“Late did I love you, beauty ever ancient ever new, late did I love you! You were within me and here I am outside, looking for you outside of me; and deformed as I was, I thrust myself to these beautiful things that you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. I was held away from you by those things which are not if they are not in you. You called and with loud demands, you shattered my deafness; you shone and with brilliance, you broke my blindness; you exhaled your perfume and I breathed, and I yearn for you; I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you, you touched me, and embrace me in your peace”.
This fragment belongs to book X of the Confessions. This and book XI serve as bases of the work which, directed by Juan Carlos Perez de la Fuentes, narrates the main event in the life of Augustine of Hippo: his conversion to Christianism in the year 387.
The director himself of the play defines the book as an itinerary, a tortuous pilgrimage, a passionate dialogue, inquisitive, a descent into the “abyss of human consciousness” to find the foundation of his life.
Confessions, a “spiritual autobiography”
“Confessions”, considered as the first book of philosophy and pedagogy of history, is one of the great works of universal literary creation and made Saint Augustine creator of an original genre, between autobiography and memoire, which can be called “spiritual autobiography”.
To Juan Carlos Pérez de la Fuente, Saint Augustine is the “first navigator and explorer of the dark worlds of the interior Ego, of consciousness”. He defines his work as no mere philosophical-dialectical exercise, but as “existential battle: a problem that he lives, that affects him and which he desires to resolve”, a fight between the interior and exterior Ego of Saint Augustine. It is here where he thinks is found the heart of the matter that makes Augustine relevant to the 21st century.
How the work came to the theater?
Pérez de la Fuente revealed that the idea of bringing Augustine to the theater was born in one of his rehearsals in Colegio Mayor Elías Ahuja managed by the Augustinians, in the Universidad Complutense.
“It is here where I got in touch with Augustinian thoughts. Despite the distance between his time and our generation, Saint Augustine shows himself as among us, in flesh and bone, easy to recognize and very close, so close that his struggles and conflicts are very similar to our own.”
The director asserts that the Saint “was very attracted to the theater, he played the role inside and outside the theater. There is so much melodrama in his words. His obsession to find the truth to its ultimate consequences led him to question everything. The scene is a question, and in all questioning there is conflict: this is where the heart is.
Gerard Depardieu, “the first Saint Augustine”
Gerard Depardieu was the first actor who played this role. After the interpretation, he said: “I love Augustine’s love for life, his spirit of openness, his will to discover the unknown. I feel like an enlightened ignorant, an innocent”.
This time, Ramón Barea brings us to the labyrinths of the human soul by the guidance of Pérez de la Fuente Producciones, which, on the tenth anniversary of the company opted to “discover new texts and assume new challenges” with the “Confessions”, the texts of which were taken from Latin by Luis Alberto de Cuenca y Alicia Mariño.
Confessions, in the Universidad de La Rioja
June 30, Monday. The “Confessions of Saint Augustine” was presented in the auditorium of Edificio Quintillano of the Universidad de La Rioja to start the university’s summer courses. José Arnáez Vadillo, the rector, explained the objective of this year’s summer program: “to provide more space and widen the academic frontiers of the campus to personalities and proposals that enrich the cultural agenda of Rioja, starting from the point of view of the university.”
On the 13th of July, in the Corral de Almagro
In each presentation, Ramón Barea, accompanied by music from a saxophone, gets into the skin of Saint Augustine for an hour and a half. Aside from Alcalá de Henares and the La Rioja he presented this same play in the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Cáceres (26 de junio), and this 13th of July come to the mythical Corral de Comedias de Almagro, in Ciudad Real.