III. David Malouf

III. David Malouf Ruth Barratt-Peacock - 9783631819654 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 07:32:30PM via free access Ruth Barratt-Peacock - 9783631819654 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 07:32:30PM via free access Malouf: An Author in Context David Malouf was born in Brisbane in 1934, of Christian Lebanese, Portuguese Sephardi Jewish, and English heritage. Although his mother was originally from England, his father was born in Australia. Malouf’s childhood was an Edwardian one, which his mother recreated in the image of her own English background (Hansson 1991, 23; Heinke 2005, 8). Malouf’s education followed the classic English style of the upper middle classes: Brisbane Grammar school, then arts at the University of Queensland, and finally teaching positions at St. Anselm’s College, England and the University of Sydney. When it is not situated in Australia, Malouf’s poetry engages with England, but more explicitly with the continent in the form of Italian settings, as well as a plethora of allusions to German literature (Petersson 1990, 129). Malouf has identified Goethe and Thomas Mann as important influences on his writing, and his poetry references other German authors in its titles or epitaphs, such as Heinz Piontek in “Birthday Poem” and Joachim Ringelnatz in Malouf’s adapta- tion of “Die Karpfen in der Wilhelmstrasse 15” in “The Carp” (both fromBicycle and Other Poems1). Other influences include Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Martin Heidegger (Hansson 1991, 19). Following on from Malouf’s assertion that it is “not simply that Australia produces clumsy variants of Europe, it produces critical variants of Europe” (Malouf and Davidson 1990, 288), the application of Australia’s European cultural heritage in the form of Romantic irony could be viewed as one such varia- tion, albeit adapted to subject–world relationships in an Australian context. It is certainly as an Australian author that Malouf has primarily been read. The reception of his novels within the context of Australia’s History Wars and the identity crises of nationalism in the Howard years have overshadowed his poetry, which reaches from the regional to the cosmopolitan and mythical with very little of the national in between. In this respect, it reflects a tendency in contemporary Australian poetry to move away from Harpur-like aspirations of national poetry, towards extreme attention to local places and participation in wider global communities: a kind of global regionalism. Malouf writes of the world and of Australia from the spaces which have formed him as a Brisbane poet, not least Deception Bay. This focus is reflected in the selection of poets in the 2016 Langford collection of Australian poetry, and it can be seen most clearly in Watson’s writing. Ruth Barratt-Peacock - 9783631819654 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 07:32:30PM via free access 66 Malouf: An Author in Context Scholarship on Malouf, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s, situates his work in a national context, which was influenced by a larger discourse on Australian history and identity that was occurring at that time. Malouf’s poetic writing, however, is a poor fit for a positive assertion of Australian national identity formation, which could explain why his novels have received a great deal more attention than his poetry. Even within national literature, such as that of Australia, Ashcroft argues that writers are driven by “transnational” concerns which exceed the “boundaries of the nation-state” (Ashcroft 2013, 36). The nation in Malouf’s work is better understood as Heimat (Ashcroft), which “becomes the promise in postcolonial writing that replaces the promise of nation, what it may be like in the future but the promise of Heimat transfers to the present” (ibid.). Heimat reflects Malouf’s views on the role of literature in the creation of a cul- ture in Australia: specifically, to bridge the divide between the author’s language as a British inheritance, and the Australian landscape. However, Malouf’s poetry also reflects the provisional nature of the veryHeimat he regards literature as creating. In this respect, Malouf is programmatically Romantic. Romanticism’s image of the human – as a being that never is but that is only ever becoming; that can never reach a definitive identity and sways between necessity and freedom, social conditioning and self-determination – is in this respect an ironic one. It is one which is paralleled in Malouf’s understanding of a specifically Australian subject, or even a specifically Australian literature. Remembering Babylon is one of Malouf’s best-known novels. It is easy to understand why the book and its treatment of Indigenous characters and themes of belonging garnered such critical interest, in both the academic and popular press. Published in 1993, it emerged just after the final decision on the Mabo case was delivered in 1992,2 and at the start of the History Wars