著者

杉本 一直

出版者

日本ロシア文学会

雑誌

ロシア語ロシア文学研究 (ISSN:03873277)

巻号頁・発行日

no.23, pp.55-69, 1991-10-01

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Reading Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheding (1937), we can find two features which makes the novel seem different from the ordinary novels based on the third person. The first feature is distinctive way of presenting a fiction to the reader, while the second is bold devices of style. The interaction of these two features brings a strange ending of the story. Let's follow the process. The protagonist, Cincinnatus, is a prisoner to be executed, whose crime is unknown to the reader, or, rather, he hasn't committed any crime at all. That means a prison and a prisoner are lying here just as a fictional setting, and the details of the crime haven't been created. In the same way, the setting as to time and space of this story remains obscure enough for the reader to find that beyond the stage of a prison there exists nothing concrete. Thus the protagonist is forced to stand in the simplest, minimum setting, which reminds us the plays of Beckett. Such extreme fictiousness of this work is reinforced by the element of play. The characters always appear with makeup, with wings and padding, and so on. And we notice the more interesting fact that Cincinnatus himself recognizes such fictiousness or such element of play, as is illustrated in his words, such as "I'll act to the end my role in your idiotic play". Like an actor, Cincinnatus belongs to the fiction just partly or temporarily. In this respect the fiction of this novel is presented on two levels, saying, on the level of the protagonist and on the level of the fictious stage. This is the first feature of Invitation to a Beheading. Half of Cincinnatus thus takes part in the "play", while the other half is absorbed in thinking and writing down his thoughts, so that Cincinnatus's words, in the form of the first person sentences, occupy a considerable part of the text. Furthermore, Cincinnatus's thinking and imagination creep in the third person sentences of narration. In some cases, the narration describes the visions which Cincinnatus's imagination produces as if they were actually going on on the fictional stage, for they are described in a deliberately "low-keyed", calm tone, such as that in which one narrates customarily the commonplace. And that prevents us from knowing imaginary visions from actual matters. These stylistic devices, where the elements of fantasy and actuality are intentionally mixed, turn out to be the second feature of this novel. When Cincinnatus's fantasy creeps in the narration this way, the order and objectivity on the fictional stage may break down. We can see such breakdowns from time to time in the course of the novel, but they boldly appear especially in the last chapter. While Cincinnatus daydreams on the way to the beheading platform, the fictional stage is pulled down little by little, which means, of course, narration describes Cincinnatus's daydream as if were real. And finally, on the platform, Cincinnatus's daydream completely controls narration, so that the whole fictional stage collapses into dust. In this work Nabokov presents a fiction as a readily broken set like that of a western film beyond which there is nothing but a wilderness, and after that he pulls down this fiction with stylistic devices. So I dare say the real story of Invitation to a Beheading is performed by style and bare fictiousness.