turning it into an object of observation, becomes
53
one of the principal approaches to a cinematic rendition of character and story. However,
such cinematic perception as a mediated perception of the world demonstrates the
potential for complete disassociation from reality, resulting in a character’s further
isolation from the surrounding reality —a theme that interweaves with the central theme
of transcendence.
The way Nabokov uncovers a story through his characters, suspended between the
two realms of reality, which often culminates in death or in transcendence into another
void or dimension, results in an in-depth literary study of human consciousness that deals
with the inexplicable and reveals unexpected conclusions about accepted norms. The
writer’s exploration of unusual mental conditions and abnormal psychological behavior
has much to do with his idea of the beyond —an alternate world —which makes the
readers and critics wonder about the nature of human experience and man’s apprehension
of what reality is and what other dimensions of it exist. Boyd writes about Nabokov’s
early attempts to render the idea of the beyond:
He builds his own worlds the same way, inviting us to probe deeper by layering
problem upon problem and welding reward to reward. As we scrape through new
strata of meaning, the problems and their solutions start to change in kind, coming
at us in an unexpected rush of speed and significance. Suddenly, as in The
Defense, Nabokov allows us to see something we had never thought to look for:
the participation in the novel’s world of some force beyond, a pattern in time so
clearly visible it discloses its patterner, a creator leaving its creations to be
discovered at deeper and deeper levels of understanding. (318)
54
The duality of man’s existence comes through in Nabokov’s fiction when we
meet with characters that vacillate between the two realms, the relations of which
undergo multiple interpretations. In early works, the idea of the beyond is pervasively
associated with a protagonist, who experiences an otherworldly state, which often carries
an air of self-delusion. Smurov’s self-detachment from his mortal state into the realm of
“genuine beyond” allows him the chance to escape his own identity and “to project his
whole being onto a more satisfying self” (Boyd 348). Though he strives to create a fuller
picture of himself, the estrangement of his metaphysical being from real life creates
mixed feeling about his degree of satisfaction about his selfhood. In Luzhin’s case, as
Vladimir Alexandrov writes in Nabokov’s Otherworld, “the choice between two
alternative readings remains suspended: we may incline toward the view that Luzhin
enters the otherworldly realm that has influenced his life from earliest childhood; but we
cannot be sure that this happens” (15). For Albinus, the two voids are those of physical
and mental blindness —in both, happiness is unattainable. However, according to
Alexandrov, the writer grants “his seminal epiphanic experiences,” described at length in
his memoir Speak, Memory, to
his positive characters from novels spanning at least three decades, such as
Cincinnatus in Invitation to a Beheading, Fyodor in The Gift, Krug in Bend
Sinister, Pnin in the eponymous novel, and Shade in Pale Fire. The characteristic
features of Nabokov’s epiphanies are a sudden fusion of varied sensory data and
memories, a feeling of timelessness, and intuitions of immortality. This
perceptual, psychological and spiritual experience is intimately connected with
55
Nabokov’s conception of artistic inspiration, and is thus a facet of his theme of
the creation of art. (7)
The quote illustrates the tight link between the writer’s preoccupation with
metaphysics and aesthetics, which prompts multiple interpretations of Nabokov’s
otherworldly dimensions as an interaction of past and present, which is aided by the role
of memory; as manifestations of the irrepressible subconscious, revealing itself through
obscure dreams; as spiritual existence, stretching beyond the threshold of death; as an
alternative world of artifice, where an artistic creation reflects life through a highly
subjective vision of an artist. No matter what the interpretation is, reality “hides its
secrets” that can be discovered by studying its obscure details that “can form patterns of
unfathomed meaning” (Boyd 151).
In Nabokov’s writing, memory often functions as a type of alternate reality that
establishes unorthodox relations between the past and the present. Many critics note that
Nabokov’s approaches to the time-related themes of memory and past echo in the works
of his contemporaries and predecessors. Nancy Anne Zeller, in her article “The Spiral of
Time in Ada,” claims that Proust’s conception of time in A La Recherché Du Temps
Perdue was a great influence on Nabokov. Proust’s belief in the involuntary
remembering of a past event due to trivial sensations and its consequential reevaluation
from the point of view of the present is seen in Nabokov’s realization of the idea of
“memory (voluntary or involuntary) as being able to overcome time and death by fusing
past to present” (Zeller 281). Cincinnatus’s recollections of the events of his childhood
early in the novel illuminate his motivation as to why he is in dire need to write a true
56
account of his life. Given a Proustian flare, his childhood memories are triggered by the
“trivial sensations” upon seeing in the morning papers “two snapshots of himself,
depicting him in his meek youth” (23). The photographs send him on a memory trip that
evokes mixed emotions about his family and self. Wyllie’s preoccupation with
“cinematic perspective” that is “integral to Nabokov’s exposition of themes of memory
and mortality” extends further to underscore the role of photography as a visual element,
which grants Nabokov’s protagonists “a superhuman visual capability” (10). But, she
adds, “the calculated manipulation of the camera eye also offers them supremely
privileged points of vantage which are crucial in their struggle to overcome the
degenerative forces of time” (10). We see that the photographs bring up in Cincinnatus
scarce and not very fond memories of his parents —“an unknown transient” of a father
and a mother who “conceived him [Cincinnatus] one night at the Ponds when she was
still in her teens” (24). This detail about his family reveals Cincinnatus’ state of despair
and loneliness that he tries to counteract by writing his life story. The introduction of his
family history also sets up the themes of deception, illusion, and self-delusion that
undergird the entire narrative:
From his earliest years Cincinnatus, by some strange and happy chance
comprehending his danger, carefully managed to conceal a certain peculiarity. He
was impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a
bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent to
one other; he learned however to feign translucence, employing a complex system
of optical illusions, as it were —but he had only to forget himself, to allow a
57
momentary lapse in self control, in the manipulation of cunningly illuminated
facets and angles at which he turned his soul, and immediately there was alarm. In
the midst of the excitement of a game his coevals would suddenly forsake him, as
if they had sensed that his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a
crafty deception and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque. (24)
In this piece of very dense prose, Nabokov creates a blueprint of his ideas, mapping out
themes, motifs, and symbols that find further development in the novel. The writer
carefully selects vocabulary that incorporates key notions in the novel: “strange” is telling
of the character’s stance of not fitting in from the beginning, and “happy,” though
unexpected at first, has far-reaching meaning of a global idea of finding happiness,
foreshadowing a positive resolution of the character’s peripeteia in the end; transparency
and opaqueness evolve into symbols characterizing the relations between Cincinnatus and
society, in which he is eventually viewed as a threat to its ideology.
Nabokov’s approach to characterization that goes hand-in-hand with thematic and
structural development involves the reconstruction of memories, implemented by the use
of flashbacks or “flash frames,” in Wyllie’s terms, which function in film as “Nabokov’s
primary synthetic visual means of projecting the past into the present and of
reconstituting and recombining remembered images according to an individual’s
subjective requirements” (183).
The first instance of a flashback sneaks up on the reader unnoticed. After the
scene with the director who is unwilling to tell Cincinnatus his execution date, we keep
following Cincinnatus past the dozing shadows of Rodion and the guard who took his
58
“uniform mask” through the yard to the city and the Tamara Gardens. How do we get
tricked into entering a parallel universe of Cincinnatus’ memory? There are a few things
that Nabokov employs to accomplish this, but his manipulations of text are so subtle that
the reader moves through the border between the reality and memory sequences as
smoothly as Cincinnatus moves through space from prison to the city streets as if he is
allowed to do it and nobody seems to pay attention to him.
The scene starts with the director entering Cincinnatus’ cell. But when the
director starts to write as an indication that the audience was over, Cincinnatus “went
out” (18). What the reader does not realize (unless rereading the episode again), that this
small phrase serves as the stylistic indicator of its own kind: it is a marker of a reversal
that takes place at the moment, indicating not just the switching of the places —logically
thinking the director should have exited Cincinnatus’ cell, not the other way around —but
the switching of the narrative planes, modes, and tones. Perhaps, that is why these two
sentences make up a separate paragraph. They constitute the turning point from physical
reality of jail Cincinnatus’ body is placed in the “other” reality of memory that
Cincinnatus’ mind is drifting to. The latter is also a place “where Marthe, when she was a
bride, was frightened of the frogs and cockchafers…” (19).
The other marker of the seamless transition from Cincinnatus’ physical world to
mental state is expressed through the changes in mode: dialogue with brief intermittent
remarks about characters’ emotional expressions is replaced by a fluid and rich
description of every tiny detail from “narrow and slippery” stone steps to “the languor” of
ponds in the park. It is a much romanticized description, which speaks to certain qualities
59
of its creator, be it Cincinnatus or Nabokov himself. For Cincinnatus, it is a memory of
being free —free to feel and to enjoy his feelings, to indulge all his senses and take
pleasure in simple things, “a meal of chewed lilac bloom in one’s mouth,” the discreet
murmur or whisper of lindens, “the sough of the foliage” (19). Can it be that for
Nabokov, who possesses an incredible ability to express multiple sensations, such a
description is a recreation of his memory of Russia with its trees and blooms, its smells
and sounds? The author’s nostalgic reminiscence of his earlier days long gone seeps
through the pages describing Cincinnatus’ longing for his “happier” past.
Though we can only guess what made the author convey these heartfelt images,
for Cincinnatus, the evocative description of a place is closely entwined with his memory
of his lost love. The tone of Nabokov’s prose here is elegiac with its melancholy
undertones and images of moon. It is mentioned repeatedly throughout the description,
each time undergoing a transformation that largely reflects the growing of emotional
intensity of a character’s feelings. The image of the moon balances out the composition
of the two-page description that is shifting from “a small courtyard, filled with various
parts of dismantled moon” to “a circular plaza where the moon stood watch over the
familiar statue of a poet that looked like a snowman” and then to Cincinnatus’ own
house, which is recognized only because of “the expression of the shadows” created by
the moon that “cast dissimilar patterns of branches of the walls of similar houses” (19).
The moon also has its “antagonist,” the yellow electric light that belongs to the world of
reality and often begins and ends Cincinnatus’ “dream” sequences like this one. Just as
Cincinnatus is about to reach for his most desired dream, he opens the door and enters
60
“his lighted cell,” and even that does not last—the next moment the light is off and he is
submerged into the darkness and silence. The contrast between the lyrical glistening of
moonlight and the harsh brightness of “highly-concentrated” electric light (14) aids the
twists and turns in the narrative as well as creates symbolic interplay between reality and
memory, conscious and subconscious, ruthlessness and sensitivity.
One peculiar phrase—“the pencil glistened on the table” —ties the end of the
episode with a moment that occurs much earlier than the visit of the director. After
Cincinnatus first walks into his cell and asks the lawyer to leave, he starts to reflect on the
“nearing end” (12). As he was pacing the floor “shivering,” on the table glistened “a
clean sheet of paper” and lay “a beautifully sharpened pencil, as long as the life of any
