Previously, we have looked at Augustine's Confessions on biblical creation. From Book 12, chapter 3, with Augustine speaking to God (as always),
"[T]ruly this earth was invisible and unformed, and there was an inexpressibly profound abyss above which there was no light since it had no form. Thou didst command it written that "darkness was on the face of the deep." [Gen. 1:2] What else is darkness except the absence of light? For if there had been light, where would it have been except by being over all, showing itself rising aloft and giving light? Therefore, where there was no light as yet, why was it that darkness was present, unless it was that light was absent? Darkness, then, was heavy upon it, because the light from above was absent; just as there is silence where there is no sound. And what is it to have silence anywhere but simply not to have sound? Hast thou not, O Lord, taught this soul which confesses to thee? Hast thou not thus taught me, O Lord, that before thou didst form and separate this formless matter there was nothing: neither color, nor figure, nor body, nor spirit? Yet it was not absolutely nothing; it was a certain formlessness without any shape."
The well in Jame Gumb's basement (shown at left), in which his victims are kept prior to skinning, represents the abyss present at the beginning of creation, of the 'evil kingdom' that Lecter and Gumb are (or were) to 'create'; and the respective victims in the well are, to Gumb, "formlessness without any shape."
The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Outler)
