St. Augustine's Confessions: Passage Explication from Book III
Aurelius Augustine, or St. Augustine (354-430), one of the most important historical figures of the Roman Catholic Church and a major author of its doctrines (Lawall et al.) is the author of Confessions (begun in 397, when he was about 43). Confessions is a lengthy, detailed personal epistle addressed to God by Augustine, about the sins and mistakes of his earlier life, combined with a mature acknowledgement to God of his present understanding of his true purpose: to serve God. Augustine "did not convert to Christianity until he had reached midlife" (Lawall et al., p. 1221). Confessions, then, is a sort of autobiographical midlife accounting of Augustine's past sins and misplaced energies up to this point. Midlife marks a distinct turning point in Augustine's life and attitudes, and in the internal direction of Augustine the man. In this essay, I will explicate one paragraph from Book III of Confessions [Student at Carthage], the first, which appears in the Norton Anthology on pages 1229-1230. This passage seems especially personal and heartfelt, and, for its writer, possibly a difficult emotional and spiritual challenge.
As the first paragraph of this passage from Book III illustrates, Augustine yearns to confess to God the details of his youth, which he has spent recklessly and licentiously, having focused more on hedonistic pursuits than on spiritual service to God. As he states: "a cauldron of illicit love leapt and boiled about me." Augustine's figurative language here includes the metaphor of the fiery cauldron of desire, a powerful, dramatic figure of...
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