A. M. Young - Some Aspects of St. Augustine's Literary Aesthetics, Studied Chiefly in de...

8/14/2019 A. M. Young - Some Aspects of St. Augustine's Literary Aesthetics, Studied Chiefly in de DoctrinaChristiana

1/12

Harvard Divinity School

Some Aspects of St. Augustine's Literary Aesthetics, Studied Chiefly in "De DoctrinaChristiana"Author(s): Archibald M. YoungReviewed work(s):Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Jul., 1969), pp. 289-299

Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509373.

Accessed: 11/12/2012 05:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University PressandHarvard Divinity Schoolare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

and extend access to The Harvard Theological Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.230 on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:38:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hdshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1509373?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1509373?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hdshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup


2/12

HARVARDTHEOLOGICALEVIEW 62 (1969), 289-299.

SOME ASPECTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S LITERARYAESTHETICS, STUDIED CHIEFLY INDE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANAARCHIBALD M. YOUNGUNIVERSITYFWESTERNNTARIO

LONDON, NTARIO

IWHEN Augustine was a young man, he tells us in his Confessions,he asked himself and his friends,

"Do we love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful?and what is beauty? What is it that attracts and wins us to the thingswe love? for unless therewere in them a grace and beauty, they couldby no means drawus unto them." And I marked and perceived thatin bodies themselves, there was a beauty, from their forming a sortof whole, and again, another from apt and mutual correspondence,as of a part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and thelike. And this considerationsprang up in my mind, out of my inmostheart, and I wrote On the Fair and the Fit, I think two or threebooks. Thou knowest,0 Lord, for it is gone fromme, for I have themnot, but they are strayed from me, I know not how.x

St. Augustine tells us that he did not regret the loss of this separatetreatise. Yet the problems it examined remained among the mostpersistent themes of his discourses, turning up in such works ashis epistles, sermons, diverse questions, commentaries on Scrip-ture, and throughout his doctrinal writings and polemics. In fact,it seems likely that his disregard grew out of a conviction that astudy of the beautiful, in a world so manifestly filled with pleas-ing things, must overflow any arbitrarily imposed limitations, andaddress itself to the larger examination of all beings, their mean-ing, and the nature of men's response to them. Thus, as JacquesMaritain observed in his study of the Schoolmen's theory of art,

We must go to the Metaphysics . . . to discover what their views1 Confessions,.13.20.

This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.230 on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:38:47 AMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/12

290 HARVARDTHEOLOGICALEVIEWwereconcerninghe Beautiful, ndthenproceedo meet Artandseewhatcomesof the junctionof thesetwoterms.2

Ideally, this procedure - which I have made my own - has themerit of both preservingthe suggestive unity of the subject, andat the same time illuminating some specific aspect of it. Cer-tainly it is the approach St. Augustine invites us to use in DeDoctrina Christiana. There, he introducesthe subject of literaryexpression by very subtly distilling distinctions essential to thisargument in a brief discrimination between "beings" and"images"of beings. Underliningthe metaphysicalimplicationsofthese terms,he says that all doctrine concernsthese two categories,for that whichis neitheris nothingat all. But to distinguish, thus,betweenimagesand nothing,is to suggest that imagesalso possessbeing in so far as they imitate it. There are, then, two aspectsfrom which to consider the image: we can consider its meaning,fromthe point of view of the being it signifies; or we can considerwhat mightbe called its "form,"or the beingwhichit possesses initself, in so far as it reflects it." But, like St. Augustine,we shouldbe anxiousto emphasizethat these categoriesare, in the firstplace,artificial, and, in the second, relative: that is, they are isolatedfrom a single phenomenonwhich, when treated organically,musttake both aspects into account.4 With this warningin mind, wecan proceed to a considerationof images, first as signs, then asbeings.

IIAlthoughit is true to say, as we have, that every image is alsoa being, it does not follow that every being is also an image, anespecially important exception since it describes God, who is theultimate Being, removed from every kind of determinationorimitation. That is why He nevergave any otherimagefor Himself

in Scripture. "The angel, and through the angel the Lord Him-self, said to Moses when he asked His name, 'I am Who Am.'"'"JACQUESMARITAIN,Art and Scholasticism (1935), 3.3D.D.C., 1.2.2."Ibid., 1.2.2; 2.1.1.5Exodus 3.14.



