St Augustine in Afrikaans

by Michael Shackleton · October 17, 2007

AUGUSTINUS: BELYDENISSE: Getuienis oor �n lewe in God. Eerste Afrikaanse omsetting met medewerking van Piet Venter, Johann Symington en Amie van Wyk. Lux Verbi, Wellington. 2007. 475pp.

Reviewed by Michael Shackleton

As the first complete Afrikaans translation of St Augustine�s Confessions, this is an impressive production.� The translators made use of the Latin text, RS Pine-Coffin�s 1961 English translation and A Sizoo�s 1965 Dutch version.

Augustine�s Confessions and The City of God are accepted as among the greatest works of literature of all time. The latter, however, tells us little about the personal spiritual development of the author. Only in the Confessions can we enter into the heart and soul of Augustine as he bares his emotions, his sense of guilt before God and his deeply felt amazement at the mysterious workings of the love and forgiveness of the Creator who gently led him from ignorance to knowledge, from moral decay to divine grace. Moreover, the entire work is a prayer addressed to God, which gives the reader a sense of eavesdropping on the saint�s making a clean breast of the state of his soul.

The Afrikaans text sets out to render the original into words that will have an impact on modern readers, while also being as true to the original as possible. The conventional threefold division of the work into Augustine�s gratitude for the divine mercy received in the past, praise for the blessings of the present, and a contemplation of God�s glory in creation, is maintained.

And so we have: Boek 1-9: Augustinus se verlede (belydenis oor sy sonde); Boek 10: Sy lewe in die hede (belydenis as persoonlike getuienis); Boek 11-13: �n Uitleg van Genesis 1 (dui op belydenis van geloof vir alle tye).

The translators give us a rendition in uncomplicated yet polished Afrikaans. For example, the magnificent Latin opening words of the book: �Magnus es, Domine, et laudabilis valde�, which are the key to the whole work, become: �Groot is U, o Heer, alle lof kom U toe.�

The stirring admission by the saint of his regret at not loving God soon enough (�I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late. Yet you were within me, and I was in the world outside myself�) is expressed this way: �Ek het te laat geleer om U lief to kry, o skoonheid, U wat tegelyk so oud en tog so nuut is. Ek het te laat geleer om U lief to kry! En kyk, U was in my binneste en ook ek was in the w�reld buite my innerlike self.�

Augustine tells God he has written this work uit liefde vir u liefde, and this theme of supreme love can grippingly take hold of the reader.

As an attractive hardcover, the book is printed and bound expertly. Amie van Wyk, in the foreword has this invitation: �Dis �n groot oomblik dat ons Augustinus in Afrikaans mag hoor praat. My aanbeveling is eenvoudig: Tolle lege! Neem en lees! Hierdie boek. En natuurlik ook die Romeineboek, ja, die hele Bybel, en vind, soos Augustinus, die ware God.