LITERATURE: Confessions – Opening thoughts

There is a palpable difference when reading a few pages of Saul Bellow and switching to Augustine.  In both cases we have a first person narrator, and the centuries separating the language is not the only difference in voice that changes the style of the reading.  There’s a slow and deliberate intensity to the reading of Augustine that comes not from the old style writing–and this is a modern translation–but from the context of what is being read.

Do heaven and earth contain you because you have filled them? or do you fill them and overflow them because they do not contain you?  Where do you put the overflow of yourself when heaven and earth are filled?  Or have you, who contain all things, no need to be contained by anything because what you will you fill by containing it?  (p. 4)

Augustine begins his Confessions by questioning the nature of God. This is a good starting point for anyone who studies theology because intellect requires that we question faith.  From introspection and reflection on self it is a natural step to seek answers to existence and creation.

Augustine’s tone, if faithfully translated, suggests a respectful line of questioning that implies a distance that wants to be traversed, a sense of ‘you made me intelligent enough to ask you this, and gave me the blessing to do so.’

Augustine may be exactly what I should be reading right now. 

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2 Responses to LITERATURE: Confessions – Opening thoughts

  1. Lisa Kenney says:

    I have been returning to your site for several days now and wanted to let you know how much I’m enjoying your commentary. I’ve had Augustine’s Confessions for a couple of years now, but it keeps slipping to the bottom of my TBR pile. Coincidentally, I’ve always wanted to go back and read more of Bellow. You’ve given me the incentive to dig back in. Thanks very much.

  2. susan says:

    Thank you, Lisa. You have quite a lovely site there yourself and I’ve added you to my Blogline readings.

    I hope you do decide to open Confession again, and maybe Bellow for a nice balance of reading. I’m finding that having options to pick up one or the other (or any of the rest I’ve started) does indeed help by suiting the mood of the time to the text.

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