SEBASTIAN CONTRA MUNDUM
"I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him.That was unavoidable for,from his first week,he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty,which was arresting,and his eccentricities of behaviour,which seemed to know no bounds.My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's,and on that occassion,I was struck less by his looks and more by the fact he was carrying a large teddy-bear".(Charles Ryder)
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
I first saw the television production of the
Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited when it was shown in the late 1990s on British TV,and I fell in love with the story straight away,by far my favourite character and the person I found most intriguing was Lord Sebastian Flyte,portrayed by actor Anthony Andrews in the programme.
I suppose it's because I felt I had some understanding of Sebastian,I've been obsessed with him ever since.One thing that struck me about the book,was how Sebastian's character fades out,in the middle of the book,(even Anthony Andrews felt Evelyn Waugh had under written Sebastians character)to hardly be heard of again until cordelia recounts to Charles her meeting with Sebastian in the monastry in North Africa ,where Sebastian was ill and being nursed back to health by the monks.Sebastian was to spend a great part of his life living in exile in Africa with his German friend Kurt and never,as far as we know returns home.
There are so many questions about Sebastian that remain unanswered.Why was he so possesive?,how did Anthony Blanche know so much about him and his family(although Sebastian dismissed this).Without doubt Sebastian loved Charles.
I think an introduction to Sebastian is in order....
SEBASTIAN FLYTE
Blonde and charming with a seemingly sweet and gentle nature(we discover he hates fox hunting),Lord Sebastian flyte is the middle child and youngest son of Lord and Lady Marchmain.His parents divorced when he was a child,but he remained on good terms with his father,who himself left England to live in exile in Italy.
The oldest of the Marchmain children was Brideshead,decribed by Anthony Blanche,one of Sebastians oh so witty f-f-friends as"archaic"and "having a face as though an Aztec sculptor had attempted a portrait of Sebastian;.
Next his sister Julia ,Anthony Blanche cruelly decribes her thus...."So gay,so correct,so unaffected.I wonder if she's incestuous.I doubt it;all she wants is power."
Last of all the youngest Marchmain,Cordelia the "fervent Catholic",the first thing we learn about Cordelia,is that her nanny drowned herself.She is the only one in the book apart from Charles to truly love and understand Sebastian.
Charles Ryder first meets Sebastian when they are both studying at Oxford,the eccentric Lord Sebastian introduces the middle class Charles to a life he's never known before,they become inseparable,and through his friendship with Sebastian Charles is able to experiance the blissful carefree time(childhood) he missed out on while growing up.It was a time he would describe as"being very near heaven,during those languid days at Brideshead."
Heaven but at what cost?.The moment Charles meets Sebastian's family everything changes,and Sebastian has lost his soul mate.
Kurt the "wolfish" looking young man(most people in the story seem to dislike him,and are unable to understand the appeal of him to Sebastian) is the person Sebastian ,decides to live with while in exile in Morocco,he is decribed by a monk who looked after Sebastian:
"there is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal and secondary syphilis,who comes here for treatment.Lord Flyte found him starving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home.A real samaritan.'
SOME QUOTES ABOUT SEBASTIAN,AND SOME MADE BY SEBASTIAN
Sebastian when telling Charles about his parents divorce.
"It upset me at the time.Mummy tried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn't hate papa.I was the only one who didn't.I belive she wishes I did.I was always his favourite."
Sebastian talking to Charles about his familys Catholic faith.
'So you see we're a mixed family religiously.Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent Catholics;he's miserable,she's bird-happy;Julia and I are half-heathen;I am happy,I rather think Julia isn't;mummy is popularly belived to be a saint and papa is excommunicated-and I wouldn't know which of them was happy.Anyway,however you look at it happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it,and that's all I want.....I wish I liked Catholic's more.'
Another quote by Sebastian,when the subject of his faith comes up yet again:
Charles :'Well I can't say I've noticed it.Are you struggling against temptation?You don't seem much more virtuous than me.'
