Sand Dunes and Friendship (1.1.4, p. 21) by Ms. Bucher

 

In the fourth chapter of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, we are told that, "Mr. Bankes was alive to things which would not have struck him had not those sandhills revealed to him the body of his friendship [with Mr. Ramsay]." This revelation took place during his “dumb colloquy with the sand dunes.” How does a sandhill relate to Mr. Bankes’ consideration of his lost friendship with Mr. Ramsay? Instead of a one-sided metaphorical recollection, I was struck that what takes place is described as a conversation between the dunes and Mr. Bankes. The dunes are speaking. But why does Woolf use the sand dune, what does this add to an understanding of this friendship and Mr. Bankes himself? 

As a child, I would spend hours at a time walking along sand dunes in Northern California. Dunes can offer stunning views of the ocean, some protection from the biting sea breeze, and that lovely whistling sound when the wind blows through them. To walk on a sand dune, you connect with the sand dune. It is physical, you are focused on the present, the feeling of the warm or cold sand between your toes. There is a sense of harmony, in which you are both a unity and an individual. They can be hard to walk on at times, and sometimes you slip; we walk it all the same because we find it worthwhile. Likewise, friendship takes work, friendships slip and get grainy, requiring sustained investment by both parties in this relationship to keep going.

Mr. Bankes reflects that his friendship with Mr. Ramsay had ceased many years ago, “the pulp had gone out of their friendship,” and “repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they met.” Nevertheless, “he maintained that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished.” We are presented with the feelings of grief at the loss of this connection, but also a sense of beauty and joy in the memory of that bond and the affection Mr. Bankes still holds for Mr. Ramsay.  Yes, “repetition had taken the place of newness” in their friendship, sand dunes, on the other hand, are constantly changing with the wind. The dune is new for each step of every walker. But Mr. Bankes still loves Mr. Ramsay, even in the face of this pain he cannot fill. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, we still love the sand dunes even after being violently pelted by its grains when the wind is ferocious. Mr. Bankes sees “his friendship, in its acuteness and reality laid up across the bay among the sandhills.” This is a physical manifestation of the love and the loss of his friendship.  The loss is real, it brings everything into a type of sculptural relief, stands out in the color, texture, cold, and beautiful view.  The dune is melancholy manifested.

There is a natural tendency for friendships to change, just as the dunes change. And that final change marked the end of his friendship. For, as the sand dunes change with the wind, footprints do not last long. Although he understands that his and Mr. Ramsay’s paths diverged, and thus the loss of their friendship is no one’s fault, I think there is some feeling of abandonment by Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Bankes is welcomed out of habit, "repetition," but there is no investment in their friendship anymore. Mr. Ramsay has long ago moved on, married and had eight children. Like nature, looking back on a withered friendship is both painful and beautiful and very physical. The sand dunes represent a physical truth of what Mr. Ramsay was to him but has faded away. He remembers his friendship acutely, but there are no footprints left in the sand and there will be no new imprints. These are aspects of the “body of his friendship” that the sandhills reveal to him.

The landscape of friendships can be rhythmic, pretty, undulating, grainy, changeable, but still something embodied. In this sense, the physical properties of sand dunes correspond to the nature of friendship. In fact, the supposed differentiations between Nature and man seem to break down the further we explore Nature’s capacity to showcase an inter-related harmony and unity with man’s emotional life.  I am left with a soft sadness, a wistful longing, and yet, like an afternoon on a sand dune, a stinging aliveness and awareness of the direct experience of sand and wind, of loving. However, we are still left with the question that Mr. Bankes attempts to tackle: what is friendship?