Vita Brevis: A Letter to St Augustine

Life is short - Vita Brevis ( original title Vita Brevis ) is a novel by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder bestseller. In the book, created in 1996, is about an old Latin letter written by the first-person narrator has discovered in a used book store in Buenos Aires. Signed the letter of a certain Floria, and he is directed to her former lover, the church teachers and philosophers Augustine.

Floria accuses Augustine and questioned his religious beliefs, due to which he had left her and taken her to their son. It thus represents both a misogynist church ethics and morality in question. The text works with many quotations from Augustine Confessions and citations of ancient philosophers.

Whether the letter is genuine, a copy of which dated the narrator on the end of the 16th century and could be based on templates from the 4th century, in his opinion, will remain open in the text. Gaarder plays with his education assiduous readers, when he cites repeatedly in remarks Latin formulations of the alleged original. The one can be proud that they have opened up the Latin " original version " of the translation, the others that they have seen the original as fiction.

The reality reference of the text is that Augustine was actually twelve years received an illegitimate connection according to the evidence of his " confessions " and this woman had a son before was urged by his mother to marry and then decided to live a contemplative and finally select the bishop had.

Expenditure

Book

• Jostein Gaarder: Life is short. Vita brevis. dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-62231-8 ( first edition: Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1997 )

Media

• Jostein Gaarder, Martina Boette - Sonner (Director), Krista Posch ( speaker): Vita brevis. Stop -Verlag, Munich 1997 (2 audio cassettes )