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sbreadsfantasy's review against another edition
4.0
Rich, But Not a Light Read
I loved reading what St. Augustine had to say, but it was so dense and so tedious that I found myself zoning out and skimming throughout most of the book. I WANTED to engage more with the text, but I think I’ve just read too much non fiction lately to do so. I will definitely revisit when I’m in a better frame of mind.
I loved reading what St. Augustine had to say, but it was so dense and so tedious that I found myself zoning out and skimming throughout most of the book. I WANTED to engage more with the text, but I think I’ve just read too much non fiction lately to do so. I will definitely revisit when I’m in a better frame of mind.
votesforwomen's review against another edition
Loved the biography, got lost in the philosophy.
casparb's review against another edition
I've been reading this for a very long time. It's kind of bizarre that I've finished it - I have too many notes to properly set this out and about but here I am anyway. I've had a fantastic time refracting it through Joyce, Heidegger, Milton and so on. The Confessions is a genuinely remarkable piece. At times, Augustine can be repetitive, nigh tedious. But when he is good, he is spectacular. A unique genius of the era.
I see Eliot all over here. I can't really articulate Augustine's extended reflections on temporality but they really came close to TSE's Four Quartets. 'If time present (if it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be'
What most struck me here was the literary theory. Not only was this startingly 20th century to my eye - so the man is a good 1600 years ahead of himself - but Augustine is also incisive, eloquent, and almost unbelievably advanced in his theoretical thinking. He's conscious of interpretation as a decentred process, unique to each reader (something beyond many of the New Critics of the 1920s). Interpretation is both public and unique. A spicy wrinkle is introduced by Augustine's conception of God as the only stable site of Truth (not the text itself. I wonder if this could be compared with Dante's association of God with The Book in Paradiso, 900 years later? θεό-λόγος). Maybe centring truth in this manner can be seen as a deferral of theoretical rigour, but I was deeply impressed.
'What nature am I? A life various and manifold, and exceeding immense. Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either through images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions or impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind- over all these do I run, I fly'
I see Eliot all over here. I can't really articulate Augustine's extended reflections on temporality but they really came close to TSE's Four Quartets. 'If time present (if it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be'
What most struck me here was the literary theory. Not only was this startingly 20th century to my eye - so the man is a good 1600 years ahead of himself - but Augustine is also incisive, eloquent, and almost unbelievably advanced in his theoretical thinking. He's conscious of interpretation as a decentred process, unique to each reader (something beyond many of the New Critics of the 1920s). Interpretation is both public and unique. A spicy wrinkle is introduced by Augustine's conception of God as the only stable site of Truth (not the text itself. I wonder if this could be compared with Dante's association of God with The Book in Paradiso, 900 years later? θεό-λόγος). Maybe centring truth in this manner can be seen as a deferral of theoretical rigour, but I was deeply impressed.
'What nature am I? A life various and manifold, and exceeding immense. Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either through images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions or impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind- over all these do I run, I fly'
deedee63's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
thelibraryskeeper's review against another edition
4.0
At first Augustine was a bit difficult to read (as I have never read any of his works before) I didn't understand the structure of what he was trying to say and the way he tells his story with no attention to time. But the more I read, the more I understood and enjoyed the way he would raise his issues and make his points. There are some great lessons to be learned from Augustine.
_deisy_'s review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.5