4/12

AUGUSTINE'SAESTHETICS 291He is, then, the fountainheadof being and has made all othercreated things to imitate His fullness, in varying degrees. Thus itis correct to say that all these are images of Him- even thoughthis termis usually reservedfor man, who, in his doublenatureasbody and soul, most closely approximatesGod:

Thanks to Thee, O Lord . . . We behold a face of waters gatheredtogether in the fields . . . We behold the face of the earth deckedout with earthly creatures, nd man,createdafter Thy imageandlikeness,eventhroughhatThy veryimageandlikeness(that is thepowerof reasonandunderstanding)et over all irrationalreatures.6In this sense, the whole created universe, as an image, "means"the divine ideas that gave them form, in the same way that words

signify the thoughts of men, an analogy St. Augustine himselfdraws our attention to:It is as when we speak. In orderthat what we are thinkingmayreach hemindof the listener hroughhefleshlyears,that whichwehave n mind s expressednwordsandis calledspeech.7And as St. Augustine points out early in De Doctrina Christiana,

words, from a very important point of view, are "signs whosewhole use is in signifying . . . For no one uses words except forthe purposeof signifying something,"8no one shouldconsiderhem for whatthey are,but rather or theirvalue as imageswhichsignifysomething lse. An imageis a thingwhichcauses us to think of somethingbeyondthe impressionheimage tself makesuponthe senses.9

This radical dependency of literal embodiment upon spiritualmeaning underlies an important aspect of St. Augustine's ideasabout the proper nature of man's response to image and being.Some beings, he says, are to be used, and others are to be en-joyed. To enjoy a being is to cling to it with love for its own sake.But the only properobject of love is Being itself, or God, so thatby means of corporaland temporalbeings we may comprehend

6Conf., 13.32.47.D.D.C., 1.13.12.8 Ibid., 1.2.2.9 Ibid., 2.1.1.



5/12

292 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEWspiritual and eternal ones."' St. Augustine illuminates this dis-tinction through a metaphor of travel in which he refers to theimage as a vehicle.

Supposewe were wandererswho could not live in blessednessexceptat home, miserable in our wanderingand desiring to end it and toreturnto our native country. We wouldneed vehicles for land and seawhich could be used to help us to reach our homeland,which is to beenjoyed. But if the amenities of the journey and the motion of thevehicles itself delighted us, and we were led to enjoy those thingswhich we should use, we should not wish to end our journey quickly,and, entangled in a perverse sweetness, we should be alienated fromour country, whose sweetness would make us blessed. Thus, in thismortal life, wanderingfrom native country where we can be blessedwe should use this world and not enjoy it.11The most revealing illustration of these principles of the natureand use of the image is found in one of St. Augustine's own pas-

sages of Scriptural exegesis. The text he chooses to describe isfrom the Canticle of Canticles, and in it the Church of Christ isimaged as a beautiful woman:

Thy teeth are as flocks of sheep, that are shorn,which come up fromthe washing, all with twins, and there is none barrenamong them.12The spiritual meaning which is the essential source of our enjoy-ment is explained in the following way:

There are holy and perfect men with whose lives and customs as anexemplarthe Churchof Christ is able to destroy all sorts of supersti-tions in those who come to it and to incorporatethem into itself, menof good faith, true servants of God, who putting aside the burden ofthe world, come to the holy laver of baptism and, ascending thence,conceive throughthe Holy Spiritand producethe twofold love of Godand their neighbour.13If we give careful attention to this example of St. Augustine'sexegesis, we can learn a good deal from it. To begin with, thepeculiar configuration of the images themselves --teeth and

'o bid., 1.4.4-1 .55."Ibid., 1.4-4.12 Canticles [Song of Solomon] 4.2.13D.D.C., 2.6.7.



6/12


7/12

294 HARVARDTHEOLOGICALEVIEWthen, to this otherpoint of view and see how it complementswhatwe have said thus far.

IIITo begin with, we find that the rigorousdistinction St. Augus-tine initially draws between the enjoymentof God'sBeing and theuse of His created images in this world is not so absolute as itmight seem, for he later goes on to say that "to enjoy"and "to usewith joy" are very similar:WhenPaulwrote o Philemon, Yea,brother," e said,"MayI enjoythee in theLord."7 If he hadnot added"in the Lord"but hadsaidmerely"I enjoythee,"he wouldhaveplacedhis hopeof blessednessin Philemon.However,njoyments very ikeuse withdelight.Whenthatwhich s loved s near, t necessarily ringsdelightwith it also.18

Thus, while God is the object of man'senjoyment, the properuseof those images which point to Him in time and space yield acertain delight too. This delight may be thought of as an enjoy-ment arising from the temporaland corporalsimilitudewhich theimagebearsto the being it reflects; for what else can St. Augustinemean when he speaks of that being as "near"when represented nthe image? This principlewhich underlinesthe formal relation-ship of being and imageis expandedin the commentssurroundingthe exegesisof the passage from Canticles. There we are told thatalthough the spiritual meaning St. Augustine paraphrasesfor usis very pleasant,yet, for a reasonhe doesnot understand,holy menare more pleasingly described for him as the teeth of Christ'sChurch,even thoughthis image says nothingwhich is not said inthe spiritualexpression.

