ATDTDA (20): The first stirrings of hope, 569-573

[Mark Kohut]

re Luca's storytelling.....I am reminded of M & D, the storytelling of it to the young ones....
  Others?
   
  And 'alternative versions' ...of course this enfolds......"not on any map".......Cf. elsewhere
   
  There is/will be a war in Outer Europe....
  There is an Inner Asia (as well as an Outer). Why would documents relating to the inner Asia be fictional or forged?...a blow against a "timeless faith"?.......
   
  Remember just a few pages back when the observation---true or unreliable?---was made 
  that although there can be 'neutral' political space there cannot be neutral time?
   
  ????

Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
  And so to Luca's storytelling, which is offered as a history but
acknowledges that there might be alternative versions, an endless narrative
that sends the children to sleep (570).

Bria and Luca go in pursuit of information about Niccolo, to find that
"[b]ack then one man might have multiple identities". The history is
continued by Professore Svegli, who lectured the Chums on the Sfinciuno
Itinerary (248-250). Then, there were two worlds, "two distinct versions of
'Asia' out there, one an object of political struggle among the Powers of
the Earth-the other a timeless faith by whose terms all such earthly
struggle is illusion" (249). Here, "'documents' might easily be forged or
fictional" (570). In each case, scare-quotes surround the term that might be
expected to signify reality. And so: "Isola degli Specchi appeared on some
maps and was absent from others."

It transpires that Luca hopes to solve a problem (an "unaccountable
malfunction", 571) with his act, one that emerged in New York. Throughout,
Bria is silent, although her actions provide a commentary on the action,
"[trying] not to roll her eyes too obviously"; or "grabbing herself by the
head and trying not to comment"; and later "peering at her father as if he
had gone insane" (572). The chapter has used her as a narrative agent to
offer an alternative to Dally; but here she is marginalised, deprived of a
voice. Luca feels that Ettore suggests an impossible return, or turning
back, one that would be resisted by the individuals in question: "By now
these subjects had gone on for too long with their lives ..." etc (571). The
engineer seeks to provide a rational solution, one that takes the act out of
the realm of the magical; Bria is sceptical, while Luca "curiously ...
[feels] the first stirrings of hope".

The analogy he provides on 572, that of the born-as-grown twins who refuse
to visit, is echoed at the end of the section when Dally tells Erlys that
she wishes to stay in Venice: that "[t]here's nothing like this place
anywhere ..." returns her and the reader to the opening impression of Venice
on 568.




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