which followed. Peter Otto situates the debate around Remembering Babylon (as seen in The Age newspaper, November 1993) firmly within the context of the Mabo decision, positing that the novel came at a time when “the line between Australia’s set- tler past and its postcolonial present was being redrawn” (Otto 2010, 231). This “redrawing” of the lines of colonial history to the present could be seen in the period between the Keating and Howard governments,3 which came to be known as the History Wars. Malouf and the History Wars This period saw the rise and clash of two competing views of Australian history: the “Black Armband” and the “White Blindfold” extremes. Historians such Ruth Barratt-Peacock - 9783631819654 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 07:32:30PM via free access Malouf and the History Wars 67 as Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan, whose work focussed on the massacres of Indigenous peoples throughout Australia’s colonial past, were subject to a huge backlash from conservative historians, including Keith Windschuttle, who asserted that they had essentially invented evidence of British violence towards the Indigenous population. The pejorative term “Black Armband” was coined by the historian Geoffrey Blainey, who thought that the younger generation of historians placed too strong an emphasis on wrongs committed in Australia’s past (Macintyre and A. Clark 2004, 3). The battle over the balance sheet of Australian history ultimately reflected the different political visions of the Australian Labor Party under Paul Keating and the conservative Australian Liberals under John Howard; as well as their respec- tive voter-bases, and the narratives directed at these voter bases. Where Paul Keating pushed a policy of multiculturalism and closer ties to Australia’s Asian neighbours, for John Howard, bashing leftist political correctness was a safe path to gaining conservative votes. As Stuart Macintyre writes: “The elites provided Howard with a foil for the battlers, whose achievements and sentiments they blackened” (ibid., 4). At a time when the movement for Indigenous land rights was gaining critical momentum, a narrative that did not disturb the status quo for those workers reliant on the mining and logging industries was also an existential matter. The dynamics of the characterisation of the left as bleeding-heart radicals and perpetrators of false information, polarised against the hard-working ordi- nary Joe, is familiar, and by no means unique to Australian politics.4 Reactions to the push to keep the atrocities visited on Indigenous-Australians in the history books and public consciousness ranged from extreme denial to a simple desire not to have to think about it. Ultimately, the History Wars were a struggle over how the country was to be defined in the present rather than the past. Macintyre summarises what was at stake: The rewards for coming to terms with the past that Paul Keating offered in his Big Picture included greater tolerance, increased autonomy, a deeper understanding of the land and its original inhabitants, an outward-looking, productive and self-confident nation. The risks of a Black Armband view of Australian history that Geoffrey Blainey identified included intolerance of old Australia, loss of sovereignty, the tying up of productive resources, disunity, pessimism and guilt. (ibid., 14–15) Closer examination of Macintyre’s assessment of the stakes for each side quoted above reveals that a large part of the issue is not only the facts of history, but also how it is acceptable to relate to a European heritage, and what that relationship means for belonging in Australia. The History Wars became a situation where people, who in many cases had known no other home, were being urged to see themselves as, at best, immigrants. Ruth Barratt-Peacock - 9783631819654 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 07:32:30PM via free access 68 Malouf: An Author in Context For authors such as Malouf, who were educated in an environment still fun- damentally British,5 the basic positions I have briefly described here form an important backdrop for examining the relationship between the self, the local landscape, and the authors’ use of a European linguistic and literary heritage. Australia’s colonial past has had a significant impact on how modern Australian literature is received, particularly in its relationship with its European and Indigenous cultural heritages. Closer attention to Malouf’s non-literary writing reveals a far more complex attitude towards the Australian identity than a “rush to resolve Australia’s contradictions”: instead, his viewpoint is deeply seated in ideas of Romanticism, and attitudes towards space and time, in which Indigenous relations necessarily play an important role (Otto 2010, 242). This is certainly the case in his novels. Indigenous presence does not, however, play a significant (if any) role in Malouf’s poetic oeuvre.

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