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Saint Augustin by Louis Bertrand

L >> Louis Bertrand >> Saint Augustin




[Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.]

Who was this friend? He tells us in very vague terms. We only know that
they had grown up as boys together and had gone to the same schools; that
they had just passed a year together, probably at Carthage; that this young
man, persuaded by him, was become a Manichee; and that, in a word, they
loved passionately. Augustin, while speaking of him, recalls in a deeper
sense what Horace said of his friend Virgil: _dimidium animæ_--"O thou half
of my soul!"

Well, this young man fell gravely sick of a fever. As all hope was at an
end, they baptized him, according to the custom. He grew better, was almost
cured, "As soon as I was able to talk to him," says Augustin--"and that was
as soon as he could bear it, for I never left his side, and we were bound
up in one another--I ventured a jest, thinking that he would jest too,
about the baptism which he had received, when he could neither think nor
feel. But by this time he had been told of his baptism. He shrank from
me as from an enemy, and with a wonderful new-found courage, warned me
never to speak so to him again, if I wished to remain his friend. I was
so astounded and confused that I said no more, resolving to wait till
he should regain his strength, _when I would tell him frankly what I
thought_."

So, at this serious moment, he whom they called "the Carthaginian disputer"
was sorry not to be able to measure himself in a bout of dialectics with
his half-dead friend. The intellectual poison had so perverted his mind,
that it almost destroyed in him the feelings of common decency. But if his
head, as he acknowledges, was very much spoiled, his heart remained intact.
His friend died a few days after, and Augustin was not there. He was
stunned by it.

His grief wrought itself up to wildness and despair. "This sorrow fell like
darkness on my heart, and wherever I looked I saw nothing but death. My
country became a torture, my father's house a misery. All the pleasures
that I had shared with him, turned into hideous anguish now that he was
gone. My eyes sought for him everywhere, and found him not. I hated the
familiar scenes because he was not there, and they could no more cry to
me, 'Lo! he will come.' as they used when he was absent but alive...."
Then Augustin began to weep louder, he prolonged his weeping, finding
consolation only in tears. Monnica's tenderness was restrained; in him it
was given full vent and exaggerated. At that time, the Christian moderation
was unknown to him, as well as the measure which the good taste of the
ancients prompted. He has often been compared to the most touching
geniuses, to Virgil, to Racine, who had also the gift of tears. But
Augustin's tenderness is more abandoned, and, so to speak, more romantic.
It even works up, sometimes, into an unhealthy excitement.

To be full of feeling, as Augustin was then, is not only to feel with
excessive sensitiveness the least wounds, the slightest touches of love or
hate, nor is it only to give oneself with transport; but it is especially
to take delight in the gift of oneself, to feel at the moment of full
abandonment that one is communicating with something infinitely sweet,
which already has ceased to be the creature loved. It is love for love, it
is to weep for the pleasure of tears, it is to mix with tenderness a kind
of egoism avid of experiences. Having lost his friend, Augustin loathes all
the world. He repeats: "Tears were my only comfort. I was wretched, and
my wretchedness was dear to me." And accordingly, he did not want to be
consoled. But as, little by little, the terrors of that parting subsided,
he perceived himself that he played with grief and made a joy of his
tears. "My tears," he says, "were dearer to me than my friend had been."
By degrees the friend is almost forgotten. Though Augustin may hate life
because his friend has gone, he confesses naively that he would not have
sacrificed his existence for the sake of the dead. He surmises that what
is told of Orestes and Pylades contending to die for each other is but a
fable. Ultimately, he comes to write: "Perhaps I feared to die, _lest the
other half of him whom I had loved so dearly, should perish_." He himself,
in his _Retractations_, condemns this phrase as pure rhetoric. It remains
true that what was perhaps the deepest sorrow of his life--this sorrow so
sincere and painful which had "rent and bloodied his soul"--ended with a
striking phrase.

It should be added, that in a stormy nature like his, grief, like love,
wears itself out quickly. It burns up passion and sentiment as it does
ideas. When at length he regained his calm, everything appeared drab.
Thagaste became intolerable. With his impulsive temperament, his changeable
humour, he all at once hit upon a plan: To go back to Carthage and open a
rhetoric school. Perhaps, too, the woman he loved and had abandoned there
was pressing him to return. Perhaps she told him that she was about to
become a mother. Always ready to go away, Augustin scarcely hesitated.
It is more than likely that he did not consult Monnica. He only told
Romanianus, who, as he had all kinds of reasons for wanting to keep
Augustin at Thagaste, at first strongly objected. But the young man pointed
to his future, his ambition to win fame. Was he going to bury all that in a
little town?

