Chapter IV
7. In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had gained a very dear friend, about my own age, who was associated with me in the same studies. Like myself, he was just rising up into the flower of youth. He had grown up with me from childhood and we had been both school fellows and playmates. But he was not then my friend, nor indeed ever became my friend, in the true sense of the term; for there is no true friendship except between those you bind together and who cleave to you by the love that is “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Still, it was a sweet friendship, being ripened by the zeal of common studies. Moreover, I had turned him away from the true faith — which he had not soundly and thoroughly mastered as a youth — and turned him toward those superstitious and harmful fables that my mother mourned in me. With me, this man went wandering off in error and my soul could not exist without him. But behold, you were close behind your fugitives — at once a God of vengeance and a Fountain of mercies, who turn us to yourself by ways that make us marvel. Thus, you took that man out of this life when he had scarcely completed one whole year of friendship with me, sweeter to me than all the sweetness of my life thus far.
8. Who can show forth all your praise (cf. Ps 106:2) for that which he has experienced in himself alone? What was it that you did at that time, O my God; how unsearchable are the depths of your judgments! For when, sore sick with a fever, he long lay unconscious in a death sweat and everyone despaired of his recovery, he was baptized without his knowledge. And I myself cared little, at the time, presuming that his soul would retain what it had taken from me rather than what was done to his unconscious body. It turned out, however, far differently, for he was revived and restored. Immediately, as soon as I could talk to him — and I did this as soon as he was able, for I never left him and we hung on each other overmuch — I tried to jest with him, supposing that he also would jest in return about that baptism that he had received when his mind and senses were inactive, but which he had since learned that he had received. But he recoiled from me, as if I were his enemy, and, with a remarkable and unexpected freedom, he admonished me that, if I desired to continue as his friend, I must cease to say such things. Confounded and confused, I concealed my feelings till he should get well and his health recover enough to allow me to deal with him as I wished. But he was snatched away from my madness, that with you he might be preserved for my consolation. A few days later, during my absence, the fever returned, and he died.
9. My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow, and everywhere I looked I saw death. My native place was a torture room to me and my father’s house a strange unhappiness. And all the things I had done with him — now that he was gone — became a frightful torment. My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say to me, “Look, he is coming,” as they did when he was alive and absent. I became a hard riddle to myself, and I asked my soul why she was so downcast and why this disquieted me so sorely (cf. Ps 42:5, 43:5). But she did not know how to answer me. And if I said, “Hope in God” (Ps 42:5, 43:5), she very properly disobeyed me, because that dearest friend she had lost was as an actual man, both truer and better than the imagined deity she was ordered to put her hope in. Nothing but tears were sweet to me, and they took my friend’s place in my heart’s desire.
Chapter V
10. But now, O Lord, these things are past and time has healed my wound. Let me learn from you, who are Truth, and put the ear of my heart to your mouth, that you may tell me why weeping should be so sweet to the unhappy. Have you — though omnipresent — dismissed our miseries from your concern? You abide in yourself while we are disquieted with trial after trial. Yet unless we wept in your ears, there would be no hope for us remaining. How does it happen that such sweet fruit is plucked from the bitterness of life, from groans, tears, sighs, and lamentations? Is it the hope that you will hear us that sweetens it? This is true in the case of prayer, for in a prayer there is a desire to approach you. But is it also the case in grief for a lost love, and in the kind of sorrow that had then overwhelmed me? For I had neither a hope of his coming back to life, nor in all my tears did I seek this. I simply grieved and wept, for I was miserable and had lost my joy. Or is weeping a bitter thing that gives us pleasure because of our aversion to the things we once enjoyed and this only as long as we loathe them?
Chapter VI
11. But why do I speak of these things? Now is not the time to ask such questions, but rather to confess to you. I was wretched; and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things — it is torn to pieces when it loses them, and then realizes the misery that it had even before it lost them. Thus it was at that time with me. I wept most bitterly and found a rest in bitterness. I was wretched, and yet that wretched life I still held dearer than my friend. For though I would willingly have changed it, I was still more unwilling to lose it than to have lost him. Indeed, I doubt whether I was willing to lose it, even for him — as they tell (unless it be fiction) of the friendship of Orestes and Pylades;3 they would have gladly died for one another, or both together, because not to love together was worse than death to them. But a strange kind of feeling had come over me, quite different from this, for now it was wearisome to live and a fearful thing to die. I suppose that the more I loved him the more I hated and feared, as the cruelest enemy, that death which had robbed me of him. I even imagined that it would suddenly annihilate all men, since it had had such a power over him. This is the way I remember it was with me.
Look into my heart, O God! Behold and look deep within me, for I remember it well, O my Hope who cleanses me from the uncleanness of such affections, directing my eyes toward you and plucking my feet out of the snare. And I marveled that other mortals went on living since he whom I had loved as if he would never die was now dead. And I marveled all the more that I, who had been a second self to him, could go on living when he was dead. Someone spoke rightly of his friend as being “his soul’s other half”4 — for I felt that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies. Consequently, my life was now a horror to me because I did not want to live as a half self. But it may have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved.
Chapter VII
12. O madness that knows not how to love men as they should be loved! O foolish man that I was then, enduring with so much rebellion the lot of every man! Thus I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was dragging around my torn and bloody soul. It was impatient of my dragging it around, and yet I could not find a place to lay it down. Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in fragrant bowers, nor in magnificent banquets, nor in the pleasures of the bed or the couch; not even in books or poetry did it find rest. All things looked gloomy, even the very light itself. Whatsoever was not what he was, was now repulsive and hateful, except my groans and tears, for in those alone I found a little rest. But when my soul left off weeping, a heavy burden of misery weighed me down. It should have been raised up to you, O Lord, for you to lighten and to lift. This I knew, but I was neither willing nor able to do; especially since, in my thoughts of you, you were not yourself but only an empty phantasm. Thus, my error was my god. If I tried to cast off my burden on this phantasm, that it might find rest there, it sank through the vacuum and came rushing down again upon me. Consequently, I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave. For where could my heart fly from my heart? Where could I fly from my own self? Where would I not follow myself? And yet I fled from my native place so that my eyes would look for him less in a place where they were not accustomed to see him. Thus I left the town of Tagaste and returned to Carthage.
Chapter VIII
13. Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure through our sense perceptions. It does strange things in the mind. Lo, time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances. Little by little, they patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure, and my sorrow yielded a bit to them. But yet there followed after this