A romantic from Hippone Romantic inspiration from The Confessions of St Augustine

Abstract

The author of the article examines Augustine as a forerunner of the discussion shaped by Romanticism, a discussion about the human condition at a moment of breakthrough and exhaustion of the existing vision of the world and culture. Augustine is also considered as the creator of a particular genre, that of spiritual autobiography. Augustine, was one of the first authors to venture to diagnose himself in a situation of internal and historical breakthrough. The article identifies the less explored context of rooting romantic confessional literature in Augustine's Confessions. By highlighting the presence of his thoughts and aesthetic ideas in the expressions primarily of the leading Polish Romantic, Adam Mickiewicz, the author points, with examples from his works, to the tropes of dependence between the ancient rhetorician-philosopher and the Romantics.