ATDTDA (5): Hunter leaving, 134-136

[Paul Nightingale]

Before his departure, Hunter is "out with his sketchbook all day, taking
down as much as he could, to bring away with him". Yet Hunter-as-artist,
thus far, has been less than successful: he "began to try to paint the place
[ie hotel]" (129), and at the opening of this new section the morning
landscape also remains elusive (134). Note the meticulous classification, by
way of compensation, of different greens, which recalls "the Payne's gray
and Naples yellow" (129). Perhaps Hunter even identifies with "frustrated
hunting dogs" (135). Once again, with the passage adopting the perspective
of a character, one recalls Lew's take on Chicago (38ff) as Hunter guides
the reader through the town.

Constance has planned "a bon voyage party ... but there's nothing here to
eat" (134). So Hunter's frustration as an artist is echoed in the muted
'celebrations' at home, the narrative stratagem that allows him to leave
Constance and go out to eat. The description of the town ("a melancholy
place", 135) again emphasises its elusive nature: "The impending departure
of the Malus seemed to have ..." etc, followed by "[l]ights burned
everywhere, as if ..." etc. This attempt at representation echoes the
opening description of the sun, "able to assume the appearance of a device
immediately recognisable yet unnameable (134, the entire passage
Beckett-like as it dwells on the inevitability of sunrise-as-repetition).

Queueing at Narvik's, Hunter suspects that "some of those waiting ... [are]
only fractionally present" (135): 'as though' they have sent a part of
themselves to reserve a place in the queue? Also: if others are "only
fractionally present", what of Hunter himself? Is he 'wholly' there? The
passage is dream-like, the line not moving at all, then "ratchet[ing] ahead
only a fraction of the space a single body would occupy". Cf: the earlier
description of Hunter's "small canvasses" and "modelings, shadows,
redefinitions of space", none of which he "had ... seen at the time" (129).
And then, over the page: "And in the ceaseless drift of the ice, the
uncountable translations and rotations, meltings and freezings, there would
come a moment, maybe two, when the shapes and sizes of the masses here at
this 'Venice of the Arctic' would be exactly the same as those of secular
Venice and its own outlying islands" (136). This "ceaseless drift" cannot be
calculated ("uncountable"), that is to say, represented satisfactorily.
Hunter's boyhood dreaming of Venice is of waiting no longer, to be already
there (the "immediate translation" of unproblematic representation; to be,
in short, no longer a child imprisoned by childhood. Cf: "... those of the
Hamiltonian faith felt an immunity to ever being superseded, children
imagining they would live forever" (132). Cf also: Merle's vision of Dally
as a "transformed young woman" (75).