Romanianus yielded, and with a generosity that is no longer seen, he paid
the expenses this time too.




V

THE SILENCE OF GOD


Augustin was going to live nine years at Carthage--nine years that he
squandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himself
and others--briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "And
during this time Thou wert silent, O my God!" he cries, in recalling only
the faults of his early youth. Now, the silence of God lay heavy. And yet
even in those years his tormented soul had not ceased to appeal. "Where
wert Thou then, O my God, while I looked for Thee? Thou wert before me. But
I had drawn away from myself and I could not find myself. How much less,
then, could I find Thee."

This was certainly the most uneasy, and, at moments, the most painful time
of his life. Hardly was he got back to Carthage than he had to struggle
against ever-increasing money difficulties. Not only had he to get his
own living, but the living of others--possibly his mother's and that of
his brother and sister--at all events, he had to support his mistress and
the child. It is possible that the infant was born before its father left
Thagaste; if not, the birth must have occurred shortly after.

The child was called Adeodatus. There is a kind of irony in this name,
which was then usual, of Adeodatus--"Gift of God." This son of his sin, as
Augustin calls him, this son whom he did not want, and the news of whose
birth must have been a painful shock--this poor child was a gift of Heaven
which the father could have well done without. And then, when he saw him,
he was filled with joy, and he cherished him as a real gift from God.

He accepted his fatherhood courageously, and, as it happens in such
cases, he was drawn closer to his mistress, their association taking on
something of conjugal dignity. Did the mother of Adeodatus justify such
attachment--an attachment which was to last more than ten years? The
mystery in which Augustin intended that the woman he had loved the most
should remain enveloped for all time, is nearly impenetrable to us. No
doubt she was of a very humble, not to say low class, since Monnica judged
it impossible to bring about a marriage between the ill-assorted pair.
There must have been an extreme inequality between the birth and education
of the lovers. This did not prevent Augustin from loving his mistress
passionately, for her beauty perhaps, or perhaps for her goodness of heart,
or both. Nevertheless, it is surprising, that in view of his changing
humour, and his prompt and impressionable soul, he remained faithful to
her so long. What was to prevent his taking his son and going off? Ancient
custom authorized such an act. But Augustin was tender-hearted. He was
afraid to cause pain; he dreaded for others the wounds that caused him so
much suffering himself. So he stayed on from kindness, from pity, habit
too, and also because, in spite of everything, he loved the mother of his
child. Up to the time of his conversion, they lived like husband and wife.

So now, to keep his family, he really turns "a dealer in words." In spite
of his youth (he was barely twenty) the terms he had kept at Thagaste as
a teacher of grammar allowed him to take his place among the rhetoricians
at Carthage. Thanks to Romanianus, he got pupils at once. His protector at
Thagaste sent his son, that young Licentius whose education Augustin had
already begun, with one of his brothers, doubtless younger. It seems likely
that the two youths lived in Augustin's house. A small fact which their
master has preserved, looks like a proof of this. A spoon having been lost
in the house, Augustin, to find out where it was, told Licentius to go
and consult a wizard, one Albicerius, who had, just then, a great name in
Carthage. This message is scarcely to be explained unless we suppose the
lad was lodging in his professor's house. Another of the pupils is known to
us. This is Eulogius, who was later on a rhetorician at Carthage, and of
whom Augustin relates an extraordinary dream. Finally, there was Alypius,
a little younger than himself, his friend--"the brother of his heart," as
he calls him. Alypius had been attending his lessons at Thagaste. When the
schoolmaster abruptly threw up his employment, the father of the pupil
was angry, and in sending his son to Carthage, he forbade him to go near
Augustin's class. But it was difficult to keep such eager friends apart.
Little by little, Alypius overcame his father's objections, and became a
pupil of his friend.

Augustin's knowledge, when he began to lecture, could not have been very
deep, for he had only lately quitted the student's bench himself. His
duties forced him to learn what he did not know. In teaching he taught
himself. It was at this time that he did most of the reading which
afterwards added substance to his polemics and treatises. He tells us
himself that he read in those days all that he could lay hands on. He is
very proud of having read by himself and understood without any assistance
from a master, the _Ten Categories_ of Aristotle, which was considered one
of the most abstruse works of the Stagirite. In an age when instruction was
principally by word of mouth, and books comparatively rare, it is obvious
that Augustin was not what we call an "all-devouring reader." We do not
know if Carthage had many libraries, or what the libraries were worth. It
is no less true that the author of _The City of God_ is the last of the
Latin writers who had a really all-round knowledge. It is he who is the
link between modern times and pagan antiquity. The Middle Age hardly knew
classical literature, save by the allusions and quotations of Augustin.

