conscious level of culture and an unconscious primitivity (Jung,
CW, 10 par. 103).Perhaps then what Malouf is also saying is that the exile, the invader is
estranged from his psychological roots, his soul, his home, and that, allegorically,
this story contains part of the myth of European Australians, of a subtle unconscious
conflict that affects Australian culture and perceptions. Whatever the interpretation
one is inclined to, one can see, as well, the contemplative, mystical, shamanistic
mind at work as Malouf conveys a feeling of ecstatic delight, over a simple word,
‘scarlet’. He forces the reader to see beyond and through the word and the
imagined colour, to the point where we, along with Ovid, become filled with it:
I t is the first colour I have seen in months. Or so it seems.
Scarlet. A little wild poppy, of a red so sudden it made my blood
stop. I kept saying the word over and over to myself, scarlet, as if
the word, like the colour, had escaped me till now, and just saying
it would keep the little windblown flower in sight (Malouf,
1978:31).
The significance given to the word ‘scarlet’ has a sacred function; it serves
as a metaphor for the numinous experience where the individual is awed,
overwhelmed and yet fascinated. I n all of Malouf’s poetry and stories there are
similar instances when the objective psyche perceives something wholly other which
possesses a sort of indisputable authority or imperative, especially so in the case of
place.
Throughout the corpus Malouf gives vivid and detailed descriptions of places
in an attempt to show the relationship between place and events. These places
exist or have existed in the material world. They may be in Brisbane or near the
Hawkesbury River or even in Changi. At another level, however, Malouf conceives
of place as an imaginal thing that, paradoxically, does and yet, does not, exist. In
12 Edmonston Street, for example, Malouf recounts his shaman-like perception of
the space underneath his childhood home:
Down here is the underside of things: the great wedge of air on
which the house floats, ever darkness ... a dream space, dark, full
of terrors that lurk behind tree-trunks in the thickest forest, hob-
goblins, old gods (Malouf, 1985:46-47).
I t is the place where:
... a secret machinery gets to work in us, a hidden industry of the
senses and the spirit, whose busy handling and hearing and
overhearing is our second birth into the world (Malouf, 1985:9-
10).