Sebastian:'I'm very,very much wickeder,'
Sebastian:'Who was it used to pray,"O God,make me good,but not yet"?'
Lord Marchmain's mistress Cara,talking to Charles about Sebastian.
'Sebastian is in love with his own childhood.That will make him very unhappy.His teddy-bear,his nanny.....and he is nineteen years old.....'
Charles when thinking about his first summer term at Oxford with Sebastian.
'It seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known,a happy childhood,and though it's toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and it's naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins,there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence."
Charles and Sebastian enjoy a day out in Swindon,under the elm trees they eat strawberries and drink wine.
'Just the place to bury a crook of gold,'Said Sebastian.'I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then,when I was old and miserable,I could come back and dig it up and remember.'
Sebastian to Charles,when Charles first visits Brideshead,and Charles wondered why he is not able to meet Sebastians family.
'I'm not going to have you get mixed up with my family.They're all so madly charming.All my life they've been taking things away from me.If they once got hold of you with their charm,they'd make you their friend not mine,and I won't let them.'
Charles begins to notice Sebastian withdraw from his friendship,and escape into alcohol(a dark sign of things to come).
'I had no mind then for anything but Sebastian,and I saw him already as being threatened,though I did not yet know how black was the threat.His constant,despairing prayer was to be let alone.By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a polynesian;only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef,and the cutter beached in the lagoon,and,up the slope that had never known the print of a boot,there trod the grim invasion of trader,administrater,missionary,and tourist-only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills;or,more easily,to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness,where the impotent,painted deities paraded the walls in vain,and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.'
Sebastian tells Charles of his secret Christmas drinking binge in London,when no one in his family was even aware that he had been missing .
'yes I was determined to have a happy Christmas.'
'Did you?'
'I think so.I don't remember it much,and thats always a good sign,isn't it?'
Charles visits Sebastian in hospital in Morocco,Charles brings Sebastian the news that his mother is very ill.
Sebastian:
'Poor mummy.She really was a femme fatale,wasn't she?she killed at a touch.'
Charles keeps visiting Sebastian daily until Sebastian was well enough to move.Sebastian explained how he means to spend his life with his German friend Kurt.It is at this time Sebastian says the words that Charles belive in hindsight were the key to all Sebastians woes.
'You know Charles,'he said,'it's rather a pleasent change when all your life you've had people looking after you,to have someone to look after yourself.Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me'.
Charles remembers something Julia once said to him about his old friend Sebastian who has now been living for years in exile.
'It's frightening,to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.''He was the forerunner.'
Cordelia tells Charles of her meeting with Sebastian,Sebastian is ill due to his alcoholism,his only friend Kurt has committed suicide in a concentration camp,he turns up at a monastery and asked to be admitted as a lay brother,a job he isn't fit for because of his drinking.The superior there had told cordelia'
"Please do not think think there is any doubt of that-he is quite sane and quite in earnest."
Instead Sebastian will become a under-porter,as Cordelia say's,
"there are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house,you know people who can't quite fit in either to the world or the monastic rule."
Cordelia has always understood Sebastian though,and tells Charles when he thinks of the sorry down fall of "the youth with the teddy-bear under the flowering chestnuts":
"one can have no idea what the suffering may be,to be maimed as he is-no dignity,no power of will.No one is holy without suffering.It's taken that form with him...."
CONTRA MUNDUM
Sebastian contra mundum,is Latin for'with Sebastian,against the world',it's an expression of profound loyalty,used often between Charles and Sebastian in the story,when things start going wrong for Sebastian.
ST. ALOYSIUS AND ST.SEBASTIAN
St.Aloysius Gonzaga,b.1568 d.1591,is the patron of Catholic youth.
St.Sebastian b.? d.304,is the patron of archers,athletes,and soldiers.
Aloysius was the name of Sebastian's teddy-bear,Sebastian as a Catholic would have been aware of these saints.