So in spite of family and professional cares, he did not lose his
intellectual proclivities. The conquest of truth remained always his great
ambition. He still hoped to find it in Manicheeism, but he began to think
that it was a long time coming. The leaders of the sect could not have
trusted him thoroughly. They feared his acute and subtle mind, so quick
to detect the flaw in a thesis or argument. That is why they postponed
his initiation into their secret doctrines. Augustin remained a simple
_auditor_ in their Church. By way of appeasing the enormous activity of
his intelligence, they turned him on to controversy, and the critical
discussion of the Scriptures. Giving themselves out for Christians, they
adopted a part of them, and flung aside as interpolated or forged all that
was not in tune with their theology. Augustin, as we know, triumphed in
disputes of this kind, and was vain because he excelled in them.

And when he grew tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists
to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine
calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical
colouring. The catechumen was not satisfied, but he put up with it for
lack of anything better. Very prettily he compares these enemies of the
Scriptures to the snarers of birds, who defile or fill with earth all the
water-places where the birds use to drink, save one mere; and about this
they set their snares. The birds all fly there, not because the water
is better, but because there is no other water, and they know not where
else to go and drink. So Augustin, not knowing where to quench his thirst
for truth, was fain to make the best of the confused pantheism of the
Manichees.

What remains noteworthy is, that however unstable his own convictions were,
he yet converted everybody about him. It was through him that his friends
became Manichees: Alypius one of the first; then Nebridius, the son of a
great landowner near Carthage; Honoratius, Marcianus; perhaps, too, the
youngest of his pupils, Licentius and his brother--all victims of his
persuasive tongue, which he exerted later on to draw them back from their
errors. So great was his charm--so deep, especially, was public credulity!

This fourth century was no longer a century of strong Christian faith. On
the other hand, the last agony of paganism was marked by a new attack of
the lowest credulity and superstition. As the Church energetically combated
both one and the other, it is not surprising that it was chiefly the
pagans who were contaminated. The old religion was to end by foundering in
magic. The greatest minds of the period, the neo-Platonists, the Emperor
Julian himself, were miracle-workers, or at any rate, adepts in the occult
sciences. Augustin, who was then separated from Christianity, followed the
general impulse, together with the young men he knew. Just now we saw him
sending to consult the soothsayer, Albicerius, about the loss of a spoon.
And this man of intellect believed also in astrologers and nigromancers.

Strips of lead have been found at Carthage upon which are written magic
spells against horses entered for races in the circus. Just like the
Carthaginian jockeys, Augustin had recourse to these hidden and fraudulent
practices, to make sure of success. On the eve of a verse competition in
the theatre, he fell in with a wizard who offered, if they could agree
about the price, to sacrifice a certain number of animals to buy the
victory. Upon this, Augustin, very much annoyed, declared that if the prize
were a crown of immortal gold, not a fly should be sacrificed to help him
win it. Really, magic was repellent to the honesty of his mind, as well
as to his nerves, by reason of the suspicious and brutal part of its
operations. As a rule, it was involved with haruspicy, and had a side of
sacred anatomy and the kitchen which revolted the sensitive--dissection
of flesh, inspection of entrails, not to mention the slaughtering and
strangling of victims. Fanatics, such as Julian, gave themselves up with
delight to these disgusting manipulations. What we know of Augustin's soul
makes it quite clear why he recoiled with horror.

Astrology, on the contrary, attracted him by its apparent science. Its
adepts called themselves "mathematicians," and thus seemed to borrow from
the exact sciences something of their solidity. Augustin often discussed
astrology with a Carthage physician, Vindicianus, a man of great sense
and wide learning, who even reached Proconsular honours. In vain did he
point out to the young rhetorician that the pretended prophecies of the
mathematicians were the effect of chance; in vain did Nebridius, less
credulous than his friend, join his arguments to those of the crafty
physician; Augustin clung obstinately to his chimera. His dialectical mind
discovered ingenious justifications for what the astrologers claimed.

