celebration in the estimation of the poet. Thus if he should replicate the praise-songs of
the oral poet, it is in praise of the padre and not of the repressive personality of “our Life
Excellency”.
In the same vein, the succeeding poems continue to draw on memories, not necessarily
those of the poet in the direct sense of the word, but re-created all the same as to
accentuate the notion that the “conjunction between (external) stimulation and (internal)
resemblance will remain, for us, the crux of the entire problematic of memory” (Paul
Ricoeur 2004: 17). It goes without saying that Mapanje’s poetry in this context can also
be appropriately gleaned as an autobiographical piece. And granted the possible
autobiographical angle to his poetry, it then becomes understandable if one shares with
Bruce Ross (1991: ix) the assumption that “if one acknowledges the inevitable social
forging and shaping of personal memories... [one finds that] it is somewhat arbitrary to
limit influences that affect memory to the lifetime retention-span of a single individual
and not also consider memories that are communicated between individuals and
institutions”. Mapanje’s activism and struggle against the despotic regime of Banda also
involved interactions, both cordial and otherwise, with other peoples, Banda himself
included. It is in the light of this that one considers for instance “On David Constantine’s
Poem”. The poem which was originally written in solidarity with a Russian activist
committed to prison in his own country somehow also managed to find its way into the
cell of Mapanje. The inspiration and solidarity the poem by Constantine induced must
have bolstered the prisoners’ will to dare and endure the challenge of festering “in this
dungeon...within/ The walls of the tropical summers”, just as the unbearable prison
condition in far away Eastern Europe has resulted in “Another poet crackling in the
Russian/ Winters of icicle cells”. Thus the universal appeal that Constantine’s poem has
as demonstrated in the effect it has on Mapanje and fellow inmates in Malawi, as it must
have had on those in Russia, goes to show how each human’s memory and personality
can be described as a collage of diverse experiences exhibited on one canvas. Just as
solidarity is deterritorialized so also is despotism, which is why the confidence that
results from the encouragement of Constantine’s poem speaks to despotism across spaces
and enhances the optimism of seeing through repressive regimes: