Nabokov and Merezhkovsky: on the possible polemic subtext of “Invitation to a beheading”

The paper discusses the parodical plan of V. Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading” dealing with the name of D.S. Merezhkovsky. The author examines Nabokov’s allusions to Merezhkovsky’s prose and to the facts of his biography. One of the keys to this polemic subtext is Merezhkovsky’s translation of Baudelaire’s poem “Invitation to the Voyage”. The author comes to the conclusion, that Merezhkovsky and his prose was for Nabokov a convenient object for parody at the period he reconsidered the main principles of his poetics.