Abstract
Based on my idea of self-closing textual patterns (Hungarian Studies, 1996/2) I describe a special type, stylistic and rhetorical at once, as a “themes summarizing verbal pattern” (1). Recently I found an elaborate instance of the pattern, hitherto unnoticed, in the Confessions (AD 397) by Augustine (2). In Book 10 it is a centre of the textual and conceptual organization of the work as its components appear in distinct form in Book 1 and act as a premise to the last three Books (3). This “themes summarizing verbal pattern” is an integral part of Augustine’s stylistic and rhetorical innovation based on the Bible and the popular use of Latin in North Africa. A clue to Augustine’s use of the “themes summarizing verbal pattern” is perhaps his familiarity with Punic linguistic and cultural traditions.
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Notes
„…a stílus christianus, beszivárog a nyelv pórusaiba, átissza a szavakat: s idézni lehetne minden lapról helyet, ma már nem is feltűnőt, de melyet meg nem írt volna senki azelőtt, senki római vagy görög író, klasszikus, pogány: mint például ilyent: « amint anyám is szokta, mert így tanulta szíve iskolájában » « in schola pectoris » : ezt nem írta volna le senki Ágoston előtt.” (Babits 1917, 949; the Latin quotation: conf. 9.9.21) “Such was she, Thyself, her most inward Instructor, teaching her in the school of the heart.” Trans. Edward Bouveried Pusey, Augustine 1952, 67.—The “Confessiones” from here on: “conf.” English translations of conf. from the source above: conf. trans. Pusey.).
“Times lose no time; nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they work strange operations on the mind.” (Ibid., 22.) “Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my concubine being torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding. […] Nor was that my wound cured, which had been made by the cutting away of the former, but after inflammation and most acute pain, it mortified, and my pains became less acute, but more desperate.” (Ibid., 42.).
“But what do I love, when I love Thee? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement, when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, and there klingeth what satiety divorceth not. This is it which I love, when I love my God.” (Ibid., 73.).
The wood has its birds, / The garden has its flowers, / The sky has its stars, / The lad has his lass. // You flowers are blooming, you birds are singing, / You stars are shining, / And the lass is blooming, singing and shining, / The wood, the garden, the sky, the lad are happy. // Alas, the flower fades, / The star falls, the bird flies away, / But the lass remains: / The lad is the happiest of all. (Trans. is my own.).
Wake, gracious dawn, you abundant with roses! / Already a cool breeze of dawn sways her bosom; / Awake, skylark on the warmth of your soft nest! / The early pink of the dawn has already appeared on the sky. // Arise, you crowned sun! Already a song praises you; / Blare, you wartime bugle, wake the army with your bray! / Breeze, dawn, bugle, skylark, army and sun, / Wake you all, all! Behold, Etele is faster than you. (Trans. is my own.).
Blooming rose, ray of sunlight, / Song of the nightingale, wing of the butterfly, / All these are beautiful and I love them. / Oh but see: you are my nightingale, / My rose, my butterfly, my sunlight / You are all these, all in one for me. (Trans. is my own.).
Ibid., 234.
(Aranyʼs italics.) I sing arms and hero, the Turksʼ power / Who dared, the wrath of Suleiman, / That great Suleiman's powerful arm, / Whose sabre was feared all over Europe. (Trans. is my own.).
(Arany’s italics.) I am dying for Csurgó, but not for its castle, / Hey, not for its castle, but for one of its streets, / Not for a street in it, but for a single house, / Hey, for her who was brought up in it, for my brown-haired sweetheart. (Trans. is my own.).
I quote from the on-line reprint of Augustine, Confessions, Augustine 1992 = conf. ed. OʼDonnell.
The specific nature of the idea of “interior homo” is exposed by Cavadini 2007, criticizing the substitution of the precise Latin phrase by the term “self” in various papers and translations.
conf. ed. OʼDonnell (ibid.).
“Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty…” (conf. trans. Pusey, 81.).
“Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and pant for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace.”(Ibid.).
Italics stand for biblical excerpts in all excerpts from Augustine's texts. Phrases in fat refer here to the mystical union.—“And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me? Whither can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? Is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me that can containThee? Do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast made, and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? Because I am not gone down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For »if I go down into hell, Thou art there.« [Ps. 139. 8.] I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all, wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, of Whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into me? For whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, Who hath said, »I fill the heaven and the earth?« [Ier. 23. 24.]” (conf. trans. Pusey, 3.).
Phrases in bold refer to obsessive repetitions of laudare, scire, inuocare, credire, praedicare etc.—“Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness, that »Thou resistest the proud« [Ias. 4,6; I Pet. 5.5]: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? For who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? For he that knoweth Thee not may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or is it rather that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? »But how shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher?« [Rom. 10:14] And they that seek the Lord shall praise Him. For they that seek shall find Him, and they that find shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee, and will call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, wherewith Thou hast inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of the Preacher.” (Ibid.).
“Behold, the heavens and the earth are; they proclaim that they were created, for they change and vary. Whereas whatsoever hath not been made, and yet is, hath nothing in it which before it had not; and that it is, to change and vary. They proclaim also, that they made not themselves; »therefore we are, because we have been made; we were not therefore, before we were, so as to make ourselves.« Now the evidence of the thing is the voice of the speakers. Thou, therefore, Lord, madest them; Who art beautiful, for they are beautiful; Who art good, for they are good; Who Art, for they are; yet they are not beautiful nor good nor are they, as Thou their Creator art; compared with Whom they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are. This we know, thanks be to Thee. And our knowledge, compared with Thy knowledge, is ignorance.” (Ibid, 90.).
“For as the beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity is a sad blemish.“(Augustine 1952, 335.).
“For God would never have created any, I do not say angel, but even man, whose future wickedness He foreknew, unless He had equally known to what use in behalf of the good He could turn him, thus embelleshing the course of the ages, as it were an exquisit poem set off with antitheses. For what are called antitheses are among the most elegant ornaments of speech. They might be called in Latin ‘oppositions,’ or, to speak more accurately, ‘contrapositionsʼ; but this word is not in common use among us, though the Latin, and indeed the languages of all nations, avail themselves of the same ornaments of style.” (Ibid, pp. 331–332).
“For not as I now speak did I feel when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully.” (Conf. trans. Pusey, 15).
“And if the Punic language is rejected by you, you virtually deny what has been admitted by most learned men, that many things have been wisely preserved from oblivion in books written in the Punic tongue. Nay, you ought even to be ashamed of having been born in the country in which the cradle of this language is still warm.” Translated by J.G. Cunningham from Schaff (1887).
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Szili, J. The monumental language game in Augustine’s Confessions . Neohelicon 42, 211–225 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-015-0300-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-015-0300-2