EDNOTE. Kurt Johnson is co-author of NABOKOV's BLUES, a delightful study of N as a lepidopterist by a lepidopterist.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Johnson, Kurt
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 11:49 AM
Subject: RE: VN & Preventive War.

Winston Churchill's grandson, in speaking of his grandfather originally drawing the boundaries of Iraq and Jordan on CNN the other night, noted that the two main policy views Winston Churchill Sr. advocated but was never able to carry out were (a) creating a Kurdistan and (b) launching a pre-emptive war against Stalin.   So, it seems to have been a rather major policy "stream" at the time, evidently mostly forgotten by now.
 
Kurt Johnson 
-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 1:42 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: VN & Preventive War.

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 6:05 PM
Subject:

EDNOTE. Ubiratan Mascarenhas, the Brazilian publisher  (Ars Poetica) of avant-garde literature  sends
 Nabokv-L the following. English translation provided by Jansy de Mello.
 
----------------------------
 
The relativity of our points of view in relation to our distance in time
A relatividade dos pontos de vistas diante da distância do tempo
 
I just came across in the Biography of Vladimir Nabokov a pearl about relativity, the distance in time:
acabo de ver na biografia de Vladimir Nabokov uma pérola da relatividade...da distância do tempo:
 
Vol.2 de Brian Boyd, pg. 144,
 
According to Brian Boyd, VN, while
explaining to the editor Katharine White the reason why he was critical about three lines in her husband´s E.B.White play about the American Eagles and the Russian Bears, wrote:
ele, explicando à editora Katharine White porque ele criticou três linhas da peça do marido dela, E.B.White, sobre as Eagles americanas e os Ursos russos:
 
".... /  What I really meant was the lameness and futility of hoping the Bears might change (if it were physically and psychologically possible, I would suggest invading the Bears' territory at once)."
 
Nabokov's bracketed afterthought may seem bizarre at this distance, but at the time even Bertrand Russell was ready to advocate a preventive war against Russian before Stalin built up a nuclear arsenal and the power to destroy the world.
 
(Brian Boyd)