Sunday, November 12, 2023

 

A Dream

Augustine, Sermons 39.5 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 243 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 41, p. 491; tr. Edmund Hill):
It's as if you were living here in a dream. If you are living here in a dream, you are going to wake up when you die, and the way you're going, you'll find you've got nothing in your hands. It's like a beggar sleeping, and in a dream he comes into a legacy, and no one could be happier than he before he gets up. He sees himself in his dream handling marvelous clothes, gold and silver plates, strolling into lovely, spacious parks, waited on by a bevy of servants. He wakes up, and he bursts into tears.

Quasi in somnis hic vivis. Si quasi in somnis hic vivis, evigilaturus es quando morieris, et sic nihil habes invenire in manibus tuis. Quomodo si mendicus dormiat et in somnis illi veniat hereditas, nihil illo felicius ante quam surgat. Videt se in somnis tractare manibus vestes egregias, pretiosa vasa aurea et argentea, intrare in amoenissima et amplissima praedia, obsequi sibi magnas familias. Evigilat, et plorat.
Hill omits "pretiosa" in his translation. On "habes invenire" = "invenies" see C.H. Grandgent, An Introduction to Vulgar Latin (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., Publishers, 1907), p. 57, ยง 128.



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