‘Everything on which I set my gaze was death’
May 24, 2011
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 [my friend] 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, and questioned my soul ‘Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?’ but my soul did not know what reply to give.
Augustine, Confessions (translated by Henry Chadwick)
I’d heard references to ‘factus eram ipse mihi magna quaestio’ before, as discussions of autobiography often start with Augustine. But I didn’t know that the statement occurs within his description of his grief when a friend died.
