Invitation to a Beheading, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Speak, Memory are three books written by Vladimir Nabokov in his mature years of literary production. Like his other important books, they embody his idea of literary independence and autonomy, crossing boundaries between fiction and "reality", past and present, history and literature. By repeating and symbolizing social rituals while simultaneously establishing a series of anti-rituals, Nabokov attempts to reshape discourses of power through his reconstruction of the Dionysian spirit of Greek tragedy, his reversal of the Platonic "Idea" and his invention of historical authority. The purpose is to exercise his own privilege as a writer in arousing, monitoring and manipulating his literary longings for the "otherworldliness", that long-lost but regained "Russia" as a result of his unique and imaginative art.