man except Cincinnatus” (12). It seems that an intentional repetition particularly of the
word “glisten” acquires significance within the structural and thematic context of the
novel. It not only draws attention to the objects, paper and pencil that symbolize the
protagonist’s chance to re-write his life but establishes the borderlines of sequences that
are not what we think they are initially. At first, it seems that Cincinnatus’ mind “went
out” of the cell after talking to the director. However, at the end of this dream that ends
with Cincinnatus suddenly entering his lighted cell again one tiny detail —a glistening
pencil —refers us back to that first mentioning of a pencil, expanding the frame of the
dream sequence vastly and hinting at another possible interpretation of the episode. This
ability of Cincinnatus’ mind to transcend the borders of reality is akin to an artist’s ability
to describe something that exists beyond the world of tangible things. This special gift,
bestowed on true artists, defines the relationship between author and his character, the
61
creator and his creation, that is beautifully encapsulated in David Rampton’s remark from
his study Vladimir Nabokov:
What distinguishes Cincinnatus from the non-beings around him is precisely his
awareness of this other world to which his imagination gives access. The world
that he longs for is variously associated with the innocence of children, pastoral
settings, bodilessness, effortless pleasure, in short, the standard reveries of the
romantic imagination at idle. But Nabokov sharpens the image a little in the one
moment at which Cincinnatus comes closest to realizing that, spiritually linked to
his creator’s active imagination, he does belong to a different order, that if lives
can end as books begin, so too can they begin as books end. (61)
Imagination is what keeps the hero’s reminiscence of his love alive. At the same
time, it keeps dangers of another kind. As an overarching theme in the narrative, it brings
about its inspirational as well as disturbing effects. The seeds of suspicion that are
planted during the director’s visit grow with Cincinnatus’ every new discovery about his
jailers and his situation. The phantasmagoric waltz with the jailer increases a vague sense
of suspicion about what we have thought the true reality is. What the aforementioned
glistening pencil does is make everything happening around Cincinnatus in the “reality”
of jail seem deceptive, as if it were happening in a dream or created by someone’s active
imagination. On the other hand, by symbolizing Cincinnatus’ desire to write a “true”
account of his life, the pencil also hints at the idea that the character’s mental state is the
true reality that he is living in, which is constantly disrupted by the invaders from the
“other” world claiming his privacy. As the dream sequences become more frequent, this
62
impression of reversed worlds grows stronger, culminating in the triumph of Cincinnatus’
mental state over the ugly and ruthless physical world that is alien to emotional
sensitivity.
Cincinnatus’ romanticized memories of the Tamara Gardens in the first chapter
stand in contrast with the dominant impression of the flashbacks about his recollection of
childhood and adolescent years. Chapter Two utilizes technique, quite cinematic in its
nature, that allows the protagonist go in and out of his memories with the ease of
switching scenes in a film: here he is reading a newspaper, and the next moment he is a
boy in the classroom where his teacher is “gazing at him for a long while” saying
“’What’s wrong with you, Cincinnatus?’” (24). The teacher’s question announces the
motif of Cincinnatus’ ostracized or, in his own words, “nameless existence” due to his
imperviousness, “a certain peculiarity” he has to conceal. This childhood memory serves
as an introduction to the protagonist’s alternate life history that the reader becomes privy
to as his story develops parallel to the events of the plot. Cincinnatus’ flashes of memory,
disseminated throughout the novel, together constitute a somewhat scattered yet cohesive
narrative of his other life. They fill in that exterior life that Field denotes as life before the
events of the story affect the main character. It is due to Cincinnatus’ memories that we
are able to collect a fuller image of his personality and ultimately learn why the author
made him the hero in the novel. Each flash of memory does not just inform us about the
events of the character’s earlier years but illuminates his attitude towards the event. In a
flashback to childhood, we find out that Cincinnatus, having discovered the dangers of
his opaqueness, learned to “take hold of himself” and “remove that self to a safe place”
63
(24). In a another memory trip to the Tamara Gardens, we see his nostalgia about his
younger days when he met and fell in love with Marthe as well as his longing for
freedom and home where “the children must be sleeping on the hook-nosed balcony”
(19). In the flash frame of Cincinnatus’ teen years, spent at the toy workshop, we peer
into his solitude of the evenings when “he would feast on ancient books,” which makes
us sympathize with his desire “to become completely engrossed in the mists of that
antiquity and find therein a false shelter” (27).
To complicate our apprehension of the beyond, the flashback sequence
interweaves with an array of dreamlike moments, which can be interpreted as
manifestations of the character’s interminable sub consciousness. These mind-pictures,
Wyllie asserts, generate alternative realms of experience and expound the role of memory
“as shifting, malleable, fluid, and subject to the manipulations of both the conscious and
unconscious mind” (180). This discernment about memory expands the notion of
deceptive nature of the visual and cognitive perception and sets up an argument that “the
dream is essentially is an act of voyeurism” (Wyllie 126).
In the first dreamlike episode when Cincinnatus “clearly” evaluates his situation
for the first time, after the harsh reality of his jail cell interrupts his memory of the
Tamara Gardens, he sinks into a realm where “darkness and silence merged completely”
(20). And as any signs or “bright dots” of reality scatter and gradually disappear into the
dark, a vision of Marthe comes into focus out of the depths of Cincinnatus’ subconscious:
At first, against the background of that black velvet which lines at night the
underside of the eyelids, Marthe’s face appeared as in a locket; her doll-like
64
rosiness; her shiny forehead with its childlike convexity; her thin eyebrows,
slanting upward, high above her round hazel eyes. She began to blink, turning her
head, and there was a black velvet ribbon on her soft, creamy-white neck, and the
velvety quiet of her dress flared at the bottom, blending with the darkness. (20)
A distinct visual and cinematic quality, engendered in this description, defines the unique
quality of a character’s memory, which supports Wyllie’s claim that “the process of
remembering is a process of visualization, activated and realized either as film or
photograph” (131). A reference to a locket does precisely that —it hints at a photographic
quality of Marthe’s portrait, which is written into a cinematic scene, created by multiple
filmic devices: the use of camera focus that allows us to visualize Marthe’s face as an
image shaping out of the darkness of the screen; the color accents that contrast her hazel
eyes and rosiness to the overemphasized black velvet of her ribbon and dress, perhaps
suggesting her premature mourning, that is like the black velvet of the subconscious out
of which she appears. This description does not only achieve the representation of the
protagonist’s memory as a dark realm of subconscious, but advances characterization of
both characters, combining the depiction of Cincinnatus’ mental state with the portrayal
of Marthe’s looks and behavior that is telling of her attitude towards the events and of
what Cincinnatus remembers about the same events. Out of all indistinct faces “of all the
spectators” in the courtroom, he “remembered only round-eyed Marthe” who “sat
motionless like an astonished child” (21). Through the “fragments of these speeches, in
which the words ‘translucence’ and ‘opacity’ rose and burst like bubbles, now sounded in
65
Cincinnatus’ ears,” and through “the rush of blood” that “became applause,” Marthe’s
“locket-like face remained in his field of vision” (21).
This dream along with other revelations of subconscious is infused with the
motifs of illusion and delusion that are pervasive throughout the narrative. At times the
blurring of the line that separates the illusive world from physical reality makes it
difficult to differentiate what is and is not an illusion. Just as Cincinnatus finishes his first
day in jail, laughing at what seems to him “a misunderstanding” and hoping that it will all
be resolved at the dawn of the “bright” tomorrow, something strange happens:
He stood up and took off the dressing gown, the skullcap, the slippers. He took off
his head like a toupee, took off his collarbones like shoulder straps, took off his
rib cage like a hauberk. He took off his hips and his legs, he took off his arms like
gauntlets and threw them in a corner. What was left of him gradually dissolved,
hardly coloring the air. At first Cincinnatus simply reveled in the coolness; then,
fully immersed in his secret medium, he began freely and happily to…
The iron thunderclap of the bolt resounded, and Cincinnatus grew instantly all
that he had cast off, the skullcap included. (32-33)
Chapter Two, which delineates the turmoil of misunderstanding, isolation, and loneliness
stretching from childhood to the present moment, ends in self-deconstruction and the
transcendence of “what was left of him” to “a secret medium” where he finds freedom
and happiness. This masterful foreshadowing of the story’s ending encapsulates major
themes of the novel that are presented through the instance of a perplexing illusion. As
Larry R. Andrews observes in “Deciphering ‘Signs and Symbols,’” Nabokov
66
“foreshadows by hidden clues an ending he does not reveal explicitly” (139). This
approach to story-telling creates an amalgam of meanings of the beyond, which keeps the
reader guessing about the possible interpretations of this notion either as an obscure
dream, happening literally as Cincinnatus falls asleep at sunset or as an exhilarating
spiritual existence that can be attained after death as it reveals itself to Cincinnatus at the
end of his execution. In the latter sense, death “grants perceptual revelation, proving to be
a positive, liberating force, available even to the most unremarkable of heroes” (Wyllie
17). However, these are not the last words of the chapter —Cincinnatus is not allowed to
cross into the beyond yet. The reality of the physical world breaks into his “secret
medium” and with a twist of irony makes him grow “all that he had cast off, the skullcap
included” (33), proving that his refreshing “exercise” in transcendence is not just
“criminal,” but an exercise in self-delusion. By introducing the concept of death,
Nabokov raises the question of immortality, which is a ubiquitous concern for any artistic
medium, literature and film included. But it is not just the idea of immortality of human
nature but of the art itself that is rendered through human aspects of character with whom
the reader can identify. Perhaps, Nabokov’s conception of life and art could not be better
expressed than in the words of Boyd, who in his analysis of the characters in The Defense
writes:
By means of their story Nabokov treats us to a study in abnormality, genius and
insanity, a domestic tragedy, and a poignant portrayal of the solitude and
vulnerability of the self. He examines the child within the adult, the adult within
the child, the relationship of individual and family. He analyzes the role of the
67
artist in human life and adds a critique of sentimentalism and sterile virtuosity. He
considers memory and our relation to our past, fate and our relation to our future,
and the intolerant advance of human time. He charts the strange position of
human consciousness and explores the possibility that a hereafter may hold some
richer relation to time and the self. He wonders whether the independent
particulars of our world may form some design we cannot see, and whether our
random life may conceal some almost unimaginable artfulness beyond. Certainly
he does all this in such a way as to advance the whole art of fiction, but the
misconception that his work is all style and no content can arise only from his
ability to integrate so many ideas so seamlessly into the shape of his stories. (339)
This conception can be applied in full degree to any of Nabokov’s works, be they poetry
or prose. The writer’s search for some unseen design and “artfulness beyond” illuminates
the conception of an alternative void as a world of artifice and artistic creation, which
reflects life inasmuch as vision of an artist allows it.
68
Chapter Three
Semantics of Transcendence: Visual Content and Multisensory Experience Through Style
and Language in Nabokov’s Prose
The dual mode of story-telling and character development, discussed earlier, are
often interlaced with thematic progression and reinforcement of dominant ideas—a
complexity that defines Nabokov’s literary style. The recursive images and concepts
reinforced by stylistic methods create a uniquely Nabokovian language that contains
