Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000352, Tue, 25 Oct 1994 10:30:38 -0700

Subject
Re: beheading (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexander Dolinin <dolinin@facstaff.wisc.edu>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu>

In my notes to the Russian translation of *Sebastian Knight*
(Nabokov V. Romany. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1991) I indicated
a possible source of the allusion to the snapshot of a Chinese being
vigorously beheaded -- a photo reproduced in 1924 in *IKS*(the Illustrative
Supplement to Riga newspaper *Segodnia*) with the caption "Beheading in
Siam." The photo captured the very moment of beheading when the head was
still spinning in the air. I am sure that similar sensational photos can be
found in other Russian emigre illustrative editions of the 1920s and 1930s
-- *Illiustrirovannaia Rossiia*, in particular. AD