Atdtda28: Round and round on an interesting topic, 782

[Paul Nightingale]

As the narrative returns to Kit and Prance, "going round and round as
usual", it returns also to the Event, although 'it' won't be named as such.
The narrative, as opposed to characters within the narrative, finally
attempts representation: one sentence listing those objects or features that
might be seen--by Kit/Prance--as red, another insisting that the wind, or
sound itself--phenomena pertaining to other senses--might also be "red as a
living heart". Where Padzhitnoff fears "collective amnesia" (781),
Kit/Prance immediately relate what has happened to what they can recall,
"the great roaring as they passed through the Prophet's Gate" (782). They
are of course among those "eyewitnesses living below" (781); if
comprehension here is rendered phenomenologically, it is in contrast to
preceding sections.

Moreover, the explosion, the "heavenwide blast" with which the chapter opens
(779), has now become "the voice of a world announcing that it would never
go back to what it had been" (782). This invokes the impossibility of
representation, a rendering of that which is now absent; and also offers a
narrative turning point that might remind us of the fast-forward frequently
employed to position a character viewing 'now' as 'the past'. Kit does look
ahead in advocating agency, or movement; he wants to "see if there's
anything we can do". Cf. Padzhitnoff's concern that the Bol'shaia Ingra has
done something that cannot be recalled (781). Prance, however, denies any
role for himself, passing judgement ("This is not political", 782) in the
way the Bol'shaia Ingra's crew had previously (780-782). At the start of the
section Kit and Prance discuss, repetitively, "which one [is] less able to
clean up after himself" (782), the possibility of returning to an earlier
state; subsequently there is the impossibility of the world "go[ing] back to
what it had been"; and then there is Prance's denial that what has happened
is any part of 'his' unchanging world.