ATDTDA (5): Motive and eccentricity, 129-131 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

The new section informs us that the Hotel Borealis had been "[b]uilt only a
few years before". It doesn't date back to "the first millennium" (127), or
even "the seventeenth century" (128): this piece of information emphasises
the newfound attractiveness of the region, drawing visitors from afar.
History might recall "the first small pack of outlaws on the run" (127);
however, the hotel plays host to "an international spectrum of motive and
eccentricity" (130).

One might imagine that the hotel is described ("... a vivid cream color,
roofed in gray shakes a shade or two lighter than the outcroppings and stone
walls that surrounded it", 129) from the pov of the artist Hunter,
introduced in the subsequent paragraph. Hunter "began to try to paint the
place": not "began" but "began to try". And "the place" is somewhat modest
in relation to the painterly vision that he struggles to realise. And note
the precise classification of his paints, "the Payne's gray and Naples
yellow". The narrative jumps forward, to "his later 'Venice' and 'London'
phases": the solution--and it is all a question of seeing--lies in the
future, when the artwork 'transforms' itself (or has the appearance of
having done so). The previous section ended with Constance thinking of what
was going to happen, the consequences of the Malus' arrival (128-129).
Hunter, in these passages, is associated with 'looking ahead'--as indeed is
Constance herself ("now passed into legend", 127)--to the moment of
narration.

Among the "international spectrum of motive and eccentricity" (130) is Dr
Rao, who has "recognise[d]the wisdom of simply finding silence and allowing
Mathematics and History to proceed as they would". Hence "Mathematics and
History" are yoked together: each bases a solution on analysis of that which
defies, in the first instance, understanding. For either "to proceed as they
would" is to acknowledge the logic of narration involved: at any moment in
time, 'then' is contained, implicitly or explicitly, in 'now'. This, indeed,
is the narrative strategy adopted by the text in describing both Constance
and Hunter. One might juxtapose this writing of certainty (what will happen)
to the writing of uncertainty that attends Hunter's attempt (he "began to
try ...") to paint the hotel (129): again, we are informed of what will
happen (reference to the "later 'Venice' and 'London' phases), but this
knowledge isn't available to Hunter himself "at the time".