If you've read this far,please go and sign the guest book at my other Sebastian website,and leave a message on the message board,
Cheers.
I first saw the television production of the
Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited when it was shown in the late 1990s on British TV,and I fell in love with the story straight away,by far my favourite character and the person I found most intriguing was Lord Sebastian Flyte,portrayed by actor Anthony Andrews in the programme.
I suppose it's because I felt I had some understanding of Sebastian,I've been obsessed with him ever since.One thing that struck me about the book,was how Sebastian's character fades out,in the middle of the book,(even Anthony Andrews felt Evelyn Waugh had under written Sebastians character)to hardly be heard of again until cordelia recounts to Charles her meeting with Sebastian in the monastry in North Africa ,where Sebastian was ill and being nursed back to health by the monks.Sebastian was to spend a great part of his life living in exile in Africa with his German friend Kurt and never,as far as we know returns home.
There are so many questions about Sebastian that remain unanswered.Why was he so possesive?,how did Anthony Blanche know so much about him and his family(although Sebastian dismissed this).Without doubt Sebastian loved Charles.
I think an introduction to Sebastian is in order....
SEBASTIAN FLYTE
Blonde and charming with a seemingly sweet and gentle nature(we discover he hates fox hunting),Lord Sebastian flyte is the middle child and youngest son of Lord and Lady Marchmain.His parents divorced when he was a child,but he remained on good terms with his father,who himself left England to live in exile in Italy.
The oldest of the Marchmain children was Brideshead,decribed by Anthony Blanche,one of Sebastians oh so witty f-f-friends as"archaic"and "having a face as though an Aztec sculptor had attempted a portrait of Sebastian;.
Next his sister Julia ,Anthony Blanche cruelly decribes her thus...."So gay,so correct,so unaffected.I wonder if she's incestuous.I doubt it;all she wants is power."
Last of all the youngest Marchmain,Cordelia the "fervent Catholic",the first thing we learn about Cordelia,is that her nanny drowned herself.She is the only one in the book apart from Charles to truly love and understand Sebastian.
Charles Ryder first meets Sebastian when they are both studying at Oxford,the eccentric Lord Sebastian introduces the middle class Charles to a life he's never known before,they become inseparable,and through his friendship with Sebastian Charles is able to experiance the blissful carefree time(childhood) he missed out on while growing up.It was a time he would describe as"being very near heaven,during those languid days at Brideshead."
Heaven but at what cost?.The moment Charles meets Sebastian's family everything changes,and Sebastian has lost his soul mate.
Kurt the "wolfish" looking young man(most people in the story seem to dislike him,and are unable to understand the appeal of him to Sebastian) is the person Sebastian ,decides to live with while in exile in Morocco,he is decribed by a monk who looked after Sebastian:
"there is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal and secondary syphilis,who comes here for treatment.Lord Flyte found him starving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home.A real samaritan.'
SOME QUOTES ABOUT SEBASTIAN,AND SOME MADE BY SEBASTIAN
Sebastian when telling Charles about his parents divorce.
"It upset me at the time.Mummy tried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn't hate papa.I was the only one who didn't.I belive she wishes I did.I was always his favourite."
Sebastian talking to Charles about his familys Catholic faith.
'So you see we're a mixed family religiously.Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent Catholics;he's miserable,she's bird-happy;Julia and I are half-heathen;I am happy,I rather think Julia isn't;mummy is popularly belived to be a saint and papa is excommunicated-and I wouldn't know which of them was happy.Anyway,however you look at it happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it,and that's all I want.....I wish I liked Catholic's more.'
Another quote by Sebastian,when the subject of his faith comes up yet again:
Charles :'Well I can't say I've noticed it.Are you struggling against temptation?You don't seem much more virtuous than me.'
Sebastian:'I'm very,very much wickeder,'
Sebastian:'Who was it used to pray,"O God,make me good,but not yet"?'
