I have reservations about Augustine as the source of "dispersion of will." Somehow, the German words Zerstreuung and Wille keep popping up in my mind, i.e., Nietzsche. Do these ring any bells out there? Johns Burt Foster in his _Nabokov's Art of Memory and Eurpean Modernism_ posits a Mary-Nietzsche connection but I don't recall the details.