Augustine: Confessions - Books 1-8
Edited and translated by Carolyn J. B. HammondLoeb Classical LibraryHarvard University Press, 2014 The sturdy, intermittently prosy William Watts translation of Saint Augustine's Confessions, a workhorse of the venerable Loeb Classical Library line, has at last been taken trotting placidly to which ever sunny field becomes the home of good but unremarkable placeholder translations. The unknown number of open-minded college freshmen binge-alcoholics who encountered the Confessions for the first and only time in the Watts translation would have seen in it comparatively little to snag their imaginations, but Carolyn J. B. Hammond, in her new Loeb translation, maintains a keen awareness of her task's pedagogical elements. Loebs are assigned in schools, after all, where their role as useful trots has been a boon to Latin and Greek students for a century; Saint Augustine must, therefore, be introduced as well as translated.Hammond does a smooth, brisk job of doing that. "It's important to bear in mind," she reminds, "that readers who base their impression of Augustine on his writings encounter a man mainly occupied with doctrine, i.e., correct theological teaching. They will see relatively little of his pastoral preoccupations as bishop of Hippo ..." That doctrine-obsessed Saint Augustine had been a bishop at Hippo Regius (in present-day Algeria) for two years when he wrote Confessions in 397, and he'd been a baptized Catholic for ten years. He was in his early forties, a powerfully intelligent and well-read zealot of the faith he'd only relatively lately embraced, having spent the bulk of his life as a passionate Manichean, believing whole-heartedly in that strange (and strangely appealing) rival religion to young Christianity that had been promulgated by second-century Persian charismatic Mani, who'd cherry-picked aesthetically appealing elements from neo-Platonists, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and half a dozen other systems. As Hammond hardly needs to point out (although maybe she does? Many students tend to miss it), the near-hysterical rhetorical emphasis that so characterizes the Confessions is over-compensation for the fact that Christianity wasn't the first religion to enflame this author's heart. Saint Augustine's heartfelt dialogue with his Creator ("a dialogue with God and the reader," Hammond puts it, "not a soliloquy"), in which he laments the sins of his youth and cherishes the memory of his teachers and his saintly mother Monica, has won the affection of readers for nearly two thousand years in large part because of how singular it is in pre-modern faith writing ("the world's first autobiography," it's often though inaccurately called) - and that singularity, as Saint Augustine knew better than anybody, is mainly due to the fact that we don't have the equivalent works he wrote in the service of his earlier spiritual masters.Augustine's conversion to Christianity came about in his third decade, conveniently enough very shortly after the Roman Empire had banned Manichaeism and legislated the death of all its adherents. Since even in our own cynical age it's considered bad manners to accuse a saint of craven opportunism, we go on embracing the winning honesty and candor of the Confessions. So the question before the prospective buyer of this new Loeb edition is far simpler than character analysis: is the translation here a good one to read? Hammond wisely keeps her stated goals modest: "This version aims at a lucid, natural English style," she writes, "from which it is possible for a reader with some knowledge of Latin to make some sense of the original, and which tracks the syntactic movement whenever possible." That movement-tracking isn't completed in this particular volume; for what can only be deemed venal reasons, the thirteen chapters of the Confessions aren't presented here - instead, we get only the first eight chapters, culminating in the final conversion to Christianity of Aurelius Augustine (readers wanting the famously moving account of Saint Monica's death will have to consult the second volume).But it's more than enough even so to give newcomers a very good idea of what all the fuss has been about this endurably absorbing book, and the happy news is that Hammond's translation not only rises above the description of a trot but soars above it. The Confessions has been translated many dozens or even hundreds of times over the centuries, and Hammond's work stands proudly in the ranks of the best of those; this is a jewel in the Loeb crown.We can dip in almost anywhere and find an illustrating case. Take the exalting end of Book VI, in which Saint Augustine lyrically professes his love for his saving God. Here's Hammond's very lively rendition of the signature moment:
What torturous paths! Alas for that presumptuous soul of mine, which had hoped that, if it withdrew from you, it would find some better place to dwell! Twist, turn, on the back or the side or the stomach: every position is uncomfortable, and you are the only rest. And look! You are at hand, you set me free from my pathetic sins and you set me on your way, and you comfort me and say, "Off you go! I will bring you, and I will guide you to the end, and even there I will bring you!"
This is the clear rhetorical descendant of Edward Pusey's legendary 1838 translation (that sold so enormously well to postwar readers in the 1952 "Cardinal" mass-produced paperback), which went at the passage with a gusto reminiscent of the King James Bible at its most melodically thunderous:
O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! Turned it hath, and turned again, upon back, sides, and belly, yet all was painful; and Thou alone rest. And behold, Thou art at hand, and deliverest us from our wretched wanderings, and placest us in Thy way, and dost comfort us, and say, "Run; I will carry you; yea I will bring you through; there also will I carry you."
In a neat little Mobius-strip of muddling-through, two popular translations in between Pusey's and Hammond's are far less successful. The widely-disseminated 1961 Penguin Classic edition done by (settle down now) R. S. Pine-Coffin, manages to sap almost all the wonderful momentum right out of the passage:
What crooked paths I trod! What dangers threatened my soul when it rashly hoped that by abandoning you it would find something better! Whichever way it turned, on front or back or sides, it lay on a bed that was hard, for in you alone the soul can rest. You are there to free us from the misery of error which leads us astray, to set us on your own path and to comfort us by saying, 'Run on, for I shall hold you up. I shall lead you and carry you on to the end.'
And what about hugely popular classicist Rex Warner, in his 1963 translation for the Mentor paperback line? In a long and very productive career, Warner scarcely ever put a foot wrong - but his Confessions is a curiously lifeless thing, almost always missing the obvious emphases in key lines and rendering this passage just about as murkily as it could be rendered:
What torturous ways these were, and how hopeless to have something better if it went away from you! It has turned indeed, over and over, on back and side and front, and always the bed was hard and you alone are rest. And, see, you are close to us, and you rescue us from our unhappy errors, and you set our feet in your way to speak kindly to us and say: "Run and I will hold you and I will bring you through and there also I will hold you."
Far better - in fact, the only rival to either Hammond or Pusey - is Maria Boulding's 1997 translation, which likewise manages to capture the ardent enthusiasm of the saint's original wording:
Oh, how torturous were those paths! Woe betide the soul which supposes it will find something better if it forsakes you! Toss and turn as we may, now on our back, now side, now belly - our bed is hard at every point, for you alone are our rest. But lo! Here you are; you rescue us from our wretched meanderings and establish us on your way; you console us and bid us, "Run: I will carry you, I will lead you and I will bring you home."
The advantage of all of these translations, even the boring ones, is that they are complete in themselves, but even so, this Loeb edition answers them all marvellously. It's a standout achievement and deserves every bit as large a readership has steadfast old Pusey has had through the decades.
