2017 # 5 (25)
Zlochevskaya A.V.
V. Nabokov Novel «Invitation to a Beheading»: Spiritual Individuality in the Focus of Metaphysical and Meta-Literary Problems
Abstract
The novel under study is V. Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading”, its inner structure specifically. In the allegorical form the author recreates the paradigm of the existence of an individual awareness at the centre of a three-fold picture of the world, in the focus where the empirical-transcendental-metaliterary realities interlace. At the heart of this tripartite model there exists the individual consciousness of Nabokov’s protagonist C. Cintinnat. He is not a victim, not a powerless toy in the hands of three forces of Universe. Rather he himself breaks up with the world of material illusion to transit to the level of metaliterary other-world existence.
Key words
V. Nabokov, V. Sirin, “Invitation to a Beheading”, mystical metaprose of the 20th century, genre, allegory, Russian literature of the 20th century, literature of Russian emigration