Thus, dazzled by all the intellectual phantasms, he strayed from one
science to another, repeating meanwhile in his heart the motto of his
Manichean masters: "The Truth, the Truth!". But whatever might be the
attractions of the speculative life, he had first to face the needs of
actual life. The sight of his child called him back to a sense of his
position. To get money, and for that purpose to push himself forward, put
himself in evidence, increase his reputation--Augustin worked at that as
hard as he could. It led him to enter for the prize of dramatic poetry.
He was declared the winner. His old friend, the physician Vindicianus, who
was then Proconsul, placed the crown, as he says, upon his "disordered
head." The future Father of the Church writing for the theatre--and what a
theatre it was then!--is not the least extraordinary thing in this life so
disturbed and, at first sight, so contradictory.

It was also from literary ambition that about the same time he wrote a book
on æsthetics called _Upon the Beautiful and the Fit_, which he dedicated to
a famous colleague, the Syrian Hierius, "orator to the City of Rome," one
of the professors of the official education appointed either by the Roman
municipality or the Imperial treasury. This Levantine rhetorician had an
immense success in the capital of the Empire. His renown had got beyond
academical and fashionable circles and crossed the sea. Augustin admired
him on trust, like everybody else. It is clear that, at this time he could
not imagine a more glorious fortune for himself than to become, like
Hierius, orator to the City of Rome. Later in life, the Bishop of Hippo,
while condemning the vanity of his youthful ambitions, must have made some
extremely ironical reflections as to their modesty. How mistaken he was
about himself! An Augustin had dreamed of equalling one day this obscure
pedagogue, of whom nobody, save for him, would ever have spoken again. Men
of instinct, like Augustin, continually go wrong in this way about their
object and the means to employ. But their mistakes are only in appearance.
A will stronger than their own leads them, by mysterious ways, whither they
ought to go.

This first book of Augustin's is lost, and we are unable to say whether
there be any reason to regret it. He himself recalls it to us in a very
indifferent tone and rather vague terms. It would seem, however, that his
æsthetic had a basis of Manichean metaphysics. But what is significant for
us, in this youthful essay, is that the first time Augustin wrote as an
author it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at least
not directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is already
inclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be a
religion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identical
with the supreme Love. "Do we love anything," he used to say to his
friends, "except what is beautiful?" _Num amamus aliquid, nisi pulchrum?_
Again, at the end of his life, when he strives in _The City of God_ to
make clear for us the dogma of the resurrection of the body, he thinks our
bodies shall rise free from all earthly flaws, in all the splendour of the
perfect human type. Nothing of the body will be lost. It will keep all its
limbs and all its organs _because they are beautiful_. One recognizes in
this passage, not only the Platonist, but the traveller and art-lover, who
had gazed upon some of the finest specimens of ancient statuary.

This first book had hardly any success. Augustin does not even say whether
the celebrated Hierius paid him a compliment about it, and he has an air
of giving us to understand that he had no other admirer but himself. New
disappointments, more serious mortifications, changed little by little his
state of mind and his plans for the future. He was obliged to acknowledge
that after years of effort he was scarcely more advanced than at the start.
There was no chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quite
plain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now,
why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he had
not the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of all
for a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and select
audience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes he
could not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularly
difficult to keep in order, because the students were more rowdy than
elsewhere. At any moment "The Wreckers" might burst in and make a row.
Augustin, who had not joined in these "rags" when he was a student, saw
himself obliged to endure them as a professor. He had nothing worse to
complain of than his fellow-professors, in whose classes the same kind of
disturbance took place. That was the custom and, in a manner of speaking,
the rule in the Carthage schools. For all that, a little more authoritative
bearing would not have harmed him in the eyes of these disorderly boys. But
he had still graver defects for a professor who wants to get on: he was not
a schemer, and he could not make the most of himself.

It is quite possible that he did not possess the qualities which just then
pleased the pagan public in a rhetorician. The importance that the ancients
attached to physical advantages in an orator is well known. Now, according
to an old tradition, Augustin was a little man and not strong: till the end
of his life he complained of his health. He had a weak voice, a delicate
chest, and was often hoarse. Surely this injured him before audiences used
to all the outward emphasis and all the studied graces of Roman eloquence.
Finally, his written and spoken language had none of those brilliant and
ingenious curiosities of phrase which pleased in literary and fashionable
circles. This inexhaustibly prolific writer is not in the least a stylist.
In this respect he is inferior to Apuleius, or Tertullian, though he leaves
them far behind in the qualities of sincere and deep sentiment, poetic
flow, colour, the vividness of metaphor, and, besides, the emotion, the
suavity of the tone. With all that, no matter how hard he tried, he could
never grasp what the rhetoricians of his time understood by style. This is
why his writings, as well as his addresses, were not very much liked.

