The Sublimitas of Confessiones. Augustinian Imagery and the Occurrence of Similes
LIVIU PETCUABSTRACT. In this article, we wish to highlight the fact that Blessed Augustine’s Confessiones is more than a mere autobiography as it lays the foundations for the literary genre of inner autobiography. The act of writing for him, a born writer, was life itself, the condition of his life: the writer would always live in him, even when he wrote about the meaning of history or immersed himself in the Trinitarian mystery. Confessiones is memorial work, and concurrently a book of theology, mysticism, history, philosophy, also an important literary work. It is precisely in this literary beauty that the charm and mirage of the work lies. Starting from the Confessiones, we shall discuss the Augustinian imagery and the occurrence of similes, the parataxis and the structure of the phrase with et, while highlighting that, in this monumental work, the style of Blessed Augustine is of Biblical inspiration. When the biblical influence is not felt in quotations or phrases, it is felt in words, images and structures.
Keywords: Blessed Augustine; Confessiones; literary style; imagery; parataxis; similes