multiple layers of meaning and influences a few senses of perception at once. Nabokov’s
style is characterized by rich figurative language, esoteric allusions, and multi-meaning
descriptions that beget vivid imagery and emotional intensity; however, because of its
density, his language becomes an obstacle for rendering those images and emotions into
another format or medium like screenplay or film. On the other hand, it has many
metaphors that “can apply either to stage or to screen” (Bienstock 128). Linguistic
peculiarity adds another aspect to the debate about the adaptability of Nabokov’s prose to
other media. Thus, our examination of cinematic devices in Invitation in tandem with
linguistic analysis of the writer’s prose is particularly telling of the specificity of visual
poetics and stylistic devices that create a multi-sensory reader experience.
Nabokov’s conception of art can be pieced together from various pronouncements
by the writer but cannot have a stable definition as it evolves simultaneously with the
writer’s apprehension of his art and his changing perception of art in general. In separate
interviews, Nabokov states that “art is never simple” (Strong Opinions 32) and that “art is
difficult” (Strong Opinions 115). The latter expression has much to do with the author’s
69
ethics of composing his stuff, in which he has “no purpose… except to compose it”
(Strong Opinions 115). Another reason why Nabokov’s multi-sided conception of art is
hard to define can be seen in his rejection of art’s importance to society. Though he did
not care for the slogan “art for art’s sake,” the writer asserts that “there can be no
question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social
importance but its art, only its art” (Strong Opinions 33).
Nabokov’s discernment of the artistic value of a creative work echoes the
approach of the Russian Formalists of the early years of the twentieth century, who were
concerned with the “literariness” of literature, which includes the verbal strategies that
make it literary, the foregrounding of language itself, and the ‘making strange’ of
experience that they accomplish” (Culler 122). Their attention to verbal “devices” in the
discourse about literary text shifted emphasis from the question “what is being said?” to
finding out how the author says it. As Jessy Thomas Lokrantz explains in the introduction
to his thesis, “The Underside of the Weave: Some Stylistic Devices Used by Vladimir
Nabokov,” the formalist idea that “the reader must be made to ‘see’ an image instead of
‘recognizing’ it” (4) drew the attention of various critics even outside of the school to the
use of stylistic devices. The works of Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum, and Victor
Shklovsky influenced the development of Formalism that eventually branched into other
fields of study such as linguistics, phonology, et al. They introduced the terms that played
a key role in the history of criticism: Jacobson’s “structural linguistics” influenced the
development of another school of criticism known as structuralism; the term
70
“ostranenie,” coined by Shklovsky, means defamiliarization in literature. The critic
explained this idea as follows:
The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and
not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to
make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because
the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is
a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.
(Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," 12)
Art as an aesthetic category that manipulates perception is relevant to Nabokov’s
conception of art. Though the writer never associated himself with any schools or
communities, as he repeatedly claimed in many interviews, what comes through in his
fiction, as Lokrantz notes, is “a clear affinity in Nabokov’s outlook on literature and his
methods of composition with these early ideas of the Formalists” (4). This affinity also
reveals itself in the idea of foregrounding that emphasizes the use of the language in a
unique way, which itself manifests Nabokov’s ability to tell a story “that should be
credible within its own framework” at the same time calling attention to his uniqueness
and peculiar style that “marks the book as his just as plainly as does his name on the
cover” (Lokrantz 2).
Among the many devices that Nabokov uses to create his art, “the intrusive voice”
or the voice of the fictitious narrator is the most explicit feature of his writing. According
to Lokrantz, foregrounding manifests itself through the intrusion into the “reality” of the
book when “the author is deliberately highlighting either himself directly (the omniscient
71
author) or the fiction he has created (the fictitious narrator)” (13). The researcher
distinguishes four categories of the intrusive voice: the intrusive author that “suspends his
tale while he is talking to the reader” the way it is often used in Bend Sinister (14); the
intrusive narrauthor, a voice that represents the fusion of the author and the narrator
when “these two become indistinct,” exemplified by Pnin (21); one fictitious intrusive
narrator that interrupts the story with his comments like a fictitious editor, as John Ray Jr.
does assuring the reader about the tale’s authenticity in Lolita (27); multiple fictitious
narrators that are incorporated into the same tale the examples of which we see in Pale
Fire, Ada, and other works (31).
Most of the time in Invitation, we hear the voice of the omniscient author who
narrates the story moving it along or explaining something about a character or
describing the atmosphere or character’s feelings: “His [Cincinnatus’] observer through
the peephole turned it off. Darkness and silence began to merge but the clock interfered”
(20). Confusion sets in when this voice has switches that are too sudden, which makes it
difficult for the reader to identify who is speaking. At the end of the first chapter, when
Cincinnatus’ thoughts and memories of a dreadful day at court are fading away into the
darkness of the subconscious “My head is so comfortable…”, the last phrase suddenly
pulls us out of Cincinnatus’ head and brings us back into the “reality” of the jail cell “The
clock struck a half, pertaining to some unknown hour.” Whose pronouncement is that?
Though it sounds like the voice of the author, yet the story is often told from the point of
Cincinnatus himself who often combines the roles of a protagonist and a narrator. But at
this moment we know his voice ceased to be, at least temporarily, and another intrusive
72
voice pulls us back into the “reality” of jail. As this voice is trying to wrap up the scene,
it sounds a bit out of place as if it is trying to break “the fourth wall” and to remind the
reader that even though Cincinnatus might have “fleeted” the scene, we are still lingering
around the empty movie set. Thus, this anonymous voice falls in the category of an
intrusive narrauthor that is a strange concoction of the omniscient author who imagined
this scene and wants to provide us with an extra image at its end, but it might also belong
to a fictitious narrator akin to the one that usually tells us about what is happening,
moving the plot along, when all the characters are silent. The latter is the voice that picks
up the narration in the opening of the next chapter, describing the morning of a new day:
“The morning papers, brought to him [Cincinnatus] with a cup of tepid chocolate by
Rodion…teemed as always with color photographs” (23).
Sometimes, the relation between the author and the character is foregrounded
when an intrusive voice speaks to the character, as happens at the end of Chapter Two:
Cincinnatus, your criminal exercise has refreshed you” (33). This voice, we can infer,
seems to personify the author, the creator of his hero, who knows the innermost thoughts
of the character. This remark with a dash of irony allows the author to tease the character
like a director on a movie set would chide an actor for sneaking away without his
permission. After all, this example illustrates the writer’s claim about being in control of
his characters and his own imagination, expressed in one of his interviews: “The design
of my novel is fixed in my imagination and every character follows the course I imagine
for him. I am the perfect dictator in that private world insofar as I alone am responsible
for its stability and truth” (Strong Opinions 69).
73
Hence, it is also an act of the author’s imagination to create an intrusive voice that
belongs to a fictitious narrator. In Invitation, it is usually a matter of distinction between
the quoted direct speech of a character and instances when a character’s words flow
freely without the borders of punctuation. As Lokrantz puts it,
The mixture of the first and third person is caused by Nabokov’s disdain for such
things as quotation marks bounding conversation, or new paragraph indentations
to separate speech and actions of his characters. When he feels that such niceties
serve a purpose, then he puts them into the text; if not, he omits them. Once this is
discovered by the reader, then there is little confusion. (15)
In the episode when Cincinnatus is woken up by the noises behind his door, such an
unquoted voice shows up unannounced: “He lowered his feet to the floor: they had not let
him see Marthe after all…Should I begin dressing, or will they come to costume me? Oh,
have done with it, come in… However, they tortured him for another two minutes or so”
(35). Cincinnatus is granted this versatility of voice that allows him to slip back and forth
between being able to talk to other characters and to himself, to think in the form of an
internal soliloquy, and to comment on the narrative because he is the only character that
possesses consciousness. It seems that only a conscious being is able to comprehend the
true nature of human interactions and relationships and grasp the complexity of life in all
its forms. Thus, the speaker’s voice should be as diverse as the stylistic means that help
create it. Nabokov’s attempts to grapple with the concept of voice in Invitation only
reaffirms the value of his early work, from which we can trace the development of certain
74
stylistic devices into his later fiction as seen from the examples in Bend Sinister, Pnin,
and other novels.
The relationship between the author and his narrator can be exemplified not just
through the idea of the intrusive voice but also through what Boyd defines as the
relationship between “I and fiction’s impersonal eye”:
In reality there may be an inflexible barrier between the self inside and the world
outside, but Nabokov also knew that language could almost breach it. More freely
than any other writer before him, he glides back and forth from third-person to
first person narrative within the same story, swiftly or slowly, abruptly or so
smoothly as to escape detection. He may let us accept the illusion impersonal
prose gives of an immediate access to the world and other minds, then jerk us
back to a narrating self: Fyodor and Humbert, Kinbote and Van Veen, all flicker
in the space of a blink between their individual “I” and fiction’s impersonal eye.
(Boyd 311)
The shifts between third and first person narrative not only reflect the vacillation between
“impersonal prose” and the identifiable voice of “a narrating self” but create seamless
transitions between the consciousnesses of a character and a narrator and represent the
dynamics of their relationship. In the moment of despair, the evocations “What anguish!
Cincinnatus, what anguish!” can be interpreted as the character’s exclamations of his
sorrow as well as the author’s expression of compassion towards his hero.
By assimilating distinct stylistic devices, Nabokov experiments with visual,
auditory, and sensual perception that allows him to approach the depiction of
75
relationships, images, and ideas in a variety of ways. Sometimes, the absence of certain
elements becomes significant in rendering the writer’s intention. For instance, taking
away a voice from a character may draw attention to gesture and appearance that is more
telling about it than words, as happens with the Librarian who brings books and
magazines to Cincinnatus. He is described as “a man of tremendous size but sickly
appearance, pale, with shadows under his eyes, with a bald spot encircled by a dark
crown of hair, with a long torso in a blue sweater, faded in places and with indigo patches
on the elbows” (54). His demeanor with “hands in the pockets of his pants” creates an air
of mystery; nevertheless, Cincinnatus “had already once had the pleasure of seeing him.”
The Librarian does not waste his words; all we hear him say is brief cut phrases as his
“speech was distinguished by a kind of defiant laconicism” (54). “The pleasure” of seeing
him that Cincinnatus feels, however, has ambiguity that prompts contradictory
interpretations: taken literally, it hints at some possible connection Cincinnatus
subconsciously detects in the quiet demeanor of the Librarian, as if he could understand
the prisoner’s plight but is bound to remain silent for the fear of getting caught in the
expression of human emotion that would endanger his being; if “pleasure” presupposes
irony, then his “defiant laconicism” represents the ultimate form of detachment from
human interaction to the point of losing a basic means of communication —his speech. It
