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Re: Idle note on Sebastian (Knight)
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Dear Mr Johnson,
Michael Maar in his recent study "Speak Nabokov" suggests the name being connected to the christian saint associated to gays. Nabokovs brother and uncle were gay and he himsels seems to have been very troubled with that (exactly as his father who had written an article in favor of de-penalizing homosexuality in Russia).
Nabokov would have tried to imagine how Sergey, his brother, would have lived his brothers attitude towards him... (at the same time as trying to imagine what Vera might have felt if he would have left her for Irina G).
He elaborates the idea further, it's worth reading !
I'm always a little bit troubled though with VN so insisting on keeping the life of the author out of literary analysises.
Koen
Hoping I gave a correct short account of MMs idea as to the name of SK ....
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 11:36:17 -0700
From: chtodel@COX.NET
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Idle note on Sebastian (Knight)
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
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?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevastopol#Etymology_of_the_name
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