Nevertheless, good judges recognized his value, and guessed the powers,
lying still unformed within him, which he was misusing ere they were
mature. He was received at the house of the Proconsul Vindicianus, who
liked to talk with him, and treated him with quite fatherly kindness.
Augustin knew people in the best society. He did all his life. His charm
and captivating manners made him welcome in the most exclusive circles.
But just because he was valued by fashionable society, it came home to him
more painfully that he had not the position he deserved with the public
at large. Little by little his humour grew bitter. In this angry state of
mind he was no longer able to consider things with the same confidence and
serenity. His mental disquietudes took hold of him again.

His ideas were affected, first of all. He began to have doubts, more
and more definite, about Manicheeism. He began by suspecting the rather
theatrical austerity which the initiated of the sect made such a great
parade of. Among other turpitudes, he saw one day in one of the busiest
parts of Carthage "three of the Elect whinny after some women or other who
were passing, and begin making such obscene signs that they surpassed the
coarsest people for impudence and shamelessness." He was scandalized at
that; but, after all, it was a small thing. He himself was not so very
virtuous then. Generally your intellectual worries very little about
squaring his conduct with his principles, and does not bother about the
practical part. No; what was much worse in his eyes is that the Manichean
physical science, a congeries of fables more or less symbolical, suddenly
struck him as ruinous. He had just been studying astronomy, and he found
that the cosmology of the Manichees--of these men who called themselves
materialists--did not agree with scientific facts. Therefore Manicheeism
must be wrong universally, since it ran counter to reason confirmed by
experience.

Augustin spoke about his doubts, not only to his friends, but to the
priests of his sect. These got out of the difficulty by evasions and the
most dazzling promises. A Manichee bishop, a certain Faustus, was coming
to Carthage. He was a man of immense learning. Most certainly he would
refute every objection without the least trouble. He would confirm the
young _auditors_ in their faith.... So Augustin and his friends waited for
Faustus as for a Messiah. Their disappointment was immense. The supposed
doctor turned out to be an ignorant man, who possessed no tincture of
science or philosophy, and whose intellectual baggage consisted of nothing
but a little grammar. A delightful talker and a wit, the most he could do
was to discourse pleasantly on literature.

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Turkey is restoring the citizenship of its most famous 20th century poet Nazim Hikmet over 50 years after it branded him a traitor.

Hikmet, a communist who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, was imprisoned in Turkey for more than a decade. He was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 1951 because of his communist views, but despite a ban on his poetry which remained in place until 1965, has remained one of Turkey's best-loved poets. His work, much of which was written in prison, including his masterpiece Human Landscapes, has been translated into more than 50 languages.

"This is very good news," said Richard McKane, Hikmet's English translator. "The restoration of his Turkish citizenship is long overdue: the people of Turkey and his readers are owed that."

Immortalised by Pablo Neruda, with whom he shared the Soviet Union's International Peace Prize in 1950, with the lines "Thanks for what you were and for the fire / which your song left forever burning", Hikmet was also supported by Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, when given the editorship for a day of Turkish newspaper Radikal two years ago, used the example of Hikmet in his cover story to criticise the lack of freedom of expression in Turkey. In 2000, 500,000 Turks petitioned the government to restore Hikmet's citizenship rights and repatriate his remains.

Deputy prime minister Cemil Cicek told the Associated Press that it was time for the government to change its mind about Hikmet. "The crimes which forced the government to strip him of his citizenship at that time are no longer considered a crime," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Hikmet, whose remains are currently in Russia, had said that he wished to be buried in Turkey in his 1953 poem Testament, translated by Ruth Christie. "Friends if it's not my lot to see the day / of independence... / if I die before that day / - and it seems I will - / bury me in a village graveyard in Anatolia / and if it's fitting / and a plane tree grows at my head, / then there's no need for a gravestone or anything else."

Cicek said that Hikmet's family would now decide whether to ship his remains back to his homeland.

Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkey in the 1930s, with his themes ranging from war to love. Despite his imprisonment he retained a deep passion for Turkey. "I love my country", he wrote in one of his poems. "I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons. Nothing relieves my depression like the songs and tobacco of my country."

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