The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana XVIII -- chapter 17: THE BIRTH OF AN ATHEIST

Baptism of Augustine of Hippo

1. Interesting parallel: As an adult, the forgetfulness came without warning, like death in the night unexpected; as a child, death came without warning and all around him, and he had to work, "providently," to push out its memory, forget, and move on with his life.  The forced forgetting is very much like the Christian notion of repentance, but repentance must be voluntary like the childhood flushing of repugnant memory.  How then would you metaphorically qualify Yambo's adult amnesia?  Finally, as baptism is sometimes identified as a second birth, or spiritual birth/rebirth, does it fit in anywhere with all this?
2. How is Yambo's conclusion, "God does not exist," not surprising, coming as it does, of course, from his life and development?
3. Describe Yambo's relationship with sin.  How might this lead to the man we know (if we know) he became later?
4. Fine books and fine music become Yambo's gods after the episode in the gorge.  How is this, well, idolatry so much more convenient, yet, at least by the strictures of human limitation, comparably satisfying/challenging?
5. Yambo's life experiences were echoed in and formulated by his books.  He found meaning, explanation, and interpretation at writers' hands.  He experiences a form--perverted--of chaste indulgence by the leniencies allowed in text, "not flesh."  Does this open a window, as it were, overlooking the First Folio; and, by extension, how is the First Folio indeed Lila?