One of the most notable features of the Confessions, and one that has fascinated — or perhaps titillated — readers through the centuries is Augustine's honesty about his sexual career. Augustine makes clear that he was no angel: As a young man, he was sexually active, and later, he lived openly with a concubine who bore him a son. As Augustine describes himself, he was a slave to his sexual impulses. Reader response to this candor has varied over the centuries. Many critics have taken Augustine at his word that he was a libertine. However, most modern scholars have questioned just how well Augustine's view of himself would have squared with the views his contemporaries. In living with a concubine, he was not necessarily much different from other men of his time, and it is certainly possible that his descriptions of his sexual exploits are exaggerated. Augustine's sexual impulses were clearly a source of intense emotional pain for him, and this fact alone may account for the emphasis he places on his sexual sins.
Throughout the Confessions, the language Augustine uses to describe his sexual impulses is negative, reflecting images of disease, disorder, and corruption. Desire is mud (2.2, 3.1), a whirlpool (2.2), chains (2.2, 3.1) thorns (2.3), a seething cauldron (3.1), and an open sore that must be scratched (3.1). Desire for Augustine is almost a compulsion, an irrational impulse that he feels incapable of controlling without God's help, a bondage that he is too weak to escape. Desire becomes the last obstacle between Augustine and a complete commitment to God, because he is certain he cannot live a celibate life.
