Let in the Light: Learning to Read St. Augustine's Confessions by James Boyd White (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Let in the Light: Learning to Read St. Augustine's Confessions by James Boyd White
• Ian Clausen

James Boyd White
Let in the Light: Learning to Read St. Augustine's Confessions
New York: Columbia University Press, 2022
Pp. xxiii + 359. $30.00.

Not many readers encounter Augustine in his native Latin. The problem is not confined to students and lay readers; Augustine scholars, too, increasingly read Augustine only in English. One worries about what is lost in reading this way. The problem is more than a matter of substance. Style, too, disappears beneath the cloak of translation, taking away from some of the pleasure Augustine intended for his readers. Can this experience be recovered? James Boyd White thinks so. In Let in the Light, he is quietly confident in the capacity of his readers to appreciate and savor what Augustine's Latin has to offer. Focusing on the Confessions is an obvious choice. If anyone today is to encounter Augustine, it is likely through this work, which defies categorization and transcends its ancient context. Paying respect to the many excellent translations over the years, White commits to walking readers through the Latin of the Confessions—or at least select parts of it—in an exercise in "slow reading" (47). His aim is, quite simply, to make possible "an exploration of the experience this wonderful book offers its readers" (xv).

Whether an audience exists for such an effort remains to be seen. Certainly the pandemic quarantine enlivened interest in language learning. But it is difficult to learn a language from an app, and many learning goals are likely to have petered out for lack of human contact. Latin might be different. Few learn Latin today in order to speak it. Nor is White interested in teaching readers Latin; as he confesses, he is no professional Latinist (xv). Instead, his book is about the experience the Confessions creates. It is also about the experience a work of translation creates, which is never a simple transfer from one language to another. "[A] translation is by its nature its own independent work," he writes (43–44). True enough, if by [End Page 141] "independent" we mean distinctive and contestable. Translation can impede but also enhance communication. A good translator's decisions are not arbitrary or idiosyncratic, and departing from an author's "literal" word may better capture that author's original meaning.

White's tack is to walk alongside and appeal to his readers directly. A paradigmatic example of this: "As you contemplate these various texts let me encourage you to think of them each as offering to its readers a certain experience, or set of experiences, both in the reading itself and in the anticipation of what comes next" (45). A calm and patient guide—or "friend" as he prefers (xv)—White models what he teaches. His approach has something to give to both new and seasoned readers of the Confessions. One is reminded of Margaret Miles's project a few decades ago in Desire and Delight (New York: Crossroad, 1991): to re-present the Confessions as a source of pleasure in itself. Part of that pleasure comes from confronting the limits of language, when Augustine is incapable of communicating his experience or understanding of the object of faith. White returns frequently to the confident declaration that opens Confessions: Magnus es, Domine, et laudabilis valde. Only this is not a conclusion, but more like a signpost on the way. Very soon, we find Augustine in an unfamiliar place, not sure what to make of his life's origins and trajectory and the God to whom they belong. For Augustine, observes White, "has the rare ability of being able to say something, then to look at what he said with fresh eyes, and in this way put into question his assumptions, his language, and his mind" (92).

White's guiding hand starts to loosen as the book proceeds. We receive more Latin and less commentary, at least on the Latin, as if to signal our readiness to engage the former on our own. Many of White's translations are beautifully rendered, and by offering them as "rough and provisional" (14), he underlines...