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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Reply not to me with a fool-born jest; Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self. - W. Shakespeare, Henry IV part II. Carolyn well reminds us to keep the tone of our discussions sober and scholarly, and I desire nothing more. Another thing I have been doing since I spoke to you last, is to teach the Confessions of Saint Augustine; about which, should the list and its owners approve, I may say a word or two in the coming weeks. When planning the course, I gave some thought as to what translation I would recommend to my students - I myself, of course, use O'Donnell's excellent critical edition. I settled on Chadwick's (Oxford World Classics). However, as the course has progressed I find myself reverting more and more to Pusey's, now very old and wizened. The advantage of Pusey's, it seems to me, is that it retains Augustine's images and metaphors, which are sometimes lost in Chadwick's. This is important, for example, in Book 2 of the Confessions. This begins to describe Aug's adolescence, his third "age" following infancy (infantia) and boyhood (pueritia). Aug. parallels this to the third day of creation in Genesis 1. Now on the third day God does two things: he orders the waters, setting bounds to them which they may not pass, setting them apart from the dry land; and he creates the seed-bearing plants, each bearing fruitful seed after its own kind. Aug. makes of himself a sort of disordered parody of this third day of creation. So images abound, on the one hand, of disordered water: whirpools, strong ocean currents and storms at sea, pots of water boiling over; and on the other, spilt and sterile seed, seed yielding thorns not the expected harvest. To take the second image first: Aug. writes of falling 'in plura et plura sterilia semina dolorum'. Pusey renders this 'into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows' which is about right; Chadwick renders it 'into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness' which I think misses the metaphor, and hence the allusion. Likewise Aug says he was 'sequens impetum fluxus mei'. Chadwick renders this 'following the driving force of my impulses.' Pusey writes (I give a larger example): 'But I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the rushing of my own tide.' I rest my case. As always, I welcome the comments of any members generous enough with their time to make them. I sign myself, not 'Oriens' But very humbly, Bill. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html