Life is short - Vita Brevis
Life is short - Vita Brevis (original title Vita Brevis ) is a novel by the Norwegian bestselling author Jostein Gaarder . The book, created in 1996, is about an old Latin letter that the first-person narrator discovered in an antiquarian bookshop in Buenos Aires. The letter is signed by a certain Floria, and it is addressed to her former lover, the Doctor of the Church and philosopher Augustine .
Floria accuses Augustine and questions the religious beliefs that led him to leave her and take away their son. At the same time, she calls into question a misogynistic church ethics and morals . The text works with many quotations from the Augustine Confessiones and quotations from ancient philosophers.
Whether the letter is genuine, the copy of which the narrator dates to the end of the 16th century and which, in his opinion, could be based on templates from the 4th century, remains open in the text. Gaarder plays with his educated readers when he repeatedly cites Latin formulations of the alleged original in the notes. Some can be proud that they have derived the Latin "original version" from the translation, others that they recognized the original as fiction.
The reference to reality of the text is that Augustine actually twelve years an illegitimate connection was received according to the evidence of his "Confessions" and had this one son wife before he was urged by his mother to marry another and then decided contemplative to live and finally was elected bishop.
expenditure
book
- Jostein Gaarder: Life is short. Vita brevis . dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-62231-8 (first edition: Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1997)
Sound carrier
- Jostein Gaarder, Martina Boette-Sonner (director), Krista Posch (speaker): Vita brevis . Hör-Verlag, Munich 1997 (2 audio cassettes)