Lord Marchmain's mistress Cara,talking to Charles about Sebastian.
'Sebastian is in love with his own childhood.That will make him very unhappy.His teddy-bear,his nanny.....and he is nineteen years old.....'
Charles when thinking about his first summer term at Oxford with Sebastian.
'It seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known,a happy childhood,and though it's toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and it's naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins,there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence."
Charles and Sebastian enjoy a day out in Swindon,under the elm trees they eat strawberries and drink wine.
'Just the place to bury a crook of gold,'Said Sebastian.'I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then,when I was old and miserable,I could come back and dig it up and remember.'
Sebastian to Charles,when Charles first visits Brideshead,and Charles wondered why he is not able to meet Sebastians family.
'I'm not going to have you get mixed up with my family.They're all so madly charming.All my life they've been taking things away from me.If they once got hold of you with their charm,they'd make you their friend not mine,and I won't let them.'
Charles begins to notice Sebastian withdraw from his friendship,and escape into alcohol(a dark sign of things to come).
'I had no mind then for anything but Sebastian,and I saw him already as being threatened,though I did not yet know how black was the threat.His constant,despairing prayer was to be let alone.By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a polynesian;only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef,and the cutter beached in the lagoon,and,up the slope that had never known the print of a boot,there trod the grim invasion of trader,administrater,missionary,and tourist-only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills;or,more easily,to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness,where the impotent,painted deities paraded the walls in vain,and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.'
Sebastian tells Charles of his secret Christmas drinking binge in London,when no one in his family was even aware that he had been missing .
'yes I was determined to have a happy Christmas.'
'Did you?'
'I think so.I don't remember it much,and thats always a good sign,isn't it?'
Charles visits Sebastian in hospital in Morocco,Charles brings Sebastian the news that his mother is very ill.
Sebastian:
'Poor mummy.She really was a femme fatale,wasn't she?she killed at a touch.'
Charles keeps visiting Sebastian daily until Sebastian was well enough to move.Sebastian explained how he means to spend his life with his German friend Kurt.It is at this time Sebastian says the words that Charles belive in hindsight were the key to all Sebastians woes.
'You know Charles,'he said,'it's rather a pleasent change when all your life you've had people looking after you,to have someone to look after yourself.Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me'.
Charles remembers something Julia once said to him about his old friend Sebastian who has now been living for years in exile.
'It's frightening,to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.''He was the forerunner.'
Cordelia tells Charles of her meeting with Sebastian,Sebastian is ill due to his alcoholism,his only friend Kurt has committed suicide in a concentration camp,he turns up at a monastery and asked to be admitted as a lay brother,a job he isn't fit for because of his drinking.The superior there had told cordelia'
"Please do not think think there is any doubt of that-he is quite sane and quite in earnest."
Instead Sebastian will become a under-porter,as Cordelia say's,
"there are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house,you know people who can't quite fit in either to the world or the monastic rule."
Cordelia has always understood Sebastian though,and tells Charles when he thinks of the sorry down fall of "the youth with the teddy-bear under the flowering chestnuts":
"one can have no idea what the suffering may be,to be maimed as he is-no dignity,no power of will.No one is holy without suffering.It's taken that form with him...."
CONTRA MUNDUM
Sebastian contra mundum,is Latin for'with Sebastian,against the world',it's an expression of profound loyalty,used often between Charles and Sebastian in the story,when things start going wrong for Sebastian.
ST. ALOYSIUS AND ST.SEBASTIAN
St.Aloysius Gonzaga,b.1568 d.1591,is the patron of Catholic youth.
St.Sebastian b.? d.304,is the patron of archers,athletes,and soldiers.
Aloysius was the name of Sebastian's teddy-bear,Sebastian as a Catholic would have been aware of these saints.
If you've read this far,please go and sign the guest book at my other Sebastian website,and leave a message on the message board,
Cheers.
