Nabokov's Invitation to a (Re)Birthing

• In Event: Liberating Nabokov: From Critical Approaches to Textual Discoveries

Abstract

In this paper I argue that several examples of highly specific imagery around birth in Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, including numerous references to newborns and swaddling clothes, an umbilical cord connection worlds, an embryonic self, and the prisoner’s final and helpful visitation by his midwife mother, clearly point to a birth/rebirth motif in the novel. These set the stage for what might be considered the final (re)birth of the Cincinnatus at the end of the novel, which also liberates him from Nabokov’s text and the absurd world in which he had been trapped.

Author

• Sara Pankenier Weld, UC Santa Barbara