Letting Augustine be Augustine

I  try to squeeze Augustine’s Confes­sions into many of the courses I teach. Sometimes this works out pretty well. I once spent a semester inviting first-generation college students on the southwest side of Chicago to relate Augustine to domestic abuse, gang violence, and teenage pregnancy. You might be surprised how many issues students share with a North African bishop who lived 1,600 years ago.

But for many students, simply making sense of the variety of topics Augustine covers can be a stumbling block. A good translation from the Latin might help open students’ eyes to the method in the madness, while a bad translation might turn them off of Augustine for good. There is a lot riding on this choice, which becomes more intimidating when you consider that Confessions is one of the most frequently translated texts in history.

Two new entries in an already crowded marketplace come from Sarah Ruden and Peter Constantine. Ruden, a classicist, brings a keen historical eye for language. Constantine, who usually translates literary works, aims instead to bring out the timeless beauty of Augustine’s prose.