Butwhy t seems weetero methan f no suchsimilitudewereofferedin thedivinebooks, incethethingperceiveds thesame, s difficultosay and is a problem or anotherdiscussion.For the present,how-ever,no one doubtsthat thingsare perceivedmorereadilythroughsimilitudes nd thatwhatis soughtwithdifficultys discoveredwithmorepleasure.1917Philemon 20.8D.D.C., 1.33.37.9Ibid., 2.6.8.



8/12

AUGUSTINE'SAESTHETICS 295In the last clause of his statement, St. Augustineseems to suggestthat the pleasurewe take in the spiritualmeaningis enhancedbythe delight that is taken in discoveringthe correspondenceor re-lationshipbetween the meaningand the literal image of it: "whatis sought with difficulty is discovered with more pleasure." Al-though this matter is formidableand referred,it seems, to a dis-cussion outside St. Augustine's immediate field of inquiry, it ispossibleto clarify someof its implicationsby returningto the briefmetaphysical discussion of beings and images which introducesDe Doctrina Christiana. It will be recalledthat Godalone is theredefinedas true being, for He created all other things which may,therefore,truly be said to be images of Him. In this sense, it wasobservedthat the whole universe could be thought of as an orderof images which signify His meaning, just as words signify theideas of a speaker. This analogy is one which is deeply rooted inthe Scripturaltraditionof the Hebraic-Christianphilosophy,andSt. Augustine draws deeply upon it to illustrate the distinctionsand relationshipsbetweenbeing and image. He uses, for instance,the opening passage from the Gospel of St. John, where God isimaged,it wouldseem, as a perfect Being who, in His relationshipto the created universe, is a divine Poet, the fountainheadof theWord, in its doubleaspect as both meaningand form. The Word,thus, exists ideationally in Him and substantially in His literalcreationwhichSt. Augustineelsewhere refersto as God's universalsong or poem ("carmen universitatis").20 This poem could bedemonstrated o have its ownshape, rhythm,andharmony,just asthe "Deus creator omnium" verse from St. Ambrose's hymn isshown to have formalproportions.21So too do the sky, the earth,and the humblecreatureswhich,like the separatewords that com-pose the poem as a whole, have their own form,as in the modulat-ing long and short syllables. And these discreteparts are, like theseparate images in Genesis,each of them good, or delightful. Butif each distinct "word" is good, how much better is the entirepoem,which,in its completeness,not only revealsa fuller formandmeaning but also increases the delight we take in the separatewords,revealingas it does their entire importthrough relationship

2 De Musica, 6.29.' Ibid., 6.1.1.



9/12

296 HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEWto the rest of the poem, and in this sense fulfilling them? Thus,St. Augustine notes that

of the several kinds of Thy works, when Thou hadst said "let thembe," and they were, Thou sawest each that it was good. Seven timeshave I counted it to be written, that Thou sawest that which Thoumadest was good: and this is the eighth that Thou sawest every thingthat Thou hadst made, and behold, it was not only good, but alsovery good, as being now altogether.22

Elsewhere, this is added to:That is not to be passed over lightly which is said, "and God saw allthings which He had made, that they were very good." For when hewas speakingof individuals,he said only, "Godsaw that it was good";but when all were spoken of, it was too little to say "good" unlessthere were added "very." For if the severalworksof God, when theyare consideredby thoughtfulpersons,each with itself and its kind, tohave excellent proportionsand numbers and order, how much morealtogether [i.e., the universeitself, which is composedof these severalthings collected into one]. For, all beauty, which consists in parts, ismuch more commendableas a whole than in part; as in the humanbody, if we commend the eyes only or the several other beautifulpoints, singly and alone, how muchmore the whole body, to which allthe members, being severally beautiful contribute their beauty sothat a beautiful hand, which being in the body was praised even byitself, if it be separated from the body, both itself loses its beauty,and the other parts, without it, are deformed.23

This matter, as St. Augustine tells us, is very important, for if itdoes not actually demonstrate the formal being of the image, asis the case, for instance, in De Musica, it does justify it by empha-sizing the essentially organic relationship it bears to the order ofbeing. This organic relationship is underlined in the body-handanalogy, a metaphor which tends to lead us away from the arti-ficiality of the sign-meaning dualism, and towards another andessential corporal metaphor which is the model and informingprinciple of all the being-image relationships in the created uni-verse: I refer to the archetypal Word, the incarnate Son, Who,

" Conf., 13.28.43.3De Gen. c. Man., I. 50.21.



