Saint Augustine's Childhood: CONFESSIONES BOOK ONE (Testimony, Bk 1) [Hardcover]

Augustine of Hippo (Author), Garry Wills (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Testimony, Bk 1 | Publication Date: October 11, 2001

In Garry Wills's biography of Saint Augustine for the Penguin Lives series, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author brilliantly documented the life of the great Christian thinker. His translations of passages of Saint Augustine's influential Confessiones were hailed as "sizzling" (Peter Brown, New York Review of Books). James Wood, writing for the London Review of Books declared, "Augustine flourishes in Wills's hand." Now, Wills has taken on a translation of the first of four books of the Confessiones, "Childhood."

Wills's broad-ranging and incisive discussion of the style, structure, and themes of "Childhood" brings a fresh perspective to this classic work, including the juxtaposition of Augustine's concept of childhood and the learning of language with the ideas of Noam Chomsky and current research. Beautifully designed and translated by "America's greatest living intellectual" (The American Prospect), "Childhood" will be sought after by academics, Christians, and the general reader.

Translated by Garry Wills, author of the bestselling Penguin Lives biography of Saint Augustine.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The traditional title for St. Augustine's classic devotional work The Confessions can be misleading. Because it is a transliteration, not a translation, of the Latin title, it encourages readers to think of the work as an autobiography, when in fact it is a prayer. Saint Augustine's Childhood, Garry Wills's translation of the first book of the Confessiones renders the work in fresh language, corrects scores of misinterpretations, and explains the prayerful nature of the book's structure, style, imagery, and rhetoric. The text describes infancy and the period during which children learn to talk, seamlessly incorporating scriptural allusions that have pockmarked previous translations. The concise notes and commentary, and a crucial appendix, bring Augustine's ideas about language acquisition into dialogue with more contemporary theories, such as Noam Chomsky's. Like Wills's short biography of Augustine for the Penguin Lives series, this project is masterfully rendered, and will be appreciated equally by scholars, students, and the general reader. Wills's sophistication is leavened by an appealing lightness. He describes one Latin term as "a nice frog-croak of a word"; a period of Augustine's adolescence is "a year of mild hell-raising"; and, paraphrasing Chesterton, Wills memorably suggests that "original sin becomes easier to understand at the moment when, on a long summer's afternoon, bored children begin to torture the cat." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal

Biographer and intellectual Wills is far from the first to have been snared by St. Augustine's complexity of mind and the tremendous rhythms of his prose. This short volume is simultaneously a successor to Wills's short biography of Augustine for Penguin and the first in a series of annotated translations from Augustine's Confessions. Wills's able translation does not disguise Augustine's breathtaking writing, and his commentary rightly brings Augustine into the company of Wittgenstein and Chomsky. This translation is highly recommended for most libraries.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1St Edition edition (October 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030015
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030019
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,524,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A travesty of Augustine's work, January 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Saint Augustine's Childhood: CONFESSIONES BOOK ONE (Testimony, Bk 1) (Hardcover)

The absurdities produced by Wills' eccentric treatment of Augustine multiply like rabbits. One example: Wills insists on calling Augustine's son Adeodatus "Godsend" rather than Adeodatus. It is true that the etymology of the name roughly corresponds to "Godsend," but given the fact that almost every name in antiquity "meant something," this tick is supremely annoying. His translations are clunky to the extreme. He translates the classic line, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you" (inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te) as "Our heart is unstable until stabilized in you."

If you have to read the Confessions in English, by all means stick with Henry Chadwick.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Readable Translation, July 28, 2010

By 

Anne (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Saint Augustine's Childhood: CONFESSIONES BOOK ONE (Testimony, Bk 1) (Hardcover)

Garry Wills translation of Augustine's Confessions came highly recommended to my husband. It was previously published as one book. A second edition was published and separated into 4 hardback books instead of 1 smaller type paperback by Penguin Books. Specifically, it was the second edition that was recommended to him because it was updated with some revisions. My husband began reading this first book of the series and immediately found it engaging and easy to read. I don't mean that it is watered down though. My husband's favorite authors are Wendell Berry, John Piper, and Eugene Peterson (spiritual theology series), all of which are not easy reads. I also read the first page and found it encouraging and easy to read. I do not read light fiction either, but I tend to prefer Jerry Bridges books to Piper's. I have always been intimidated by Augustine's Confessions, but I know I'd be able to read this translation and understand it.

There is only one other review of this book and I noticed that it criticized two specific examples from the translation. I'm afraid that I can't refute them because I am not a translator, but the friend that recommended this edition to my husband is very knowledgeable since he has taught a foreign language. It was explained to me that there are many nuances to translation that are not easily explained to people who are not translators. I trust this man's opinion since he has been a translator. And as far as looking for a readable translation, this is a great choice!

The other books in the series are:
Saint Augustine's Memory
Saint Augustine's Sin (Augustine, Confessiones. Bk. 3.)
Saint Augustine's Conversion