Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

More documents

Recommendations

Info

A. Moudrov. “Nabokov’s Invitation to Plato’s Beheading” the day of his death (Crito, 44a-b). 3 Later on Nabokov makes a jocular reference to “the new comic opera Socrates Must Decrease” (220) which was performed right on the day of Cincinnatus’ execution. Finally, as if evoking Socrates’ beliefs in the afterlife, Cincinnatus apparently reaches the realm beyond after his execution. Nabokov’s persistent but notably inconsistent adaptation of Platonic references appears to symbolize the writer’s conflicted attitude toward the philosopher. At times, Nabokov clearly satirizes Plato—often simplifying and actually misreading his ideas the way he did it with Freud. At other times, however, in this novel and elsewhere, we can discern clear signs of “a conscious Platonism” in this and other works, particularly when in one of his essays he compared an artist to “the enchanter in his cave,” both partaking “in the same sacred danger” (“Art of Literature” 372). Such an inconsistency of Platonic references bespeaks some fundamental and yet unexplained tensions in Nabokov’s prose which this essay attempts to unravel. In contrast to the efforts of other commentators who occasionally pointed out Platonic elements in his writing, 4 my goal in this essay is to explain the Platonic theme of Invitation to a Beheading precisely in terms of the conflictedness and tension between Nabokov’s artistic sensibilities and his interpretation of Plato—a great example of a Modernist writer in conflict with Antiquity. 3 Plato’s texts are quoted from the following translations: Crito, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in The Last Days of Socrates (New York: Penguin, 1993). Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1977). Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992). Timaeus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961: pp.1151-1211). 4 Vladimir Alexandrov explored the “metaphysical” and, to a lesser extent, “Neoplatonic” aspects of Nabokov’s prose in Nabokov’s Other World. Dieter E. Zimmer’s notes to the German edition of Invitation to a Beheading (Reinbeck be Hamburg: Rohwohlt, 1990) briefly discuss a few Platonic references as well.
NOJ / НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journal, Vol. I / 2007 Nabokov’s antipathy toward Plato grew out of his distinctly modernist sensibilities as well as personal experiences. Overall, he might have felt some dissatisfaction with the philosopher’s lasting authority in such questions as metaphysics, the nature of art, and the relation of art to politics, all of which came under intense scrutiny during the social cataclysms of the twentieth century. It seems that the kind of experiences which Nabokov went through, and which many of his contemporaries shared, had pushed Plato out of favor. A refugee from the Soviet Russia and Fascist Germany, Nabokov must have been quite suspicious of the kind of political ideas which one can discern, mistakenly or not, in Plato’s Republic and some other dialogs. Plato’s famous vision of the perfect state, in which everything, including art, is subjugated by the state’s interests, was more real than Nabokov and his contemporaries really wanted. He was not alone in reacting against it. 5 Nabokov also held in contempt the notion that art is an inferior and even dangerous intellectual endeavor. Socrates, who is generally (even if naively) seen as a stand-in for Plato, often emphasized the intellectual inferiority of art. He usually contrasted artistic endeavors with high aspirations of philosophy which aim at the knowledge in its highest form (Republic 595a-608a). At one point, he famously declared that an artist “produces work that is inferior with respect to truth and that appeals to a part of the soul that is similarly inferior rather than top the best part” (605a). This led him to conclude that poets should be excluded from the perfect state. Nabokov, a refugee from the “perfect” states, could easily relate his experience to that of an exiled poet, and he 5 Many twentieth-century readers of Plato could not ignore what appears to be Plato’s totalitarian streak. Karl Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) is a perfect example of a reader’s dismay at Plato’s fascination with the ideal states. Other classics of anti-Platonism include Warner Fite’s Platonic Legend (1934) and R.H.S. Crossman’s Plato Today (1937).
Page 1 and 2: NOJ / НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journa
Page 3: NOJ / НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journa
Page 19: NOJ / НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journa

Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?