10/12

AUGUSTINE'SAESTHETICS 297being the perfect imitation of the Father, is the identical repre-sentationof the one who begets Him, andwas yet "made flesh anddwelt among us." 24 St. Augustine speaks of the nature of thismystery in the following passage:

I acknowledge perfectman to be in Christ;not the bodyof a manonly, nor with the body and sensitivesoul withouta rational,butveryman;whom,notonlyas beinga formof Truth,but for a certaingreatexcellencyof humannature,and a moreperfectparticipationof wisdom,I judgedto be preferredbeforeothers. But Alypiusimagined he Catholics o believeGodto be so clothedwith flesh,that besidesGodandflesh, herewasno soulat all in Christ,anddidnot thinkthata humanmindwasascribedo Him. But understand-ing afterwardshat this was the errorof The Apollinarian eretics,he joyed n andwas conformedo theCatholicaith.25

The superlatively good and the separate good, the object of en-joyment and the image of delight are, in this figure, conjoinedwithin the terms of a single being: God and man, Who are thesame in Christ, even though the one is more excellent than theother. Within this conception, the radical dualism, like theApollinarianheresy, disappears. In fact, that is what we shouldhave expected from the beginning, for even when St. Augustinespoke of images only in terms of what they mean, or refer to, helikened them to a "vessel," and in particulara ship. Surely hewas aware,in choosingthis figure,that St. Ambrosehad comparedthat vehicle to the body of Christ,and also to His Church,which,at the conclusionof time, will rise to meet its master and be unitedwith Him. Far from being abandonedat the approachesof mean-ing, the vessel becomespart of a fulfilledorder which is "altogetherboth good and very good."26 Hence Christ speaks of his incarna-tion as a discrete stage within a unitary and hierarchical ex-perience:

The Lordcreatedme fromthe beginning f his ways,27o that thosewho wished to come might have a beginningin Him . . . Thus He24I Cor. 1.21; cf. D.D.C., 1.13.12.25 Conf., 7.19.25.26 The idea of marriage is apposite here; yet, to my knowledge, it is a figure St.Augustine used far less frequently than other and related images of union."Proverbs 8.22.



11/12

298 HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEWsays, "I am the way, and the truth,and the life," that is, you are tocome throughme, to arrive at me, and to remain in me. When wearrive at Him, we arrive also at the Father28 - since by an equal,anotherequal is known.29

Thus, the images God has created in this world (and the imagesof human "creation," in so far as that act imitates its divinecounterpart) are to be understood, like their archetypal model,"not allegorically, but properly," that is, figuratively."3 To illus-trate what he means, St. Augustine explores the meaning of thephrase "increase and multiply" from the account of creation inGenesis. Though spoken of one creature, he notes, it is inferred inmany, and the many are carefully catalogued within a hierarchicalpattern, ascending from creatures of the sea to creatures of land,from beasts to men, and from the corporal to the spiritual (for"we find 'multitude' to belong to creatures . . . in heaven andearth").3 In this sense, the divine principle is signified in theimages of the creatural world, but these also participate in whatis pointed to; the divine world manifests what is signified, but alsoperfects, in the sense of fulfilling what the image itself contains.The polarity of simple signification is thus dissolved, and the in-congruities between image and being, while not supplanted, aresuperseded by another awareness, one which makes for a striking"double knowledge" which is superbly manifested in this ironiccomment from the fourth book of De Doctrina Christiana (hespeaks of the relation of humble language to important ideas):

Certainly, if we were advising men how they should act in worldlycases, either for themselves or for their friends, before ecclesiasticaljudges, we should rightly urge them to speak in a subdued manneras if of small things. But when we are speaking of the eloquenceofthosemen whom we wish to be teachersof thingswhichwill liberateusfrometernalevil or lead us to eternal good, whereverthese things arediscussed, . . . they are great things. Unless, perhaps,becausea cupof cold water is a small and most insignificantthing, we should alsoregard as small and most insignificantthe promise of the Lord that2 John 14.6.1o.29 D.D.C., 1.34.38 (the italics are mine).30 Conf., 13.23.38.31Ibid., 13.23.36-3 7.



12/12

AUGUSTINE'SAESTHETICS 299he whogives such a cup to one of His disciples"shallnot lose hisreward." 2

Summarily, although St. Augustine implies that images are to betaken as meaninganything they could possibly mean that wouldbe true, and althoughthis must and does include a relationshiptobeing which is allegorical, the essential relationshiphe describespossesses a rather different order of implications, implicationswhich we might call, with St. Augustine, "figural" rather thanallegorical, and characterized,if we may attach any importanceto the passage above, by ironic complexity rather than simpledualisms.

32 D.D.C., 4.18.37.

A. M. Young - Some Aspects of St. Augustine's Literary Aesthetics, Studied Chiefly in de...

Documents

Transcript of A. M. Young - Some Aspects of St. Augustine's Literary Aesthetics, Studied Chiefly in de...