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Angkor - 2003

Angkor - 2003

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-25 13:29:32

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to be discovered by westerners, and to profit from the sale of its works of art; actually, it was only a public apology for that theft.

In the early seventies I met this intellectual adventurer at Phnom Penh, when he had already left the Ministry. We had nearby rooms at the “Le Royal” hotel which, although it retained its classical colonial style, had lost most of the splendour of the old day

The now seventy-year-old Malraux, still sharp-minded and strong in character, talked with me about his life of action, about the civil war in Spain, his German imprisonment during World War II, his daring escapes and his great journeys, undertaken to avoid the routine of everyday life. But never antything about his private life with all its misfortunes, or anything about the story of Banteai Srei.

Although the period of Angkor’s historical splendour lasted only five centuries, its decline was much more rapid. The Khmer empire, a giant with feet of clay, which in its full geographical extension included not only Cambodia but Thailand, southern Burma, Laos and Vietnam, demonstrated how fragile a centralized power could be which was moreover based on a slave organisation. It was inside that system that the causes of its weakness probably came to a head, already in the decades following the death of Jayavarman VII in 1219. The country was unable to support the heavy weight of those colossal constructions for long, and even less the continual wars with the bellicose Siamese and with the Khans.

The mythical city lost its population as if it had been decimated by the plague. Abandoned by men and by kings, the population transferred to the vicinity of Phnom Penh, but it did not grow as it had at Angkor. Consequently, in no time at all the jungle reclaimed it; wherever the wind brought bits of earth, there, was soon a sprouting of plants, creepers and roots which twined around the macroscopic world of stone and broke it up. Tigers began to stalk along the pawed streets, the temples became a hiding-place for panthers, and a legion of monkeys took possession of the places where merchants used to display products from every corner of the Orient.

But unlike the other megalithic cities, which had been condemned to oblivion, in the great region accommodating the temples something happened after the restoration of Angor Vat. The Cambodians returned to light their sticks of incense and to pray; the heart of Angkor began to beat again and its link with the past was reestablished.