Don B. Johnson: Food for
(s)peculation. "I am Sebastian, or
Sebastian is I, or perhaps we are both someone neither of us knows"...
None of the historical persons or places evoked
by the name seem to be obviously connected to
VN's novel (see www below). In an idle moment it ocurred to me that the first
syllable of the name echoes the Russian pronoun SEBYA meaning "one's
self ." Given the tangled relationship between the
narrating half -brother and his brother Sebastain, I wonder if this
pseudo-etymology sheds any light on the novel.Tennis, anyone?
JM: I was reminded of Rimbauds oft-quoted lines: " Je est un
autre" ( "I is another").
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[Page Stegner links the name in RLSK to the
Portuguese king, Dom Sebastião. The origin of "Sebastianism"
is described by John Dryden (another writer of "The Restauration.")
and Nabokov's novel is a "transmutation" of sorts.]