Hi, all. For a minute I just considered writing “ditto” to Ben’s posting, but then I realized that I should probably go a bit further. I read the first five books of Confessions a couple of weeks ago, and since then—to be honest—I’ve kind of been skipping around. A lot of the book was really interesting, but at a certain point I couldn’t quite listen to him go on about being a wretch in his youth anymore.
So, at the risk of directly echoing Ben, I will say that I was also surprised by how readable most of this was. (Note: I also got a version with “you,” as opposed to “thou” and I can only imagine it has saved me some time and frustration.) I also second (as pre-reading advice, for anyone who’s looking) the “sit down for about an hour” rule with this. It’s too big for much less time than that—and I, for one, couldn’t handle distraction at all as I was working my way through it (as evidenced by the 15 pages I had to reread after attempting the first time in a busy café).
One of the things I find interesting, and difficult, in talking about St. Augustine is that it’s really hard to talk about the writing when the ideas and concepts are both so old and so enormous. Do I really want to point out his use of metaphor when we’re discussing stuff that’s so much bigger than writing? I don’t know. Maybe.
Okay, I do. In book three, this one passage really struck me:
“…although they have been reckoned sinners by men who are not qualified to judge, for they try them by human standards and assess all the rights and wrongs of the human race by the measure of their own customs. Anyone who does this behaves like a man who knows nothing about armour and cannot tell which piece is meant for which part of the body, so that he tries to cover his head with a shin-piece and fix a helmet to his foot, and then complains because they will not fit.”
This is just awesome. I read it a few times just to sort of see how he arrived at the metaphor and just wanted to point it out here as something very textually based before I wander off into the content and the writer himself.
I was more taken with the content, the stories, than anything. The Destroyers—awesome. I also got really pulled into some of the anecdotes that gave some insight (that I wish I had) about what life was really like then—how marriage worked, or engagement, or parent-child relationships, or academica. It’s so valuable in that way. Also, the little contextual oddities threw me and made me laugh, like the story he tells about being in a bath house with his father when “he saw the signs of active virility coming to life in me and this was enough to make him relish the thought of having grandchildren”—and then the father runs off to tell the mother. That’s odd and creepy and funny. Or when he, I think, confesses to having had sex inside the church—these long, drawn out explanations get so interesting in one facet, and yet I really do find myself wondering why he’s giving them away. Maybe it is just his position, but then why so much of it, still? I’ve done some outside reading and covered the introduction, but I still found myself stopping every once in a while to think, “Okay, but why is he telling us this?”
What it really came down to for me was that—despite the fact that it’s called Confessions—I got really sick of feeling like I was the bored priest in a really small town, sitting on the other side of the curtain at 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday, waiting for all of the townsfolk to tell me that they had lustful thoughts or stole milk money. I’m concerned that I got so sick of him, to put it bluntly. I wouldn’t say this in a classroom, but I have to make a confession of my own: I started making notes in the margins that said things like, “Enough already!” Yeah.
On a last note, I’m considering putting the following Confessions quote on the syllabus for the classes I’m teaching in the fall:
“For I understood not a single word and I was constantly subjected to violent threats and cruel punishment to make me learn.”
A mission statement, of sorts.
Oh, also, I just wanted to mention something I’ve been reading that I have enjoyed, The New Kings of Nonfiction. It’s edited by Ira Glass and has some great stories from all kinds of different publications from the past few years. If anyone would like to borrow it when I get back, just say the word. Hope you’re all doing well!
J.
P.S. I recognize that this post is a little disjointed, so please let me know if sections (all of it) are confusing. I’m on a very odd sleeping schedule down here and I think it’s throwing off my clear thinking, but wanted to get all of this out while I was reading and thinking so much about it.
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