Augustine Gives in to Pear Pressure (Confessions, Part 1)

In Part 1 of our discussion on Augustine's Confessions, we welcome translator Peter Constantine to discuss the historical context in which Augustine of Hippo wrote the Confessions, the genre of the text, the lasting effect it has had on religious and secular intellectual traditions, and some of the touchstone episodes found in the work.

Peter Constantine is the director of the Program in Literary Translation at the University of Connecticut, the publisher of World Poetry Books, and editor-in-chief of the magazine New Poetry in Translation. A prolific translator from several modern and classical languages, Constantine was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of The Bird Is a Raven by Benjamin Lebert, and the Koret Jewish Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation for The Complete Works of Isaac Babel.

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Confessions, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/ConfessionsNL.

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Episode transcript at https://seagull.wwnorton.com/Confessions/part1/transcript.

Transcript

[Music] 

[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library Podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading Scholars of the Norton Library, a new series from W.W. Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host Mark Chino with Michael Von Cannan producing. Today we present the first of our two episodes devoted to Augustine's Confessions, as we interview its translator Peter Constantine. In part one, we discussed Augustine's life and career and the historical time in which he wrote. We touch on the form of the work, the way it functions as autobiography, science, and biblical commentary. Peter Constantine is the director of the program in literary translation at the University of Connecticut, the publisher of World Poetry Books ,and editor-in-chief of the magazine New Poetry in Translation. Constantine is a prolific and award-winning translator, whose efforts include works by Thomas Mann, Chekhov, and Isaac Babel. Peter Constantine, welcome to the Norton Library Podcast!

[Peter:] Thank you very much, well found! 

[Mark:] It's such a pleasure to have you to talk about your edition of the Norton Library’s Confessions of Augustine. We always like to start with the writer himself, who was Augustine. What do we know about him? And what do we need to know about him? 

[Peter:] The first thing I'd like to say is, actually, we have a quite a strong image of what he looks like, that is, we think we do. There are the Botticelli’s paintings of an ancient man in his cell writing with a quill—actually, Botticelli did quite a few paintings of him; and then there's Carpaccio of the Renaissance as well, who depicts Augustine in the study; and there’s also Philippe de Champaigne’s, where Augustine's head is on fire while he's holding a burning heart and looking up at the little cloud where it says “veritas.” All these ancient men writing the Confessions. One thing I'd like to say is we don't know what Augustine looks like. I would like to remind the reader that Augustine was, when he began on his Confessions, in his very early 40s, so this ancient Sage that has come down to us that we think of a saint is a sort of a recreation, which we often see with great authors. We see that with Chekhov, for instance. The ancient man Chekhov was actually an extremely handsome person, but that did not fit with the image we see that here with Augustine. That's one thing I'd like to sort of start with. The second is, when you read the Confessions, maybe it's important to think about how they were written. When Sandro Botticelli paints Augustine with a pen in hand, that's not how it would have happened. The Augustine was a great producer of works with over 100 books—I think some 500 million words. There's no one from antiquity that we have so much writing from. The way he could he could do that, the way he could also preach when was Bishop of Hippo in in North Africa, the way he could also act as a judge—because that was part of what he would have to do—and still entertain in the evenings and have these great feasts, the way all that could happen is if there was a sort of a factory, and the factory was scribes, stenographers, copyists, and editors, so it was a big, big production, which we don't think about. We always think of the saint alone in a dark cell, writing. Stenographers, because he would speak; he was an orator; he had studied Latin orator; he was a very, very accomplished Latinist Grammarian. He taught before he converted to Christianity. He taught rhetoric, and these inspired books, sermons, letters—and I do say letters because letters were also public. There's a difference between his letters that would have been publicly available to those who copied them and had them and memoranda, which was private, which he would also send a private memorandum and those were not for public consumption, and those are very, very interesting, in fact. In these thousands and those much, much more, we don't have everything he wrote, so all of that happened in the way with the scribes and the stenographers who quickly could catch every single word. 

[Mark:] When did Augustine live? And what would Society have been like for him? 

