EDNote: Victor Fet's discovery relates to a passage from
The Gift in which Fyodor reports that his father enjoyed describing his encounter with the cyclists featured in the exhibit below, Allen and Sachtleben. I don't have access to the English at the moment. -SB
И отец любил рассказывать, как однажды на таком закате, в 1893 году, в мертвом сердце Гобийской пустыни он повстречал,
-- сначала приняв их за призраки, занесенные игрою лучей, -- двух велосипедистов в китайских сандалиях и круглых фетрах, американцев
Сахтлебена и Аллена, невозмутимо совершавших спортивную поездку через всю Азию в Пекин.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [NABOKV-L] The Gift cyclists photo exhibit in UCLA
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2014 13:45:36 +0000
From: Fet, Victor
<fet@marshall.edu>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
<NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
An Allen & Sachteben photo exhibition will be opening in December at the Fowler Museum at UCLA:
http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/round-trip-bicycling-asia-minor-1891
Round Trip: Bicycling Asia Minor, 1891 features sixty circular black-and-white photographs taken by the cyclists and reproduced from recently scanned negatives held by the UCLA Library Special Collections. The images track a year on the road between Athens,
Greece and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The accompanying captions are based on Sachtleben’s meticulous notes, written on the envelopes that contained each original negative. The exhibition will possibly travel across the country.
This exhibition is organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA in partnership with UCLA Library Special Collections and guest-curated by David V. Herlihy, historian and author of Bicycle: The History and Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and
His Mysterious Disappearance.