is only when we get closer to the end that we realize that “the pleasure” was Cincinnatus’
intuitive detection of something humane in the Librarian under the mask of his sickly
appearance. When he comes to visit the prisoner the day before his execution,
Cincinnatus detects that “with the book dust, a film of something remotely human had
76
settled on the librarian” (178). The lower-case spelling in “the librarian” underscores his
job instead of an obscure non-existent name “the Librarian” he carried in the beginning.
Giving in to his instinct, Cincinnatus asks for a minute of his time so that he could “weed
out a few noxious truths.” The librarian in return suggests a few readings “for the last
night” which makes Cincinnatus observe with surprise that he is “awfully talkative”
(179). The librarian’s last remark “Pity” before he left the cell “trembling” reveals the
human emotion lurking under the mask of his long, pale face. Rhetorically, the librarian’s
lack of voice balances out Cincinnatus’ multi-voicedness. Yet in the end, the situation is
mirrored, when Cincinnatus fails to find the words to disprove “noxious truths” and the
librarian becomes “awfully talkative.”
Whenever some stylistic devices rendering sensory details become deficient,
visual elements can supplement the lack of content. When we cannot rely on a character’s
speech, as in the case with the Librarian, the help of other visual elements is required, and
we are given a Tarkovskian long short (mentioned in the first chapter of this research) of
the Librarian’s appearance from eyes to pants, which is repeated with some variations in
the episode of their last meeting.
Similarly, other types of camera shots function not just as cinematic means of
depiction but have stylistic purpose due to their specific language. In previous chapters of
this paper, we have discussed the use of the camera-eye view as a cinematic device,
which provides a mediated perception for the viewer. However, in terms of its functions,
the camera can also provide cinematic shots such as close-ups and panoramic views that
are significant elements of describing strategy. The close-up shot “as a key filmic device”
77
was “pioneered by American directors under the influence of silent film” (Wyllie 50). In
the absence of sound, the only way to create a portrait of a person would be with the use
of a close up that can capture every little detail of a facial feature or expression.
A close-up in verbal form can help a writer achieve certain accuracy of
description. Nabokov makes use of it in almost all of his works from his first novel Mary
(1926) to his last one The Original of Laura, incomplete due to the writer’s death in
1977. In Invitation, there is a whole gallery of close ups from the first shot of the judge’s
mouth, making the announcement about the death sentence into Cincinnatus’ ear, to the
very last one of Cincinnatus before the execution “wetting his lips, his arms folded
somewhat awkwardly across his chest” (219). In between, there are portraits of Marthe,
M’sieur Pierre, his jailers, people at the dinner party, etc. At times, inanimate objects of
some significance will be caught in the camera focus such as the pencil and a paper, the
tools of the artist for rewriting his life.
Similarly, a variety of camera shots are used in constructing the setting or the
scenery. They become a part of an elaborate system of visual poetics, the elements of
which help the writer create vivid images of people and places and help the reader to
visualize those creations. Panorama of details and places makes the world seem smaller,
more accessible, and within reach. When Cincinnatus is brought to the roof of the jail, a
sense of freedom is embedded in that sudden “solid rush of wind, a dazzling expansion of
summer sky, and the air (was) pierced by the cry of swallows” (42) Finding himself on a
broad terrace of the fortress, towering a huge cliff, Cincinnatus sees “a breathtaking
view” of “vineyards, and the creamy road” winding down “to the dry river bed.” And
78
then that panoramic shot turns into something else, as it often happens in Nabokov’s
prose:
Further away the sun-flooded town described an ample hemicycle: some of the
varicolored houses proceeded in even rows, accompanied by round trees, while
others, awry, crept down the slopes, stepping on their own shadows; one could
distinguish the traffic moving on First Boulevard, and an amethystine shimmer at
the end, where the famous fountain played; and still further, toward the hazy folds
of the hills that formed the horizon, there was the dark stipple of oak groves, with,
here and there, a pond gleaming like a hand mirror, while other bright ovals of
water gathered, glowing through the tender mist, over there to the west, where the
serpentine Strop had its source. (42)
The choice of words in this description suggests something other than a view in
plain sight. Right at the start, the word “further” signals the change of perception from
the view of physical space to “the view” as it exists in Cincinnatus’ memory. Logically,
the reader realizes that if the dog looks like “a speck” in the panorama observed from the
tower, then it would be impossible for anyone to see trees’ shadows or the traffic in the
street or the fountain at the end of the street. Though it seems like the perspective is
stretching father in distance as we are led through the town streets to the groves “over
there to the west,” the use of details that could be seen only from a closer point suggests a
different interpretation of the description and different purpose of the shot. From an
objectivized view of the vineyard in physical reality, we are carried into the highly
subjective mental image within the alternate reality of memory. As Robert Alter notes,
79
“the graphic personification, however, seems perfectly right because it suggests how a
scene done with painstaking art begins to transcend the limits of its own medium,
assuming an elusive life that is more than color and line, plane and texture” (50). Similar
transitions occur in Nabokov’s later works, acquiring a reputation as the writer’s
signature stylistic device.
Nabokov’s use of language in creating scenery is full of poetic imagery. As
Lokrantz notes, the author found “a great similarity between poetry and prose used for
‘poetic’ expression” (5). This is where his outlook on literature did not coincide with the
Formalists, who “carefully divided poetry and prose into separate categories” (Lokrantz
5). In one of his interviews, to the question “What language do you think in?” Nabokov
answers, “I don’t think in any language. I think in images” (Strong Opinions 14).
Perhaps, this ability to imagine and to picture things attests to Nabokov’s
exceptionally visual language and style, infused with poetic rhythm, rhyme, and the
patterns of sounds. William Woodin Rowe’s clever observations about sound effects in
Nabokov’s fiction, described in his book Nabokov’s Deceptive World, speak not only to
the writer’s role as “stage manager” but to the rich auditory qualities of his written
language. Rowe points out that “sound instrumentation” that “constantly, actively, and
systematically contributes to meaning in Nabokov’s works” functions “not unlike
background music that subtly intensifies an effect on stage or screen” (51). Nabokov’s
appropriation of alliteration, assonance, and consonance in prose is as pervasive and
adroit as it is in his poetry. Though it seems that he uses “assonance less frequently than
alliteration,” when it comes to creating a meaning, it “does much of the work” (Rowe
80
52). In regard to their roles, assonance and alliteration are well-defined by Rowe’s
expression: “Alliteration is the armor —assonance, the inner life” (58). We can see the
correspondence between sound and meaning in the example of the director’s speech:
You ought to be more cooperative, mister. All the time he’s haughty, angry, snide.
Last night I brought him some of them plums, you know, and what do you think?
His excellency did not choose to eat them, his excellency was too proud. …No
need to mope as you do. Isn’t that right, Roman Vissarionovich? (Invitation 39)
[my italics]
The italicized vowels that denote the oo assonance and interchange with ju sounds,
emphasize not just the logical stresses in Rodrig’s lines but the meaning of the words that
are most important in representation of the characters’ relationship. Ought expresses the
pressure of Cincinnatus’ obligation to cooperate with the authority in the form of the jail
director. Brought represents Rodrig’s desire not just to bring food to the prisoner but
perhaps to bring him either back into society or to justice. Some reflects a tightfisted
“generosity” of Rodrig’s offer, about which others are supposed to know. The lineup of
no-mope-do accentuates Cincinnatus’ desperate condition, apparent to the director who
advises him to cheer up by using a negation that sounds more like a strict order. As Rowe
observes, Nabokov shows “more control or greater craftsmanship” in his “meaningful
manipulation of sound” (58). Some parts of text show higher density of language devices,
which only attests to the writer’s more polished technique.
Assonance and alliteration in combination with interchanging short and long
phrases, disseminated throughout the narrative, constantly remind us of the author’s
81
artistry lurking behind every word we read. In the description of Emmie, the sound
patterns are at work from defining the character “the director’s daughter” to creating her
appearance “checked frock and checkered socks —a mere child, but with the marble
calves of a little ballerina” to rendering a dynamic action “bouncing a ball, rhythmically
against the wall” (41). The latter phrase also incorporates a stronger beat that sounds
almost like a poetic meter, and underlines the writer’s intension explicitly stated in the
word “rhythmically.” However, in this example sound instrumentation and phrasing
make a different kind of contribution to meaning: instead of hinting at implicit
connotations, these devices help create a cinematic image complete with visual and sound
effects.
Sound patterns are often accompanied by repetitions that play a similar role of
underscoring not just the auditory reverberation but the meaning within the expression as
we read “Footsteps ran past. Footsteps ran past. Ran past and returned” (35). The
repetition of the short sentences along with alliteration of sounds “r”, “f”, “p” creates the
effect of a noise that is “a huffing, a cracking, a clattering, as if someone is probing with
a stick under a bench” and of a hectic movement that Cincinnatus “could not bear any
longer” (35).
The writer’s experiments with sound patterns and repetitions, disseminated
throughout the narrative in Invitation, are what we see in a perfected form in the dramatic
opening of the renowned Lolita that sets up a vivid first impression with the density of
language stylistics: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:
the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the
82
teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” (9) In this short paragraph, the writer does not just introduce his main
heroine but draws attention to the sound of her name, the pronunciation of which implies
certain sensual experience in the movement “of the tongue taking a trip.” Alliteration,
assonance, and repetition are all involved in creating the richness of sensual perception
that translates the auditory pleasure into a passionate desire of another kind described as
“fire of my loins.” The repetition of the interchanging “l” and “t” sounds together with
long “o,” “ee,” and “a” in the name is echoed in other words with similar sound patterns.
Nabokov also uses transliteration as a stylistic device when he splits up the name either
by hyphens or by periods. The former emphasizes the sensual as well as correct
pronunciation for the reader (that attests to Nabokov’s own compulsive attention to
pronunciation of names and words in various languages, which is seen from his elaborate
explanation, in one of the interviews, of how to say his name correctly as it sounds in
Russian as opposed to its mispronunciation by his English-speaking followers (Strong
Opinions 51)); the latter introduces the constituent shorter nicknames that are embedded
in the full three-syllable name Lolita, which functions as a transition to the next
paragraph that elaborates on the meaning of those various nicknames: “She was Lo, plain
Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Dolly at school. She was
Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita” (9). Similarly, the
sound patterns continue the game of meaning and audio-visual representation of text with
the inclusion of “d” that seems to carry the meaning of formality as it appears in Dolly
“at school” and Dolores in official papers “on the dotted line.” These grown-up sounding
formal names contrast with tenderness and mischievousness in Lolita, which in the last
83
sentence reveals the implication of deep personal attachment of the speaker to the one
always called Lolita in his arms. It is then at the end of these brief descriptions of the
name that we find what the story ahead is going to be about —love, passion, obsession;
sin, soul, and fire.
When the writer was asked to describe his process of selecting names for his main
