ATDTDA (21): He sees her point, 577-580

[Paul Nightingale]

As Dally's relationship with Hunter develops he begins with the dreamed war;
later, there is another reference linking him to Merle (579). On each
occasion the painter is telling a story; Dally, model and agent, becomes the
audience. Introspectively, she wonders about the questions he isn't
addressing, not least what his plans are.

The dream with which Hunter starts 'places' him in London, erasing his part
in earlier sections of the novel; subsequently, one might ask if it is
indeed his 'own' dream, just as, in the previous section, his "young, almost
adolescent face" is juxtaposed to "gray, nearly white [hair]" (576). Then,
having name-dropped WG Grace (577), he goes on to mention "eminent ghosts,
Turner and Whistler, Ruskin, Browning sorts of chap" (578, the association
with predecessor artists perhaps more obvious than the inclusion in that
list of the poet).

Such ghosts are not mere tourists, "their purpose to infest the Venetian
summer, ... to pass quickly as they must, driven off, forgotten" (568).
History is defined as "bourgeois literalism, ... its ultimate embodiment,
the tourist" (579). Ghosts have left something behind, "subtle vibrational
impulses of the soul" (578). Hence, "dreamers [can] pick up traces of the
dreams of whoever slept there just before them": is the Grace dream, then,
something Hunter has "pick[ed] up"? Either way, the dreamer connects, and
this process echoes Hunter's methodology as a painter: "Imagine that inside
this labyrinth ..." etc (575). The tourist (their obsession a mark of
"bourgeois literalism", 579) wants the same as all other tourists (eg, the
"better-known landmarks around town", 574); whereas the painter looks for
(and expects his audience to look for) something else (eg, "... stay in this
town awhile, keep your senses open, reject nothing ..." etc, 579).

As the audience for Hunter's exposition, Dally is threatened with the role
of tourist: "She was trying to keep up, but Hunter didn't make it easy."
Throughout, she has had little to say, a passive recipient of his speech,
called upon to do little but prompt him, eg: "To the spirit behind it-"

Eventually, his story of Jesus recalls Merle, whose discourse replaces that
of Hunter ("... as Merle had told it"). This is what, finally, allows her to
assert herself ("... it had always seemed to Dally", 580). The section ends
with her lengthy speech, followed by a brief coda from Hunter.