My copy of Invitation to a Beheading starts with a foreword where Nabakov specifically denies any connection to a number of authors, singling out Orwell and Kafka in particular for no denial.  Nabakov is a writer who is particularly unreliable in what he says about his own work, and Orwell and Kafka are the correct comparitors here.  Th book is very much like Kafka and has obvious affinities with The Trial.   Nabakov denies having read any Kafka at the point he wrote Beheading and there is no reason to disbelieve him, but this book is trying to do something very similar.  Both depict a world where someone has been charged with a crime whose very nature is obscure.  In both the worlds are bizarre and irrational.  Both are concerned at least in part with the irrational forces then gripping the European continent.  Of the two, however, Kafka is by far the best, and while Beheading is worthy, it is not as good as The Trial or as Nabakov's later works.

 

Along with Orwell, Nabakov is one of the two great writers about oppression of the twentieth century.  While their styles are very different, there views on oppression are virtually the same.  Nabakov is not at his best here.  The bizarre word interferes with his depictions of the delusional nature of oppressors and he is always at his best when writing from the oppressors vantage point rather than the oppressed.  However, Nabakov is still a great writer and while this only prefigures what is to come, its well worth reading, presuming that you have already read The Trial and Lolita.

 

Good but not great.

Why should I remember this word? Because it's something I've been fascinated by since I was a child - stories where the character picks up his/her decapitated head, and then goes merrily on his/her way - or has a chat with bystanders.

Cephalophore: (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Handling the halo in this circumstance offers a unique challenge for the artist. Some put the halo where the head used to be; others have the saint carrying the halo along with the head. [all of that via wikipedia]

Which is why it was weird when I bumped into the word yesterday and couldn't immediately remember what it meant. Because it's been in a lot of books I've read - but wait, first, a photo...

 

I was particularly fascinated by this sculpture when I was on a trip to Paris as a teenager (not my photo btw, it's via wikipeida, info linked below):

 

Saint Denis and his head, at Notre Dame de Paris. See much larger version of this image on wikipedia here - it's currently what I'm using as my desktop background. Love the expressions on the angels' faces. Wikipedia captioned it (on this page): "St. Denis's [head] has angelic companions showing him polite concern."

 

This "head carrying" seemed to happen quite a bit with Christian saints, though it also seems to be a story that comes up in other cultures - and in non-saint situations like Gawain and the Green Knight.

 

On the topic of saints, if you're a fan of horror you should check out some of the various books on lives of the saints, because those stories have all sorts of gruesome bits, besides the walking headless - humans being skinned alive, being cooked on a griddle, carrying their eyeballs or breasts (removed under torture) on plates, etc. (You really have to wonder about the people who wrote all this stuff down because, yeek, serious torture porn in there.) Yes, I was the kid who was too squeamish to read Stephen King, but was fascinated by Foxe's Book of Martyrs (I skimmed a lot to get to the weird/gross bits) - not the first time that my reading choices aren't entirely logical.

 

[Yes, I should have a helpful book link here, but I can't seem to find the version of Foxe I read - here's the Gutenberg link to another one. However if you want to read a more humorous version of all the saint hooha, I did enjoy Saints Preserve Us! Everything You Need to Know About Every Saint You'll Ever Need - short summaries of all the saints, in alphabetical order, focusing on all the weirder bits of the legends. You can read the excerpt at that Amazon link to see if it's your kind of thing. It's not into the Heavy Christian Message thing, or proselytizing, but again, read the sample.]

[I could totally go off on a tangent here about how I do not get how gross-out stories of gory deaths and sadism was ever supposed to work as "rah rah, conversion time!" material - I've always thought of it as historical campfire stories or perhaps true crime type gossip - but since I haven't read any books on that aspect, and this is long enough already - tangent squelched!]

 

Randomly if anyone comes across a book of cephalophore ghost/horror stories let me know - doesn't it sound like there should already be an anthology like this?!

 

More links:

 

Wikipedia's Cephalophore Category page, 31 examples

 

Winner of the Best Multiple Cephalophore Example: Felix and Regula (and Exuperantus) (wikipedia), photo of nice stone carving and more info here (Felix and Regula are patron saints of Zurich)

 

Shrine o' Dreams blog post: Cephalophores has many photos of art  - paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and statuary

 

Humorous MetaFilter post on Cephalophores from 2012 which I feel fairly certain I read back then, and from which I snagged a few of the links here, such as...

 

They Might Be Giants song You Probably Get That A Lot, which I own, but did I remember the Cephalorephore part? Nooo! Lyrics (at TMBG wiki page):

Do you mind, excuse me

I saw you over there

Can I just tell you

Although there are millions of

Cephalophores that wander through this world

You've got something extra going on

I think you probably know

You probably get that a lot

I'll bet that people say that a lot to you, girl

 

 

And to end all this - here's a song I usually listen to around Halloween - about Anne Boleyn:

 

With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm (wikipedia)

YouTube: link! (3 min)

 

[Note: cheesy images in this video, but hey, it's a comedy/music hall song. Also this was the version that had the best audio.]

 

 

 

Fifty pages in, I feel like I've given this a good shake and I can move on. You have to care about something when you read a book: the story, a character, maybe even the technique. Something, at any rate. Nothing comes to mind for this one. While Nabokov stated in an interview that of all his novels he held the greatest affection for Lolita, it was Invitation to a Beheading that he held in the greatest esteem, he said at the same time:

My advice to a budding literary critic would be as follows. Learn to distinguish banality. Remember that mediocrity thrives on "ideas." Beware of the modish message. Ask yourself if the symbol you have detected is not your own footprint. Ignore allegories. By all means place the "how" above the "what" but do not let it be confused with the "so what." Rely on the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs. Do not drag in Freud at this point. All the rest depends on personal talent.

What a wanker.

I know I'm in the wild here, not kowtowing to the idea of Nabokov, but the time will come where he is reassessed and found wanting. As far as I can see, he is too clever by half. One needs more than intellect to make writing work, to make it other than banal. He's not only a wanker, but a darn smug one and one wonders why. It isn't enough to pepper everything you write with corny sexual metaphor. Speaking of which, I feel like, as a consequence of reading the first pages of this, my dorsal hairs couldn't get it up with a dose of viagra now.

Tim Winton, get me over this unhappy affair. Cloudstreet is my recovery play.

What a feeling of loneliness I felt was evoked by this text...

In a world where translucency is valued and opaqueness is a social sin, a man finds himself convicted of a crime he didn't commit, but can't plead innocent to. In Invitation to a Beheading we get to spend some time with him as he awaits his impending decapitation.I don't think anyone else could have pulled this off, but Nabokov brilliantly, as usual, blurs the lines between fiction and science fiction and delivers a great story.