characters —Lolita and Humbert Humbert —and his “almost obsessive attention to the
phrasing, rhythm, cadence and connotation of words” as noticed by some critics,
Nabokov explained:
For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most
limpid and luminous letters is “L”. The suffix “ita” has a lot of Latin tenderness,
and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as
you and most Americans pronounce it: Lowleeta, with a heavy, clammy “L” and a
long “o”. No, the first syllable should be as in “lollipop”, the “L” liquid and
delicate, the “lee” not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course,
with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was
the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears
in “Dolores” My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account
together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another,
plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the
surname “Haze,” where Irish mists blend with a German bunny — I mean, a small
German hare. [“a wordplayful reference, of course, to the German term for rabbit
— Hase”] (Strong Opinions 25)
84
On the subject of “engaging redundancy” in the name of “Lolita's aging inamorato” the
writer replied:
That, too, was easy. The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It
is a hateful name for a hateful person. It is also a kingly name, and I did need a
royal vibration for Humbert the Fierce and Humbert the Humble. Lends itself also
to a number of puns. And the execrable diminutive “Hum” is on a par, socially
and emotionally, with “Lo,” as her mother calls her. (Strong Opinions 26)
Evidently, that peculiar Nabokovian detail, often observed by critics in narrative
descriptions and character depictions, also incorporates much smaller units such as letters
and sounds, which comes naturally to the writer whose own explanations of stylistic
details are infused with the same devices as we see it in his choice of words “lyrical lilt”
and “limpid and luminous letters.”
Coincidently or not, the last paragraph of the opening chapter in Lolita recalls the
opening in Invitation, discussed in detail earlier in this paper, as it brings about the ideas
of judgment and innocence that are represented by the images of “the jury” and “thorns”:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the
misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns” (9).
This technique of introducing major themes, which will develop throughout the narrative,
by means of symbols and subtle allusions is a particularly Nabokovian feature that can be
traced from the earlier more experimental fiction to prominent later works.
Though the role of sound in contributing to meaning and creating a filmic image
is undeniably important, the stylistic means that influence the visual aspect of prose and
85
its cinematic qualities are essential for Nabokov’s fiction. One of the most utilized
elements in Nabokov’s hierarchy of visual poetic is color. It is used to achieve an array of
effects, and it often becomes symbolic, especially in the hands of an artist like Nabokov
whose ardor and expertise in painting seeps through the pages of many works. When the
writer was asked in an interview about another aspect of his “not entirely usual
consciousness” that is the extraordinary importance that he attaches to color, Nabokov
explained:
Color. I think I was born a painter —really! —and up to my fourteenth year,
perhaps, I used to spend most of the day drawing and painting and was supposed
to become a painter in due time. But I don’t think I had any real talent there.
However, the sense of color, the love of color, I’ve had all my life: and also I have
this rather freakish gift of seeing letters in color. It’s called color hearing. Perhaps
one in a thousand has that. (Strong Opinions 17)
This humble opinion about his skill as a painter, nevertheless, reveals the writer’s love of
color that he uses in abundance in his writing. His skill to “paint” a picture with
meticulously chosen words like an artist does with carefully mixed hues and give
attention to little yet important details to create a visually appealing scene or setting adds
to the list of his roles as a director and a stage manager the role of a set designer.
Nabokov’s artistic vision colors the narrative with exquisite details that make it easy for
the reader to visualize verbal descriptions:
The ugly little window proved accessible to the sunset; a fiery parallelogram
appeared on the side wall. The cell was filled to the ceiling with oils of twilight,
86
containing extraordinary pigments. Thus one would wonder, is that some reckless
colorist’s painting there to the right of the door, or another window, an ornate one
of a kind that already no longer exists? (14)
Nabokov the painter comes through in such segments where the reader is granted a
private viewing of his colorful creations. His artistic expression, as Appel notes, provides
a “map” that is “filled in gradually, through an accretion of vivid touches and precise,
painterly details —a futuristic, Durer-like landscape glimpsed through a partially opened
window” (169).
Whenever a certain color is used repeatedly in a specific context, we can talk
about its symbolism. Perhaps, Nabokov’s pervasive use of yellow —that often describes
harsh electric light —is the most obvious example: its annoying quality to suddenly break
into the setting is emphasized when it shows up as “golden, highly-concentrated electric
light” breaking the dark of the prisoner’s cell and consciousness (14). It has the power to
pulls Cincinnatus out of the realm of memory into the realm of harsh reality of his cell. It
is also the color of the cell walls (20).
Other colors have symbolic meaning as well. White signifies innocence; both are
represented by Cincinnatus’ white shirt that he puts on the day of his execution
awkwardly like a child with the help of his executor. It is also the color of a clean sheet of
white paper that symbolizes not just the unmarred innocence of Cincinnatus’ life but a
fresh start, a new beginning that he passionately desires in his last days and that is to
come after his transcendence. Against this whiteness of paper glistens “a beautifully
sharpened pencil, as long as the life of any man except Cincinnatus, and with an ebony
87
gleam to each of its six facets. An enlightened descendant of the index finger” (12).
Interestingly, both objects symbolizing the hero’s life are represented through contrasting
hues, white and ebony, as if they are the opposite ends of the same thing. Black is often
associated with Cincinnatus’ sorrow and regret as implied in the image of Marthe’s black
velvet dress that he sees her wear in court, which also conveys the great irony of her
premature mourning. It is the color of loneliness that belongs to the spider, Cincinnatus’
only friend. It is the color of mysterious justice, punishment, and metamorphosis as we
see it in the image of “the woman in a black shawl” who passes Cincinnatus “carrying the
tiny executioner like a larva in her arms” (223). Within the contextualized meaning of life
that has opposing ends of white and black, initiated by the images of paper and pencil,
Cincinnatus’ white shirt and the woman’s black shawl complete that symbolism as we
see the executed and the executioner go opposite ways at the end. In between white and
black, there is a whole spectrum of colors that are versatile in terms of their reference and
meaning but not the least enjoyable for the reader’s eye that distinguishes “the rosy
depths of the sky,” “a long violet bank with burning rents along its lower edge,” and “an
oak-covered hill flashed with Venetian Green” (165).
Of course, when it comes to depicting a subject that must be greatly romanticized
such as Cincinnatus’ memory of the Tamara Gardens, poetic language and imagery are
raised to a whole new level: the protagonist’s perception of the gardens is rendered
through heightened lyricism and described in evocative, almost poetic prose. Every little
detail is given a special attention and is an image of its own: the frogs and cockchafers,
lilac bloom, firefly tears, green turfy tamarack, the languor of ponds (Invitation 19). On
88
another memory trip to the gardens, new touches are added to the previously painted
image:
…the very, very spacious Tamara Gardens, where for no reason, the willows
weep into three brooks, and the brooks, in three cascades, each with its own small
rainbow, tumble into the lake, where a swan floats arm in arm with its reflection.
(…) some grotto, some idyllic bench (…) some baby deer, bounding into the
avenue and before your very eyes turning into trembling mottles of sunlight —
that is what those gardens were like! (Invitation 28)
We can see that this is not just a picture the artist wants us to appreciate from a distance.
The phrase “before your very eyes” takes us to that same spot in space and time and
makes us experience this memory of the place the way it is experienced by the character
and perhaps by the author whose imagination created it all. These images, like pieces of a
bigger puzzle, compose a tender and captivating image of the Tamara Gardens that
represent Cincinnatus’ ideal of beauty, rooted in his memory of youth and first love to
which he yearns to return. This kind of dense poetic language is especially hard to
translate, to which the noticeable differences in the English version can attest, in spite of
the attempts to render the visual and sensory effects as close to the Russian original as
possible.
Later in the novel, these picturesque images of the Tamara Gardens from
Cincinnatus’ memory are contrasted by an image that is unexpectedly different from what
we have read:
89
No, it was only a semblance of a window; actually it was a glazed recess, a
showcase, and it displayed in its false depth—yes, of course, how could one help
but recognize it!—a view of the Tamara Gardens. This landscape, daubed in
several layers of distance, executed in blurry green hues and illuminated by
concealed bulbs, was reminiscent not so much of a terrarium or some model of
theatrical scenery as of the backdrop in front of which a wind orchestra toils and
puffs. Everything was reproduced fairly accurately as far as grouping and
perspective was concerned, and were it not for the drab colors, the stirless treetops
and the torpid lighting, one could slit one’s eyes and imagine oneself gazing
through an embrasure, from this very prison, at those very gardens. (Invitation 76)
We notice the difference in tone as well as the language of description that is dry with
conciseness and packed with terminology a painter would use to deconstruct an image in
a way a scientist dissects an object of his study. Nabokov is equally adroit in using his
expertise in art to create evocative images full of meaningful emotional nuances as well
as purposefully flat and dull images because of their artificiality and poor technique. The
later picture of the Tamara Gardens is not imaginative enough even to be “a terrarium” or
“some model of theatric scenery” that require some artistic skill. By calling it “the
backdrop” for the puffing orchestra, the writer implies his concept of poshlost’ that stands
for “vulgar clichés” and “imitations of imitations” (Strong Opinions 101). If the Tamara
Gardens the way they exist outside of Cincinnatus’ consciousness are just an imitation of
his memory of them, then this painting is just the cheap, meaningless imitation of
imitation, a deceptive illusion of the real thing.
90
The juxtaposition of the images of the Tamara Gardens expressed through
panoramic views of romantic scenery and through the dreary picture on the wall is part of
a larger thematic scheme —the contrast between space beyond the jail walls that is
freedom and the enclosed spaces such as cell, court, various halls and tunnels that
exemplify moral and physical constraints to which Cincinnatus is submitted. This
contrast of visual elements epitomizes liberty and conformity, imagination and ignorance,
and, particularly for Nabokov, originality and poshlost’.
The language used for designing the visual images of small constraining spaces
reflects the uneasiness and ugliness of these places and of what they symbolize. The first
description of Cincinnatus’ cell starts with “the ugly little window” (14). The brevity of
enumeration of “the cell’s quota of furniture” that consists of “a table, a chair and the
cot” emphasizes the physical bareness and the emotional emptiness of the world around
him. The image of the jail that shows up a few pages later only intensifies that
impression: the jail that is a fortress, towering “hugely on the crest of a huge cliff” seems
“to be a monstrous outgrowth” (42). The climactic moment of revealed deception that
takes place in the director’s house is preceded by a description of creaking doors, and “a
darkish passage,” and “a smell of kerosene” that create a feeling of an unpleasant
suspense, which contradicts Cincinnatus’ rush of excitement about what he thinks is his
long-awaited escape from the jail. The pompousness and artificiality of a banquet
prompts a feast-during-the-plague comparison and foreshadows the final collapse of this
flat, two-dimensional world, the pieces of which fall apart like an old stage set—a pile of
“dust, rags, chips of painted wood, bits of glided plaster, pasteboard bricks, posters”
91
(223). Behind all of these images lurks a deeply humanistic idea that everything ugly,
