The confrontation of the self and the other through the notion of memory in the poems of David Malouf Priyanka Negi College

David Malouf, born in South Brisbane to a Catholic paternal family from Lebanon and Sephardic Jewish maternal family from Spain who had travelled to England before settling in Australia, is an Australian poet and author, whose works reflect a congenital insecurity about belonging due to his origins. Belonging to a nation, then, of multidimensional migration which is constantly transforming and reshaping the said nation, disposed Malouf to the underlying effects of the amalgamation of cultures, which Malouf then used to interrelate and understand the sense of self, otherness, and the continuous evolution of both. This evolution, in the works of Malouf, takes place through the notion of memory.

Don Randall sees in his writing a continuing interest in the relationship between the self and the other. He asserts that the otherness serves to be “a creative unsettling of identity” which “provokes creative self-transformation, a self-overcoming”. The “other”, he posits is the “indispensable agent of our changes.” This perception locates Malouf as a writer on edge. Like Australia, “the edge is where inside and outside meet and sometimes interpenetrate.” Whilst the
“edge” may outline the idea of darkness, danger or the unknown, it also...