Fecisti nos ad te et cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in te.
In his most famous line from his Confessions, St. Augustine introduces the great outward and return journey of his life, of our life. In this meticulous sentence, he reveals both his ability for rhetorical flourish and the paucity of our attempts at translation. The effect is that many modern translations of the work into English struggle to capture and convey the meanings he offers.
We begin with “Fecisti.”
St. Augustine employs the verb “facio, facere” instead of “creo, creare” (see, Procreation, Episode 8), even though the distinction is clear to him theologically by this point in his authorship. Perhaps the choice is in reference to the many ways God formed St. Augustine and each of us in the adventure of life as distinct from God’s creation and sustaining of His creatures. Adventure, it seems, is key to life. “You have made us to yourself,” he writes. This “ad te” is more than simply stating possession or purpose. You have made us to yourself signifies motion toward, a presence not yet achieved or enjoyed. The exitus-reditus paradigm which will schematize the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas nearly a millennium later is encapsulated in these four words: “Fecisti nos ad te.”
Then we arrive at “cor nostrum,” literally, “our heart.” “Nostrum” is the first-person, plural, possessive adjective. He does not write “our hearts,” “my heart,” or even “the heart of us.” What does St. Augustine mean here? Does he mean a single human heart collectively shared? If so, where does this one heart beat? Is he writing metaphorically or rather metonymically to refer to our heart as a part to the whole and thus essentially mean simply “us”? Is he writing transtemporally in that, at one time prior, the human heart did reside singularly in the chest of Adam? The sin, after all, is called “original” on account of this common origin. Is this commonality with our first parents how God in some sense knows the human family, connected in this way, existing in this way across generations of His creation?
What is “cor”? Is it a heart for St. Augustine in the sense of muscular tissue? Is its beating the “inquietum” referenced or is “cor” significant of the principal aspect of us, that which experiences sadness, dissatisfaction, “inquietum”? What is the rest of the body or “corpus” to the “cor”? Is the body the foot (cf. Greek “ποῦς”) or footstool of the “cor,” suggesting a Platonic influence concerning the transmigration of souls? Rather still, might the “corpus, corporis” be the bearer of the “cor,” the heart, the soul, ferrying it into the world?
Returning to “inquietum” is this movement, that is, the movement “ad te” the source or cause of the inquietude? What is “quietum”? If it is “quiet,” what makes “quiet” so? Is “quies” a state of completed “quere” or search. As creatures, we are by metaphysical realty incomplete, an effect not containing its cause. Is “inquietum” the norm of our existence or merely the statistical anomaly of history, specifically salvation history being incomplete, as yet unfulfilled. In 5,000 years, will the majority of our existence have been quietude or inquietude?
Proceeding to “requiescat,” we discover an answer to this question of norms. St. Augustine’s choice of “requiescat” is both liturgical in connotation and significant of the return , the “reditus” to God. The subjunctive mood of the verb “requiescat” expressing desire or exhortation is modified by the prepositional phrase “in te.” The Latin pronoun “te” can be either accusative or ablative in reference to case. Similarly the preposition “in” can pair with objects in both these cases with modifications of meaning. “In te” where “te” is accusative can mean “into you,” the ingressive sense , which suggests our participation of the Divine Life, that is, beatitude. It can also mean, adversatively “against you” and in an extreme sense suggests the rest experienced by the damned in the knowledge of their condemnation perpetually. “Te” interpreted in the ablative case means “in” or “on,” and thus “until [cor nostrum] rests on you.” Here the resting of the Beloved Disciple on the breast of Christ at the Last Supper comes to mind.
Fecisti nos ad te et cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in te.
The difficulty in translating this sentence is not that all translation is deficient, and thus linguistic theft, but that language as a gift from the Divine Word can so densely convey reality. By reading texts in their original language, we remain closer to the reality of the author, whether human or Divine and deny the loss of fruitfulness to translating middlemen and the likes of Big Lexi.
BetterPears 