insincere, narrow-minded, and cruel, everything without consciousness or soul, will
eventually perish.
Thematic contrast is also represented through the symbolic use of light, darkness,
and shadows. Though Nabokov is not a symbolist, he often assigns symbolic meaning to
most ordinary objects or things of nature. In “Deciphering ‘Signs and Symbols,’” Larry
R. Andrews discusses the idea –expressed by L.L. Lee in “Duplexity in Vladimir
Nabokov’s Short Stories” —that “less conspicuous symbolic patterns arise through the
use of doubling” (145). In Invitation, this duplicity is as pervasive as multiple recursive
images and motifs, which show up unanticipated throughout the narrative. Cincinnatus’
experiences with darkness, however, do not frighten him. As mysterious as it is, darkness
often brings Cincinnatus a sense of comfort, and as lonely as it can make him feel, the
dark offers relief or even escape, if not physical then mental. It is where and when time,
space, memory, and imagination converge. It is in darkness that Cincinnatus’ mind flees
to the Tamara Gardens or to his childhood or to that other realm of reality known in
Nabokov’s aesthetics as the beyond. Darkness is often accompanied by silence, and when
they merge completely “it was then and only then (that is, lying supine on a prison cot,
after midnight, after a horrible, horrible, I simply cannot tell you what a horrible day) that
Cincinnatus clearly evaluated his situation” (20). The clarity of vision comes in darkness
—a typically Nabokovian paradox comes through in these lines. Consciousness is like the
mysterious dark matter of the universe, endless and immeasurable, yet somehow it is part
of Man or perhaps Man is only a minuscule part of it. Though it is impossible to fully
92
apprehend it, one should never stop trying because his humanity depends on it. It is the
light that has an unpleasant intrusive presence but only if it is a “golden, highly-
concentrated electric light” (14). Even the director notices, when he comes for a visit, that
“the light is a bit harsh” (16). But this glimpse of concern—“Maybe if we…”—dissolves
just like an elusive figure that mumbled it, which might have been only a figment of
Cincinnatus’ feverish state of mind. It seems that whenever there is light, confusion sets
in and strange things happen, as we see in the paragraph between the moment when “the
door opened and the prison director entered” (14) and another moment when “a minute
later, however, the door opened once again” and “in came the same person” (15).
The transitional space between light and dark is represented by shadows that
assemble into the system of their own. Shadow in its symbolic meaning is applied to
character—“on the corridor wall dozed the shadow of Rodion” (18)—as much as to
images—“having finally shaken off the last shadow of the fortress, [Cincinnatus] ran
more straight and free” (18). Shadows belong to an ethereal world where “the impalpable
spiral of a ghostly railing” and “mirrorlike inversion” of a door sign are visual elements
of all things ephemeral as they are themselves the shadows of imagination. Interestingly,
shadows as a stylistic device help us visualize the atmosphere of something surreal, a
space where unusual things happen —where “a small courtyard” is “filled with various
parts of the dismantled moon” (18). It is also a space that allows the transition between
different voids to take place. It is almost mythological in its sense as a world of shadows
that provides passage to the underworld. On the other hand, it is also a space where a
flight of imagination is possible and where memories come to life again with such
93
vividness that one could feel “a wave of fragrance” coming from the gardens of his
youth.
As much as shadows are a part of a ghostly world of twilight, a place where light
and dark blend, they also exist in Cincinnatus’ memory: “it was only by the expression of
the shadows” that could recognized his own house “on the right [where] the moon cast
dissimilar patterns of branches on the walls of similar houses” (18).
The way Cincinnatus enters and leaves this world is very peculiar: all he has to do
is to see a shadow as he does at the beginning of the segment when he goes past the
shadow of Rodion and of a stool, but he is jerked from his memory by the intrusion of
light running up the front steps of his house to push open the door only to enter “his
lighted cell” (20). The scene comes full circle to “O horrible!” the glistening pencil on the
table, and the spider on the yellow wall. The light as dramatic effect has done its job, and
darkness comes back again. The intense interchange of these interdependent devices
comes like an unpredictable rush of waves in a sea, which renders the emotional ups and
downs of Cincinnatus’ tortured soul.
Aside from the symbolism attached to color, light, and shadow, Nabokov’s
figurative use of language constitutes a significant set of stylistic devices that help create
visual content in the novel. Dramatic imagery is a cornucopia of repeated adjectives,
verbs and adverbs, sometimes with missing prepositions and conjunctions —all to give
the narrative a stream-of-consciousness quality, which shows in extremely long sentences
without borders, so characteristic of the style of the early twentieth-century modernists
like Joyce and Woolf. Such is Cincinnatus’ contemplation about death:
94
For I know that the horror of death is nothing really, a harmless convulsion —
perhaps even healthful for the soul —the choking wail of a newborn child or a
furious refusal to release a toy —and that there once lived, in caverns where there
is the tinkle of a perpetual stillicide, and stalactites, sages who rejoiced at death
and who —blunderers for the most part, it is true —yet who in their own way,
mastered —and even thought I know all this, and know yet another main,
paramount thing that no one here knows —nevertheless, look, dummies, how
afraid I am, how everything in me trembles, and dins, and rushes —and any
moment now they will come for me, and I am not ready, I am ashamed…
Cincinnatus got up, made a running start and smashed headlong into the wall—
the real Cincinnatus, however, remained sitting at the table, staring at the wall,
chewing his pencil, and presently shuffled his feet under the table and continued
to write, a little less rapidly. (Invitation 193)
Cincinnatus’ muddled internal speech, transcribed by repetitions and an excessive use of
dashes that fill in the blanks of skipped thoughts, exemplifies Nabokov’s version of
stream of consciousness and its relation to contemporary literature. It is also an example
of prose with deep psychological underpinnings that attract many critics. Besides, this
passage demonstrates Nabokov’s skill to handle language in so many different ways yet
utilizing it for very specific purposes to fashion a distinct style of his hero’s speech that
reflects his mental state and to reconnect themes of death, consciousness, and innocence
with the corresponding motifs of fear, knowledge, and childlike outlook. This happens
due to the insertions of comparisons pertaining to a certain theme or image such as the
95
metaphor of “the choking wail of a newborn” that illuminates the central idea of birth,
death, and rebirth, which foreshadows the final turn of events. Similarly, the ensuing
metaphor of “sages who rejoiced at death” equates the wisdom of a child and a wise man
who share the knowledge of the “main, paramount thing that no one else here knows”
except Cincinnatus. Just as sages are called blunderers, Cincinnatus is often accused of
mumbling or saying something no one understands for the lack of their consciousness,
and that is why Cincinnatus labels them as “dummies”; he would rather know and be
afraid to die than live in effervescent ignorance.
Nabokov’s figurative language also allows for intertextuality that ties together the
recursive themes, symbols, and images in all of his writing. When answering Herbert
Gold’s question about a critic who pointed out “striking similarities” in his work,
implying that the writer essentially was saying the same thing in “wildly different ways,”
Nabokov replied: “Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others,
past and present. Artistic originality has only its own self to copy” (Strong Opinions 95).
This stance shows that Nabokov is not the least worried about the accusations of
repetitiveness. On the contrary, he considers all of his works as parts of a wider
conversation about the inexhaustible topics concerning the mysteries of human
experience. Perhaps, the writer’s life-long preoccupation with mind-bending concepts
and games such as chess has its imprint in this philosophy. Yet in his answer, we can also
sense a bit of irony when he says that the critic “may have something there.”
Irony is one of many characteristics of Nabokov’s style, but it is perhaps the most
subtle yet the most enduring of them all. It is a device that represents Nabokovian artifice
96
and originality in its many copies throughout his entire creative work. At times irony
turns into parody, satire, or farce. His saying that “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game”
(Strong Opinions 75) demonstrates the distinction the writer makes when he employs one
or the other. However, while other forms are most obvious, irony lurks in places often
unnoticed by even vigilant readers. Even the most serious of subjects cannot avoid the
mischievous implications of irony, as we witness in the execution scene when M’sieur
Pierre demonstrates to Cincinnatus and the public how to proceed with the beheading:
M’sieur Pierre, who had already put on a white apron (from under which his jack
boot showed) was carefully wiping his hands on a towel, and calmly,
benevolently looking around. As soon as the deputy director had finished, he
tossed the towel to his assistants and stepped over to Cincinnatus.
(The square black snouts of the photographers swayed and froze still.)
“No excitement, no fuss, please,” said M’sieur Pierre. “We shall first of all
remove our little shirt.”
“By myself,” said Cincinnatus.
“That’s the boy. Take the little shirt away, men. Now I shall show you how to lie
down.”
M’sieur Pierre dropped onto the block. The audience buzzed.
“Is this clear?” asked M’sieur Pierre, springing up and straightening his apron (it
had come apart at the back, Rodrig helped tie it). “Good. Let’s begin. The light is
a bit harsh…Perhaps you could…There, that’s fine. Thank you. Perhaps just a
wee bit more…Excellent! Now I shall ask you to lie down.” (221)
97
The irony in this segment is so subtle, its purpose so ambiguous, and its meaning so
complex, that every reader perhaps could find multiple interpretations of what is going on
in the scene. Most of it is generated by M’sieur Pierre’s appearance, demeanor, and
language: the apron that comes undone as if it is trying to slip off when he lies down onto
the block underscores the paradox of stripping away the last covers that society puts on
each of its members labeling them with roles; the towel he uses for wiping hands points
out the artificial gesture of unnecessary cleansing that will not help to wash away the
blood of his victim who is like a “boy.” M’sieur Pierre’s behavior seems to be a mixture
of some freakish excitement and theatrical farcical performance as seen in his “dropping
onto the block” and “springing up” from it. The retying of the apron can also be his
dressing up for the part as an actor before his act on stage, especially considering that
everything is happening on a raised platform. His playful teasing in the words “That’s the
boy. Take the little shirt away, men” comes off as a mockery at the least and as perverted
cruelty at the most. But he is not the only repository of irony in the scene. The audience
that is buzzing from anticipation adds to the grotesque fervor of this surreal event.
Furthermore, the author’s participation in the scene in a role of a director/stage manager
who intrudes with his comments (isolated in parenthesis) is probably the most peculiar
feature of this description. His remark about the apron and “the square black snouts” is
Nabokovian irony at its best. It reminds us about the ridiculousness of the situation and
hints at the true nature of its observers. Since the snouts belong to the photographers, the
idea of the mediated and, perhaps this time, distorted perception of the world through the
camera lens comes immediately to mind. Thus, within the context of the present
98
discussion about cinematic patterns, applied equally to stage or film, this particular
performance is what Nabokov would call a poshlost’.
However, irony, like other stylistic devices —alliteration, assonance, symbols,
metaphors, etc. —contributes to meaning in a variety of ways in its relation to narrative
structure, characterization, visual perception, and cinematic devices. Wyllie’s observation
about the role of irony in Laughter in the Dark is that flashbacks are perceptual
dimensions of the novel that give characters “a highly sophisticated mnemonic visual
capability, but at the same time amplifying the irony expressed in the novel’s central
theme of physical and moral blindness” (69). Speaking of cinematic perspectives in
Despair, she also notes that the deployment of film “serves as more than simply a means
of generating dramatic irony, however. Nabokov is touching on wider issues concerning
