A good, but lengthy, read. Prepare to sit and ponder. And reread and ponder some more. ( )

A spiritual self-examination it tells of Augustine’s restless youth and of the stormy spiritual voyage that ended some 12 years before the book’s writing in the haven of the Roman Catholic Church. In reality, the work is not so much an autobiography as an exploration of the philosophical and emotional development of an individual soul. Confessions broke entirely fresh ground as literature, and the genre of autobiography owes many of its characteristics to Augustine.

Although autobiographical narrative makes up much of the first 9 of the 13 books of Confessions, autobiography is incidental to the main purpose of the work. For Augustine, “confessions” is a catchall term for acts of religiously authorized speech: praise of God, blame of self, confession of faith. The book is a richly textured meditation by a middle-aged man on the course and meaning of his own life. The dichotomy between past odyssey and present position of authority as bishop is emphasized in numerous ways in the book, not least in that what begins as a narrative of childhood ends with an extended and very churchy discussion of the book of Genesis; the progression is from the beginnings of a man’s life to the beginnings of human society.

Between those two points, the narrative of sin and redemption holds most readers’ attention. Those who seek to find in it the memoirs of a great sinner are invariably disappointed, indeed often puzzled at the minutiae of failure that preoccupy the author. Of greater significance is the account of redemption. Augustine is especially influenced by the powerful intellectual preaching of the suave and diplomatic bishop St. Ambrose, who reconciles for him the attractions of the intellectual and social culture of antiquity, in which Augustine was brought up and of which he was a master, and the spiritual teachings of Christianity. The link between the two was Ambrose’s exposition, and Augustine’s reception, of a selection of the doctrines of Plato, as mediated in late antiquity by the school of Neoplatonism. Augustine heard Ambrose and read, in Latin translation, some of the exceedingly difficult works of Plotinus and Porphyry. He acquired from them an intellectual vision of the fall and rise of the human soul, a vision he found confirmed in the reading of the Bible. ( )

Simultaneously read a contemporary academic translation by Peter Constantine (University of Connecticut) and a contemporary translation by a non-academic, Benignus O'Rourke of the Order of St. Augustine, that seeks to make the text more easily accessible by simplifying the sentence structure and, uniquely, breaking the lines into short poetic-like units of text. Augustine likely would have approved such an effort as he wrote in a simpler Latin than that of the famous orators and intellectuals of his own day that he taught to students for many years, and in the work bemoans that he was initially put off by the simplicity of language of the Christian scriptures: "It struck me as unworthy of comparison to the distinction of a Cicero. My strutting pride shunned the simplicity of the Scripture, my eye not keen enough to penetrate its interior." (trans. Constantine).

Could my own strutting pride enjoy a translation inspired by a desire to provide today's youth with a text that is easy to follow, non-poetry formatted to impersonate poetry? Happily yes! Clarity is no fault, and the poetic-like structure works I think. Here's an example where I think it heightens the emotion that Augustine wants to communicate, concerning his state of mind following the death of a close friend when he was a young man. First, Constantine:

Not in shady groves, not in amusements, nor in song could my soul find repose, nor in fragrant gardens or sumptuous feasts, not in the pleasures of bed and couch, not in books or poetry. Everything repelled me, even light itself. Everything was irksome and vile that was not what he was, everything except for laments and tears, since it was in those alone that I found a little solace.

Now O'Rourke:

Not in sheltered groves,
not in music or play,
not in gardens scented with flowers,
nor in feasting and company;
not in the pleasures of love,
not even in books, nor in poetry,
could my soul find rest.

All these I hated.
I hated the daylight.
Everything that was not him was painful and hurtful to me.
Only in my tears and sighs
did I taste some little peace.

Here's an instance where O'Rourke adds clarity to the passage that in its reference to the Roman god Jupiter would surely have been clearly understood two thousand years ago, but using a strict translation today it isn't quite so clear. Constantine:

Did I not read in you of Jupiter the thunderer and adulterer - he surely could not have been both, but was presented as such so that a fictitious thunder might mimic and pander to real adultery.

Have to admit I didn't quite follow Augustine's point there. What's all that about thunder and why can't you thunder and adultery both? Then I read the O'Rourke:

It was an accepted belief in the studies I followed
that Jupiter was both the one
who sends his thunderbolts on the wicked
and the one who was also an adulterer.
How could he possibly be both?
But so the story goes.

The result is that those who follow him in adultery
can put a bold face on it
by making false pretence of thunder.

Aha, Augustine is highlighting the hypocrisy of the gods in classical texts and how this is also present in humans, blustering one way yet behaving in quite another. This regrettable aspect of human nature was copy/pasted onto Roman gods, leaving Augustine unconvinced that what he was reading and teaching to Rome's youth bore witness to actual truth. And one thing the Confessions makes clear, that I didn't really appreciate earlier, is that Augustine was embarked on a long journey in search of Truth from a young age, from reading Cicero to the community of the Manicheans to the philosophy of the Neoplatonists and finally to baptism in the Christian faith after becoming convinced by it after years of first intellectual resistance and then years of a resistance of his will (the famous "make me chaste, but please, not yet" years).

O'Rourke's unique translation is one I would highly recommend then, although he only translated the first 9 of the 13 books of the Confession, those in which Augustine composes the world's first written autobiography in the modern sense. Books 10 through 13 are a philosophy of time and memory, and an exegesis of Genesis. These more academic topics must be read in an academic translation. But O'Rourke gives us Augustine's personal journey of the intellect, of the heart, of the seeker, in a highly relatable reading that can seem quite contemporary.

I was delighted to hear Ambrose
often saying in his sermons to the people,
and saying it with emphasis,
The letter kills,
but the Spirit gives life.

When he lifted the veil of mystery from the Scriptures
and opened to the people the spiritual meaning of texts,
which taken literally would seem to be absurd,
he said nothing that would offend.
Even so, I did not know whether what he said was true.

---

What you were I did not know.
But that you did exist,
and that the care of human affairs was in your hands,
I did believe.

This conviction was at times strong, at times fickle.
But at all times I believed that you existed and that you cared for us,
even though I did not know how I ought to think about you,
or work out what way would lead us to you,
or lead us back to you.

---

These books bade me
to return to myself.
So with you as guide
I entered into my deepest self.
But only because you helped me
was I able to do this.
I entered, then,
and with the eye of my soul
I saw the light within,
the light which never changes.

Or, one might say, there is a light and it never goes out (Morrissey. Not translated.).

1. AUGUSTINE - PHILOSOPHER, THEOLOGIAN
2. REDEMPTION ( )

1. AUGUSTINE - PHILOSOPHER, THEOLOGIAN
2. REDEMPTION