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BIOGRAPHY
The Confessions, in thirteen books, were written about 397, in the early
years of Augustine's episcopate of Hippo. In form they are a dialogue between
the author and God, or more strictly a monologue addressed by the author to
God. The ancient reader on opening the work might well feel that what he had
before him was a philosophical treatise written in the form of a prayer, for
which Plotinus himself, and even more his successors, provided a modeL
In content the first nine books recapitulate in chronological order the development
of Augustine's spiritual understanding from his first infancy to the death
of his mother Monnica in 387, dwelling in anxious detail on those episodes,
often trivial in themselves, which marked an advance in the author's insight
into his own nature and his place in the created universe. The last four books
are a philosophical and theological anaylsis of the state of Augustine in particular
and of man in general with reference to God and to the Christian
church. The Confessions, however, are not a series of reminiscences. Though
Augustine can project himself back into early manhood, youth and childhood
"with marvellous empathy, he is not interested in recreating a past which might
otherwise be lost, or in telling a good story. "What concerns him is how he,
Augustine, came to be chosen by God for the gift of grace and what it implies.
Yet is it not a story with a happy ending, as, in a sense, were the lives of the
martyrs. At the end of it all Augustine recognizes that he has made progress.
But his new state brings with it even more problems than his original innocence.
Understanding brings a bleak and discouraging view of mankind, and little
by way of comfort.
Augustine has a talent for narrative, and there are many brilliant narrative
passages in the Confessions, such as the story of the boys stealing the pears in
Carthage (2.4.9) or or " Alypius, future lawyer and bishop, being arrested as a
burglar (6.9.14). But a story is never told for its own sake. The brooding
presence of the Bishop of Hippo is always there to comment, interpret, draw
the lesson. In the numerous passages of direct address to God all the devices
of ancient rhetoric are brought into play, as might be expected of the former
holder of a chair in that subject. Augustine varies the pace and style of his
long soliloquy with the skill expected of a successful professional. And he
adds a new quality to his Latin prose by the continuous references, sometimes
by verbatim quotation, sometimes by the most indirect allusion, to the Bible
and in particular to the Psalms (naturally in a pre-Hieronyman version).
This resulted not merely in adding a certain depth of meaning to what Augustine
had to say, but also in the incorporation into artistic Latin prose of a whole
exotic vocabulary and a strange universe of reference which had been hitherto
spurned by men of classical learning, even if they were Christians.
This long account of the spiritual journey of a man brought up in the purest
of classical tradition through Manichaeanism and Neoplatonism to a whole-
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