the relationship between literature and film and the possibilities of combining the two
modes to create new perspectives and narrative dimensions” (Wyllie 44). The
juxtaposition of these opinions reveals the development of the writer’s concept about
irony as a dramatic perspective in its transition from earlier to later works.
What makes Nabokov’s works, and particularly Invitation, multi-dimensional is
Nabokov’s synthesis of irony, parody, melodrama, and metaphysics, all used to show the
superiority of a writer’s creative force over a hostile, indifferent, and chaotic world
devoid of values. Language helps create such fictive dimensions where a creative mind
can explore the relation between reality and artifice.
99
Conclusion
Nabokov’s Invitation is the manifestation of the writer’s unique style comprised
of visual content and language as well as his deployment of cinematic techniques, all of
which prepared the success of his later fiction. Furthermore, the novel’s visual poetics—
its use of cinematic patterns and filmic devices—exemplifies the peculiarity of
Nabokov’s literary style and represent a starting point in the development of the more
sophisticated writing technique noticed in the later works, which succeeds in
transcending genre boundaries in literature and film. This is because Nabokov’s creative
work was influenced very early by his conception of art as a form of imaginative
expression that involves thinking in images. He created a complex system of visual
poetics, the elements of which manifest themselves in details of a plot, in character
sketches, in picturesque scenery, in vividness of landscapes, and in precision of language.
His preoccupation with film as well as personal experience of movies and the film
industry becomes a large part of his fiction, whether it is revealed in the characters who
manifest a direct connection or affection for the medium, or the stylistic devices that the
writer uses to achieve certain visual effects. This kind of “visual writing” and creation of
“cinematic moments,” to use Trottier’s terms, are characteristic features of Nabokov’s
prose that can be traced from his early experiments with fiction to his later more
sophisticated writing of a matured artist.
His role of the author as a visionary story-teller and as the sole creator of his
characters that submit to his ideas and act according to his directions is akin to the role of
a film director, a similarity that inspired many comparisons of Nabokov’s work process
100
to his predecessors and contemporaries in film. The writer’s treatment of filmic devices,
Wyllie asserts, “suggests that Nabokov was developing his own thesis of cinematics,
establishing film as the means by which he explored and evolved notions of time,
memory, and perception” (122). His diverse knowledge and skillful manipulation of
cinematic methods carries over into his prose, which exhibits peculiar patterns applicable
to fiction, stage or screenwriting alike. Such versatility of content representation as seen
in his novels encourages the incessant interest of filmmakers in adapting his works to
film.
Invitation to a Beheading, however, would not be considered by many an obvious
choice for a film adaptation for what may seem like the lack of cinematic qualities. For
many researchers, the novel presents difficulties in terms of its genre, characterization,
composition, and style, being the last of his Russian novels and standing on the cusp in
the writer’s transition to his new language of fiction, which English became after the
writer moved to America in 1939.
Genre identification of Nabokov’s novels has always been problematic, as the
overwhelming amount of criticism on the subject can attest. The diversity of visual means
and cinematic techniques only reflects the versatility of Nabokov’s novels that is already
there; thus, the puzzling question of mixed genre is one way to extend the discussion
about cinematic features and their functions in various interpretations of a Nabokovian
novel. The genre of novel is versatile in itself, but in Nabokov’s writing it reaches
another level of complexity: any of his novels has drama at its core, but it is often a
romance, a suspense thriller, with the features of comedy and tragedy, a supernatural
101
mystification, and psychological study. There is the whole genre misunderstanding that
happens in Laughter in the Dark, allegedly the most cinematic of his novels, which seems
to be a typical romance but, as Appel notes, mimics “the conventions of a thriller:
assumed names; clandestine meetings; swift cars; violent catastrophes; anti-climactic
surprises which mock suspense techniques; a concluding gun shot; a network of fateful
coincidences, coordinates marking the labyrinth in which Albinus is locked” (261).
The problem of genre identification makes Invitation to a Beheading one of the
most curious and challenging texts, which the author himself held in high esteem. The
majority of critics agree that the novel is extremely philosophical. It has been called a
dystopia, “the dream novel” (Lee 70), and a parody (Toker 140). It has often been
characterized as political because of its allusions to a totalitarian regime, in which many
critics saw the writer’s grudge against the government that caused him to live the rest of
his life in exile, though Nabokov always claimed his apolitical stance as a writer. It has
also been considered metaphysical due to its Kafkaesque nature; however, this
resemblance is simply coincidental as Nabokov stated that he never read Kafka or was
influenced by his ideas. The novel is deemed highly allegorical because of its apparent
symbolism bestowed onto characters and objects that are often unexpected. It has been
regarded as fantastic because of its “grotesque design” (Pifer 49). And this is not the full
list of genre characteristics that has been applied to the novel over the years.
The problem of defining the novel’s constituent subgenres is further complicated
by the writer’s choice of the protagonist and by other potentially confusing experiments
102
in form and style. Robert Alter warns against the deceptive impression the novel might
produce:
In the conventional novel of imprisonment, in the conventional fictional pattern of
crime and punishment, the sentencing of the hero would of course take place
toward the end, after a long and arduous development, so we are put on notice at
once that conventional expectations will be subverted in the particular fiction
before us. (43)
Subversion seems to be Nabokov’s goal, one that is achieved with technical virtuosity
and unique artistry. It concerns form and content as much as it does characterization and
style: the writer subverts novelistic genre and narrative conventions inasmuch as he
chooses an unorthodox type of hero and misappropriates some of the familiar stylistic
devices —all to expose the paradox between life and art.
This perplexing contradiction reveals itself through a plethora of mental puzzles,
of which the writer was so fond, which are directed at his reader. So who is Nabokov’s
perfect reader? The writer answers this question by saying that he writes “for artists,
fellow-artists and follow-artists” (Strong Opinions 41). Known for his peculiar
conception about approaching a literary text as “re-reading” or re-acquaintance with it,
his definition of “the pleasures of writing” demonstrates the connection between the two
processes:
[The pleasures of writing] correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading, the
bliss, the felicity of a phrase is shared by writer and reader: by the satisfied writer
and the grateful reader, or—which is the same thing—by the artist grateful to the
103
unknown force in his mind that has suggested a combination of images and by the
artistic reader whom this combination satisfies. (Strong Opinions 40)
The quotation illuminates the importance of relationship between the writer and the
reader, in which both are the artists of their own kind; both are in conversation with each
other. The multivalence of Nabokov’s narratives is what attracts generations of his
readers to his works. Whether it is Nabokov’s artistic originality or his rich, intricate
language, the readers undoubtedly respond to vivid cinematic images that trigger three-
dimensional visualizations of a written word. From this perspective, Nabokov’s work
represents an appealing material for the new generation of readers who live in the world
of omni-present visual culture.
Though there is still an on-going debate across disciplines about defining the
meaning of such terms as visual rhetoric, visual poetics, or just the visual, it remains true
that research and experimentation with these concepts foregrounds new approaches to the
study of the literary text. The relations between words and images or between writing and
design uncover multiple dimensions of literature and foster the multisided perceptions of
its readers.
104
Works Cited
Alexandrov, Vladimir E. Nabokov’s Otherworld. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991. Print.
Alighieri, Dante. “Letter to Can Grande della Scala” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts
and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. 3d ed. New York: Bedford,
2007. Print. 120-123.
Alter, Robert. “Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics.” Nabokov.
Alfred, Appel, Jr. and Charles Newman, eds. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1970.
Print.
Andrews, Larry R. “Deciphering ‘Signs and Symbols.’” Rivers and Nicol 139-152.
Appel, Alfred, Jr. Nabokov's Dark Cinema. New York: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.
Bienstock, Beverly Gray. “Focus Pocus: Film Imagery in Bend Sinister.” Rivers and
Nicol 125-138.
Bitsilli, P.M. “A Review of Invitation to a Beheading and The Eye.” Trans. D. Barton
Johnson. Proffer 63-69.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Print.
Field, Andrew. Nabokov, His Life in Part. New York: Viking, 1977. Print.
Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting. New York: Delacorte, 1982.
Print.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. Leitch 1490-1502.
Horton, Andrew. Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay. 2nd ed. Berkley: U of
105
California P, 1999. Print.
Johnson, D. Barton. Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Ann
Arbor: Ardis, 1985. Print.
Kobel, Peter. “Film; Nabokov Won’t Be Nailed Down.” The New York Times. 22 April
2001, np. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.
Lee, L. L. Vladimir Nabokov. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Print.
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2 ed. New York:
Norton, 2010. Print.
Leving, Yuri. “Filming Nabokov: On the Visual Poetics of the Text.” Russian Studies in
Literature, 40. 3, (Summer) 2004, 6–31. Web. 23 Oct. 2013
Lokrantz, Jessie Thomas. “The Underside of the Weave: Some Stylistic Devices Used by
Vladimir Nabokov.” Diss. Uppsala, 1973. Stockholm: Rotobeckman, 1973. Print.
Morton, Donald E. Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974.
Print.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Leitch 2084-2095.
Nabokov, Dmitri. “A Few Things That Must Be Said on Behalf of Vladimir Nabokov.”
Rivers and Nicol 35-42.
—, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. Eds. Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940-1977.
New York: HBJ, 1989. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Defense. New York: Putnam, 1964. Print.
—. Invitation to a Beheading. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author.
New York: Putnam, 1959. Print.
106
—. Kamera obskura. [Laughter in the Dark] Moscow: Act, 2006. Print.
—. Laughter in the Dark. New Directions 1938, New Edition, 1960. Print.
—. Lolita. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage International, 1997. Print.
—. Priglashenie na kazn’. [Invitation to a Beheading] Moscow: Act, 2006. Print.
—. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973. Print.
—. Zashchita Luzhina. [The Defense] Moscow: Act, 2006. Print.
Proffer, Carl R., ed. A Book of Things about Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1974.
Print.
Raguet-Bouvart, Christine. “Camera Obscura and Laughter in the Dark, or, The
Confusion of Texts.” Trans. Jeff Edmunds. Libraries PSU EDU. Np. Web. 11
Sept. 2013.
Rampton, David. Vladimir Nabokov. New York: St.Martin’s, 1993. Print.
Rivers, J.E., and Charles Nicol, eds. Nabokov’s Fifth Arc. Austin: U of Texas P, 1982.
Print.
Rowe, William Woodin. Nabokov’s Deceptive World. New York: New York UP, 1971.
Print.
Toker, Leona. Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.
Print.
Trottier, David. The Screenwriter’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and
SellingYour Script. 5th ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James, 2010. Print.
Tarkovsky, Andrei. “Conception and its Realization.” Lectures on Filmmaking. Media
Archive “Andrei Tarkovski.” 2008-2013. np. Web. 23 Oct. 2013
107
—. Title quote of 2003 Tarkovsky Festival Program. Pacific Film Archive. Nostalghia:
An Andrei Tarkovsky Information Site. 2003. np. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S.
Hacker and J. Schulte. 4th ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Ebook.
Wyllie, Barbara. Nabokov at the Movies: Film Perspectives in Fiction. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland & Co, 2003. Print.
Zeller, Nancy Anne. “The Spiral of Time in Ada.” Proffer 63-69.
108