[Peter:] He was born in in 354 A.D., and it was at a time when the Roman Empire had recently become Christian, so the Christians were no longer being persecuted as they had been before. He was born in Thagaste, which is in North Africa, in the Kingdom of Numidia at the time, A small town that we don't know very much about. in fact, historians read Confessions very, very carefully and see what he writes about the baths, what he writes about the streets. Anyway, in that sense, Confessions also is an interesting historical document that sort of paints a reality of the time. What we often think of Thagaste being a sort of a backwater province that is at the back of beyond. However, that's not quite the case. North Africa, which was part of the Roman Empire, was, at the time of his birth, more central than we think. Rome was having some serious problems, was being attacked by barbarians, as one would say; it was pretty much the end of the Roman Empire was nigh, so, they were very, very colorful, interesting, problematic, and dangerous times, and it was to catch up with Augustine later on. In fact, when he died in 430 of the modern era —he had quite a long life—they were being besieged, and that was the end of Hippo, which was the town, which then became the capital of a new sort of Barbarian Empire, as the Romans would have said. 

[Mark:] What kind of impact did his Confessions have when he was alive? How would it have been disseminated and shared at that time? 

[Peter:] The scribes would have created the copies. When I say copies, I mean quite a few. Another important thing to think about is really to try and sort of teleport oneself back to a time—I will say something that would sound a bit a bit crude, but let's say there’s no internet, no publishing, no books. There are some bookstores, but the books were extraordinarily expensive because they were handcrafted. It was also the period that was very, very important: the transition from scrolls to codices, which look like the books we have today. Now scrolls were very difficult to read because when scribes were still writing on scrolls, you'd have one of them holding the scroll up and the other one dipping it into ink. But also the paper would have to be created; the parchment would have to be created; the ink would have to be created; hence, also this big factory kind of situation. But for a book to exist it wasn't just that Augustine, let's say, would sit in his study and write the book and then we have it and it's sent out for publication. This is the reason that there were so many scribes around and that many versions were created. So that was one thing. And that was the first bit of dissemination. And then Possidius, who was his first biographer and very good friend, who worked very, very hard, not only during the final years of Austine, but also afterward to ensure that the libraries with all the books would survive the Barbarian invasions and the burning of libraries, so what I would like to say is that there was a production with many copies being created for people who would have these books and maybe also read them out. 

[Mark:] I'm also interested in his influence and Legacy in the sense that—so this is 600 years of this text being extent. Has his influence wavered over the years, come and gone, or has this text consistently been canonical, important, and cited?  

[Peter:] Yes, I would say, until the 19th early 20th century, it was without question canonical and fully embraced and, interestingly, not just by the Catholic church but also Protestant, which is something to be kept in mind, so he was not bordered out or cut out of Britain's reality or Germany's reality with Luther or with the Reformation in the United Kingdom, so that's one thing to be kept in mind. Questions started being asked, I think, in the 20th century about the way women are presented in Confessions and in other writings. I mean that is one thing of feminist reading. I think, also, the doctrines were, to some extent, discussed a bit more openly. So, yes, it’s still very, very influential, both Augustine and his mother Santa Monica. She was a major, major Saint in in the in the Christian church and revered also throughout the Millennium.

[Mark:] Peter, in your introduction to the Norton Library Edition of Augustine's Confessions, you mention that one of the immediate challenges for a reader is the problem of genre: you see a title like “Confessions,” and you’d say “oh, this is going to be great. This is going to be a tell-all autobiography.” But it seems like it's a lot more complicated than that. Can you talk a little bit about the genre of this book? 

[Peter:] Yeah, first of all, “Confessions” is an interesting title. I like the title, although there are scholars, theologians, would prefer “testimony” or who would like something a bit more nuanced—nuanced in the sense that what confessions do we think of? is it about a sinner who is confessing? But that's not really. I mean, maybe partially true, also partially how Augustine would present himself.  But he is testifying his conversion. He's testifying that it is so clear when you look at the world, how God is good, so that's something that we should think about a little bit. Definitely, the title is to be kept in mind a little bit as we read. I would also say that we will notice that even if it isn't really an autobiography, it has always been perceived as such and also started the Western tradition of autobiography. We see very similar structures, let's say in Rousseau's Confessions, also an autobiography, and there are sort of little hints of—I mean Rousseau would say this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth what I write.” Augustine stole apples with his naughty friends, and Rousseau stole pears, so, in a sense, both are really symbolic. Also, there’s something to be kept in in mind that, maybe some of the passages are fictionalized in order to make a point, to make a point that, for instance, in the stealing of the of the pears that Augustine writes about, they were not very good pears, and he had access to much better pears; he didn't have to do that, but he just did it because his friends did it and he sort of mixed with the wrong crowd, so you might say even parable in a sense.

