Abstract
AbstractAugustine’s account in the Confessions Book IX of his ecstasy at Ostia remains unsurpassed in its poetic force, yet unusual, as a description of religious experience, in two particular respects. First of all, what he describes is not a “vision” of God, but an experience of listening. Second, it is not a solitary but a shared experience (e.g., with his mother, Monica). This essay considers the significance of these two elements by analyzing the relation between his description in Book IX and the understanding of rhythm that he develops in De musica. Drawing also on Book X (on memory) and Book XI (on time-consciousness) in the Confessions, I investigate a particular type of flowing memory – what I call, “perfect” memory – that characterizes the temporally ordered movements of musical rhythm, showing that it is in this type of memory that Augustine finds God.
Highlights
Augustine’s account in the Confessions Book IX of his ecstasy at Ostia remains unsurpassed in its poetic force, yet unusual, as a description of religious experience, in two particular respects
We look for that rhythmical or metrical art we use for making verses, do you think it possesses the numbers verses are made by? D
In the same way that the perfect number three is a whole of non-independent parts, I shall describe this as a “perfect” memory – a memory of the all
Summary
Composed a decade before the Confessions, Augustine’s De musica occupies a neo-Platonic landscape and, in the final of six total books, attempts to marry the philosophical with the theological by interweaving quotations from the Gospels with his conclusions about the metaphysics of rhythm. A rhythm is a complex of presence and absence – of what is and what is no longer or not yet (and its intimacy with silence); it is irreducible to a single sound-event or “part” of time.[5] For example, a “” articulation must be related to a moment of the already-past and the yet-to-come-future in order for a rhythm to be expressed (that is to say, in order for us to have music – i.e., “the science of mensurating well” – and not just sound sensation or noise) Augustine conceives of this temporal structure in terms of countable numbers. In the same way that the perfect number three is a whole of non-independent parts, I shall describe this as a “perfect” memory – a memory of the all
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