Saint Augustine's Sin (Confessiones) - Hardcover

Wills, Garry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670032417 ISBN 13: 9780670032419

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2003

Synopsis

A third volume in a series of translations from Saint Augustine's Confessiones contends that Augustine sought to understand humanity's capacity for evil despite its good nature, analyzing three founding Biblical sins including the fallen angels' rebellion, the temptation of Adam, and Cain's murder of his brother. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Garry Wills--Latin scholar, liberal Catholic apologist, historian, award-winning Augustine biographer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author--is certainly one of the best qualified translators in America to render Saint Augustine's Confessiones for modern readers. With Saint Augustine's Sin Wills offers the third and perhaps most crucial volume of the translation (following Saint Augustine's Childhood and Saint Augustine's Memory), and, with a small exception, his text remains lively, erudite, and contemporary while preserving the rhetorical games of the original.

As in the earlier volumes, the supporting apparatus for the translation--almost two thirds of the slim book--allows Wills to open the literary and theological complexity of Augustine to new readers. In the introduction he declares that Augustine's titular sin is not sexual (as is often assumed), but, rather, is a gratuitous sin--a theft of pears committed with a group of young delinquents--akin to Adam’s sin of "compulsion to solidarity" with Eve. Wills buttresses his contention in the Appendix, "Augustine’s Theology of Sin." Here, he cites Augustine's City of God at length to demonstrate the parallel language used in the narration of the fall.

Wills' other major goal in this translation, beyond positioning the work in its proper contexts, is to preserve Augustine’s Latin "rhetorical pyrotechnics." In doing so, he embraces word play and conjures Augustine’s Latin imagery into English equivalents. At one point, his decision to mirror Augustine's use of a rare Latin verb leads to the opaque phrase, "I boldly foisoned into ramifying and umbrageous loves." But after this intended, intrusive lapse in clarity, the language of the pear theft itself melds perfectly Augustine's philosophical and theological anguish. Wills' scholarly notes taken together with his rousing, vital translation insure that Augustine will be enjoyed by contemporary readers afresh both for his gifts as a writer and for the passion of his spirituality. --Patrick O'Kelley

About the Author

Garry Wills has written many acclaimed and bestselling works, including What Jesus Meant, Papal Sin, and Why I Am a Catholic. His books have received many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. A professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University, Wills is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0670032417
• ISBN 13: 9780670032419
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128