[Mark:] Yes, is there an element to the Confessions, and confessions might take also a secular term, so it might mean something a little bit more modern?

[Peter 15:56:] Well, yes. Maybe what has made this book so fascinating throughout the—let's say Millennia—is that it can be read in so many different ways, and if you've read Confessions more than once, you might almost feel like you're reading a different book; there is something for everyone in it. It is a fascinating story. There are those historical insights that I pointed to. There are those problematic presentations of slaves being beaten and how women must negotiate their lives in order to prevail within a male dominated Society, and maybe the question whether he is condoning that in the book, so as you read that, that might be something that might strike you. I would prefer not to have such a presentist reading. We should remember that this is written within a society 300–400s AD, so that is part of the reality, but that could also be seen as an apologist stance because we could also say slavery in the States was a reality 200 years ago. Why didn't certain people speak up? But I would leave that up to the reader to decide where that is, how they might feel or engage with that.

[Mark:] How does the problem of genre that we're discussing go along with just the layout of the book? If you look at the chapters that Augustine gives us, it doesn't seem completely coherent, or is it completely coherent?

[Peter:] I would say yes and no. First of all, the way the books are laid out comes from the codices that have come down to us. That was imposed by later editors. I don't know to what extent he perceived these as different books. I'm not aware of that. Over the last 10 years of working with Augustine in different ways, I've never come across that. So, we respond—let’s say the translator responds to the codices that we have. They were laid out in this form. Now, from Book 1 to Book 9 we have really the autobiography as it were, and then after that an exegesis—in other words, a look and a study of Genesis, which is a more philosophical term. You will see in college courses, when Augustine is taught, that there seems to be a tendency to teach Books 1 to 9 or 1 to 10 and not to do the very last ones because they are quite hard to read, particularly for, I would say, undergraduates. However, if you do read from cover to cover, initially you might wonder what happened, why there this is gear change, and why suddenly we are at this different speed, but then, looking back, you will see that he is just explaining. And maybe there's also a key to the fact that Confessions is there to help people of the time find Christianity and true Christianity, not the heretical, not a heresy, as the Manichaean or the Donatist at the time, who he thought—and the pagan, or demipagan, portions of his flock of people—would come to his sermons, so Confessions was maybe also an example like: this is what I did, and this is how I look at things, and this is how I found God, and this should maybe help you do the same.

[Mark:] You mentioned the stealing of the fruit. That's a famous episode of the Confessions. What are other touchstone episodes that Augustine tells us about? And why are they important? What should we be looking for?

[Peter:] There is a controversial passage about the death of his close friend—maybe I wouldn’t want to call it controversial. It's clear that that there is excessive mourning at the death of his friend, he then uses it as an example of what is wrong before he found God. He was too bound to earthly matters, and there's a contrast to when his mother dies or when his son dies that they they're dealt with in a sort of very emotional but cool way—maybe I'm using the wrong language, but this over-the-top I've just said now is what people have also thought of as possibly being homoerotic relationship, and it has also sparked in the 20th century sort of question of whether he felt that he was sinning with male friends. Not surely or necessarily want to touch on that because it's not central to the book, and it's clearly not his intention, so that's more of a reading that people might do. But that episode is quite dramatic: terrible depression, and he can't go; he looks at places where he and his friend had been and he can't be there, and he can't see them. It's actually a spectacular description of grief. Another thing I've always found interesting was that when he decides to make his fortune in Italy, even though his mother Monica is very sort of a central figure for his conversion to Christianity because Monica was a Christian, and Patricius, his father, was Pagan. Augustine came from a mixed family like that. It was only later in Italy that he was baptized and became Christian, so he was sort of a demi-Christian in those years, but he escaped with his concubine, whose name he doesn't name and whom he calls a una, one person, but she was important to him and, when we do the math by reading Confessions, we see that she bore him a son when he was 16 or 17. But he was faithful to her, he also says. They were family, despite her status as a concubine, and raised Adeodatus, which means given by God—God-sent is the name of his son. They raised him together and also, it seems, left together secretly because they did not want to take Monica along to Italy, where he was going to go, first of all, Rome, and then to Milan. Milan was where the emperor was, and he became a rhetorician there, and he would have traveled with his family and slaves and arrived in Rome, and then moved on to Milan, so these are all very interesting biographical moments in Confessions that I'd suggest to keep an eye out for.