Visual Poetics and Cinematic Images in Nabokov's Invitation To A Beheading

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Visual Poetics and Cinematic Images in Nabokov's Invitation To A Beheading

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

VISUAL POETICS AND CINEMATIC PATTERNS IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S

The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature

San José State University

of the Requirements for the Degree

Alesya Zvereva Petty

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

Alesya Zvereva Petty

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

VISUAL POETICS AND CINEMATIC PATTERNS IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S

Alesya Zvereva Petty

APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE

SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY

Dr. Paul Douglass Department of English and Comparative Literature

Dr. Robert Cullen Department of English and Comparative Literature

Dr. Noelle Brada-Williams Department of English and Comparative Literature

VISUAL POETICS AND CINEMATIC PATTERNS IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S

by Alesya Zvereva Petty

Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel Invitation to a Beheading (1936) that foregrounds

reader-writer relationships. Chapter One explores Nabokov’s idea of a visual narrative

and cinematic patterns in relation to certain methods of screenwriting. Chapter Two

mediated perception, which is closely related to the questions of character creation.

visual poetics produce a multi-sensory effect on the reader, establish reader-writer

relationships, and fulfill the artistic purpose of Nabokov’s prose.

me throughout my academic studies and work on this thesis.

Visualizing a Narrative: Nabokov’s Conception of Cinematic Patterns

in Invitation to a Beheading ……………………………………………………………..6

The Dichotomy of Nabokovian Characterization: Mediated Perception

and its Role in Character’s Aesthetic Perspective ………………………………………39

Semantics of Transcendence: Visual Content and Multisensory Experience

Through Style and Language in Nabokov’s Prose …...…….....….……………………..69

Works Cited ..…………………………………………………………………………..105

response requires some degree of insightfulness and attentiveness, demanding Nabokov’s

As he writes in the Forward to the collection of his interviews in 1973:

(Strong Opinions xiii)

readers of the respectable magazine Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes) in which

title Priglasheniye na kazn’ [literally translated as Invitation to an Execution]—that

style, which functions as a narrative device as well as an element of Nabokovian

himself, who tests his reader with mind-bending puzzles.

Paris, became known as Invitation to a Beheading in its English translation, made by

virtually unknown to English-speaking audiences. The lack of scholarship in regard to

which represents an amalgam of allegorical, metaphysical, political, and other subgenres.

commercial industry. Chapter Two investigates various means of characterization in the

or a cover of a magazine. It also analyzes the role of language in developing thematic

so appealing to filmmakers, viewers, and readers alike.

Visualizing a Narrative: Nabokov’s Conception of Cinematic Patterns

The current generation of Nabokov’s readers seem to be taken by his visually

Literature: Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov” by Michael Lackey, 2013), or Proust (“Nabokov,

the adaptability of Nabokov’s prose to other media due to the multivalence of

patterns in his fiction, which will be the focus of this chapter.

cinematically and often go unapprehended.

noticed by the ladies he brought to the movie.

conceptualization of Lolita decades later (118). Nabokov even switched to German

then newly-released book, the author would write:

cinematophors into my literary compositions cannot be contested of course, but

do we have TV at home (except when soccer competitions take place). (Letters

This passage attests to Nabokov’s general interest in competition, as in The Defense,

both as a novelist and a screenwriter comes into consideration: working on a screenplay

and allowed him to go behind the scenes of cinema.

Nabokov’s insightful judgment of character, including his own, prompted him to

characters desiring to become part of the glamorous world of movies —Margo in

cinematic detail serves as an integral dimension of narrative structure, exposition of

character, theme, motif, even metaphysical discourse” (5).