Monday's Excerpts - Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

     The song “EAT ME, DRINK ME” has always been special to me because of all the references made to various works of literature I’ve enjoyed. Its richness makes it so much more enjoyable for the ears and heart.
     From a desire to comprehend with as much clarity what Manson’s intention for “EAT ME, DRINK ME” as a whole, I’ve sought out the works unfamiliar to me. This started with Lolita in December of last year, leading me to I fall in love with Nabokov’s abrasive, yet romantic, no-fear writing style, as well as his concept of a pilot light, and farther into love’s cloudy red abyss, my romantic affair with word painting.

     Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with Invitation to a Beheading, although not entirely of Nabokov’s fault. The publishing company wrote an entire synopsis of the story for the back cover, destroying any surprise that could have existed, and would have been very enjoyable. However, the length of Invitation’s dull moments cannot be ignored, and justified by fault of the publishing company.

     The best way I can describe Invitation to a Beheading is this: the good parts are magnificent, the boring parts are like listening to annoying gnats fly around your head. You know they won’t go away, so you deal with them, and read on, hoping to spot a butterfly.

This Week's Book: Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

Chapter Four
     “But then perhaps” (Cincinnatus began to write rapidly on a sheet of ruled paper) “I am misinterpreting... Attributing to the epoch... This wealth... Torrents... Fluid transitions... And the world really never was... Just as... But how can these ruminations help my anguish? Oh, my anguish—what shall I do with you, with myself? How dare they conceal from me... I, who must pass through an ordeal of supreme pain, I, who, in order to preserve a semblance of dignity (anyway I shall not go beyond silent pallor—I am no hero anyway...), must during that ordeal keep control of all my faculties, I, I... am gradually weakening... the uncertainty is horrible—well, why don’t you tell me, do tell me—but no, you have me die anew every morning... On the other hand, were I to know, I could perform... a short work... a record of verified thoughts... Some day someone would read it and would suddenly feel just as if he had awakened for the first time in a strange country. What I mean to say is that I would make him suddenly burst into tears of joy, his eyes would melt, and, after he experiences this, the world will seem to him cleaner, fresher. But how can I begin writing when I do not know whether I shall have time enough, and the torture comes when you say to yourself, ‘Yesterday there would have been enough time’—and again you think, ‘If only I had begun yesterday...’ And instead of the clear and precise work that is needed, instead of a gradual preparation of the soul for that morning when it will have to get up, when—when you, soul, will be offered the executioner’s pail to wash in—Instead, you involuntarily indulge in banal senseless dreams of escape—alas, of escape... Today, when she came running in, stamping and laughing—that is, I mean—No, I still out to record, to leave something. I am not an ordinary—I am the one among you who is alive—Not only are my eyes different, and my hearing, and my sense of taste—not only is my sense of smell like a deer’s, my sense of touch is like a bat’s—but, most important, I have the capacity to conjoin all of this in one point—No, the secret is not revealed yet—even this is but the flint—and I have not even begun to speak of the kindling, of the fire itself. My life. . . .”(Pages 51-52)

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Chapter Five
    “No, not everything—tomorrow you will come,” Cincinnatus said aloud, still trembling from his recent swoon. “What shall I say to you,” he continued thinking, murmuring, shuddering. “What will you say to me? In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsmen and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B… without looking, or, without lifting the pencil… or in some other way… we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.” (Pages 60-61)

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Chapter Nineteen
    “Everything has fallen into place” he wrote, “that is, everything has duped me—all of this theatrical, pathetic stuff—the promises of a volatile maiden, a mother’s moist gaze, the knocking on the wall, a neighbor’s friendliness, and, finally, those hills which broke out in a deadly rash. Everything has duped me as it fell into place, everything. This is the dead end of this life, and I should not have sought salvation within its confines. It is strange that I should have sought salvation. Just like a man grieving because he has recently lose in his dreams something that he had never had in reality, or hoping tat tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw. I have discovered it. I have discovered the little crack in life, where it broke off, where it had once been soldered to something else, something genuinely alive, important and vast—how capacious my epithets must be in order that I may pour them full of crystalline sense… it is best to leave some things unsaid, or else I shall get confused again. Within this irreparable little crack decay has set in—ah, I think I shall yet be able to express it all—the dreams, the coalescence, the disintegration—no, again I am back off the track—all my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples. Oh, if only I had known that I was yet to remain here for such a long time, I would have begun at the beginning and gradually, along a high  road of logically connected ideas, would have attained, would have completed, my soul would have surrounded itself with a structure of words… Everything that I have written here so far is only the froth of my excitement, a senseless transport, for the very reason that I have been in such a hurry. But now, when I am hardened, when I am almost fearless of…” (Pages 204-205)

Books read this past week...
★★★☆☆ Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

(All title links link back to my webpages of them on Goodreads.com, a great library/reviewing/rating website for readers. Check it out, and add me as a friend if you decide to join!)