[Mark:] Yeah, that's great. Confessions has 13 books, and I'm wondering, Peter, if there's one book that you think is particularly dramatic or you enjoy talking about the most that maybe we could focus on?

[Peter:] Book 9 is very interesting because a lot happens. This is where Christianity is embraced but also from a biographical perspective. What I find very interesting is he describes his mother—in fact I I'd like to maybe read a few lines from that because it sort of shows what we were talking about a little bit before, which is the problem of position of women in Roman society, not only in North Africa but also in throughout the Roman Empire. From his book he discusses the relationship between his mother and his father. He writes, “She tolerated his infidelity so that there would never any animosity between them, for she was awaiting your mercy upon him that in believing in you he might become chaste. Furthermore, he was as exceptionally kind, as he was hot tempered, but she had learned not to cross an angry husband in word or deed. It was only when his temper had settled, and he was calm and approachable, that she would explain her actions, if he had happened to be too quick to flare up in anger. Many other wives had gentle husbands or shameful marks of beatings on their faces, and among their friends they would blame their husband's ways, but she would blame the women's tongues, giving the women as if in just the solemn advice that the instant they had heard the marriage contract read out to them. They should have recognized that they were now slaves and would be remembering their station. It would have been more fitting for them not to take on heirs before their Lords. When their friends found out what a violent husband she had, they were amazed that nobody had ever heard of Patricius’s raising a hand to her, or that she never bore the marks of a beating.” That's quite a poignant passage, I think, that bears looking at and, maybe, thinking about within context. And he also talks about the slaves that had raised his mother. There was an elderly slave, who was very hard on her, would not let her or her sisters drink water in order to discipline them. I regret one thing in my translation. Famula is a word for maid, maid servant, or slave. Now these were slaves, and I should have translated it as such. I translated them as maids, but when Monica marries into the family of Patricius and the slave women intrigue against her, the young slave woman manages to assert herself by speaking to her mother-in-law, and the slaves are beaten and will be beaten not until they see sense. In Augustine's works, the elderly women slaves usually are the sort of motherly figures, and the younger ones are the intriguers. Maybe what I'm just saying now is extremely controversial and I should not really be saying it, maybe. But it is something that I have noticed and something that translators will often think of, something like, “oh, I should have done something slightly different.” I'm happy to say it hasn't happened too often with Augustine, but that is one thing where I wonder if I should have iron things out a little bit.

[Mark: 28:41] Book 9 also talks about his baptism. Is there something about the description or his recollection of his baptism that might be striking? 

[Peter:] This touching that he was baptized with his son and with his friend Alypius, who—if we read the letters of Augustine later on—was also Bishop in the media and had a similar trajectory to Augustine that the three of them was an important bond. It is the high point of Confessions in many ways. The whole book moves toward that moment, and the fact that it is with his son and his best friend, I think, is an interesting and important moment as well.

[Mark:] You also make a point in your introduction about the notion of Manichaeism and how that relates to Augustine. 

[Peter:] One of the tasks that Confessions has is for Augustine to shut the door on his past as a rhetorician, first of all, when somebody could use language to generally persuade people to do whatever one wants them to do, which is just so wrong from his perspective. But he was also a Manichean for nine years. The thing about Manichean was that it was a form of Christianity; it just was considered a heresy that there were heretical parts to the way the Manicheans saw good and evil. It was very much of an intellectual religion with strong philosophical arguments that had initially attracted Augustine, so in the Confessions we see sort of a damning of that and his confessing or his testimony that this was a very, very wrong thing, a wrong period, that he had been lost and now was found. If we look again at the correspondence after the Confessions were written, they were completed around 400, so he lived another 30 years after they were done. Many of the writings and many of the letters are defense like “I'm not a Manichean. I have nothing to do with that. it is not in a valid part of anything that I have any connection to” —because he was still being accused.

[Mark:] Peter Constantine, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library Podcast to discuss your edition of Augustine's Confessions! 

[Peter:] Thank you very much! 

[Mark:] The Norton Library Edition of Augustine's Confessions translated by Peter Constantine is available now in paperback and e-book. Check out the links in the description to this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library including the full catalog of titles.