“Ambition, lustful, narcissistic—I was all of these things. God gave me a mother; she showed me that nothing in this material world is worthy of our ambition. God gave me a woman; she showed me that loving means renouncing oneself. God gave me a son; I started to believe that he was created in my image. God took him away from me to show me that he was created in his image. Ambitious, lustful, narcissistic—I was all these things, and still am, as we all are. As we all are. But not one of us is alone—ever. Not even when we are in desperation, bitterness, darkness. God is close to us. God is more brother than any brother… He is more friend than any friend… More lover than any lover…”
Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author’s early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine’s brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.
(Goodreads.com)
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