Key Arguments

• After his friend’s death, Augustine describes pervasive desolation: ‘Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment.’
• He underscores how his longing for the absent friend made him hate all things that did not contain him: ‘My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. I hated everything because they did not have him, nor could they now tell me “look, he is on the way”, as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me.’
• He formulates his own condition as an unresolved inner question: ‘I had become to myself a vast problem,10 and I questioned my soul “Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?”’
• He notes that his soul had good reason to refuse the biblical exhortation to trust God, because his conception of God was less real than his friend: ‘If I had said to my soul “Put your trust in God” (Ps. 41:6, 12), it would have had good reason not to obey. For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust.’
• In this void, sorrow itself became his only sweetness: ‘Only tears were sweet to me, and in my “soul’s delights” (Ps. 138: 11) weeping had replaced my friend.’

Source Quotes

5: 17). Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment.

Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there.

I hated everything because they did not have him, nor could they now tell me ‘look, he is on the way’, as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me. I had become to myself a vast problem,10 and I questioned my soul ‘Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?’ But my soul did not know what reply to give.

But my soul did not know what reply to give. If I had said to my soul ‘Put your trust in God’ (Ps. 41:6, 12), it would have had good reason not to obey. For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust.

41:6, 12), it would have had good reason not to obey. For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust. Only tears were sweet to me, and in my ‘soul’s delights’ (Ps.

For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust. Only tears were sweet to me, and in my ‘soul’s delights’ (Ps. 138: 11) weeping had replaced my friend. v (10) Now, Lord, all that belongs to the past, and with time my wound is less painful.11 Can I hear from you who are the truth, and move the ear of my heart close to your mouth, so that you can explain to me why weeping is a relief to us when unhappy? Or, although present everywhere, have you thrust our misery far from you and remain in yourself (Wisd.

Key Concepts

• Everything on which I set my gaze was death.
• My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment.
• I had become to myself a vast problem,10 and I questioned my soul ‘Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?’
• If I had said to my soul ‘Put your trust in God’ (Ps. 41:6, 12), it would have had good reason not to obey.
• For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust.
• Only tears were sweet to me, and in my ‘soul’s delights’ (Ps. 138: 11) weeping had replaced my friend.

Context

Book IV, section iv (9): Augustine analyzes the psychological and spiritual effects of his friend’s death, exposing the danger of idolatrous friendship and of trusting in a false image of God.