Confessions Augustine\'s Attitude to Storytelling

Confessions

Augustine's attitude to storytelling and classical literature in his "Confessions"

Augustine was the son of a pagan father and a devout Christian mother. He struggled between embracing both of their contradictory attitudes in his own life. His attitude to reading the mythology of the past, such as the "Aeneid" of Virgil was initially a perceived conflict between the pagan and Christian, between what he saw as sophisticated and attractive storytelling and the initially less attractive, simple morality of the heart. Eventually, through reading, and telling his own spiritual story, Augustine was able to find Christianity the more sustaining moral philosophy of the two worlds offered to him.

Augustine came to regards pagan writings as inferior versions of Christian beliefs. "For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, O power that links together my mind with my inmost thoughts?" (I.16.21) The earthly love of Dido and Aeneas is inferior to the interior love the soul owes God. Augustine regards his early affection for reading pagan Latin as mistaken. "I erred, then, when as a boy I preferred those vain studies to these more profitable ones, or rather loved the one and hated the other." (I.16.23)

Despite his guilty attitude towards loving the excitement of Latin pagan literature, Augustine is a man who is converted through reading. He struggles with the intellectual side of pagan life that attracts him, as opposed to what he regards as the simplicity of Christianity. He reminds himself it was "was even "the least of the apostles" by whose tongue thou didst sound forth these words." (VIII.6.245) Words from the Bible eventually gave Augustine guidance to put away his old life and take joy in the words of God. "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." (VIII.12.265)