ANGKOR and I

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116 returned to the town of Siem Reap. However, when the group that boarded the ship at Siem Reap arrived at Phnom Penh on December 24th they were arrested by the Police authorities, and the stone sculptures were seized. The following year Malraux was sentenced to three years detention by a court in Phnom Penh, but his wife who was acquitted returned to Paris, hired an astute lawyer, and appealed. He was then sentenced to a year’s incarceration and received a year’s suspended sentence on appeal at a court in Saigon, and left the country in November of the same year. Based on this experience Malraux published in Shanghai in 1930 the novel “The Royal Way,” which became his masterpiece. The main characters in the novel, namely Claude Vannec and Perken, are symbols of Malraux himself. This novel presents a means of finding a royal road built by early Cambodian kings, and finally locate a temple with great treasure. The author says his intent was not just theft, but an effort to seek eternal art and unending value. To be exact, for the sake of art he would not hesitate even to steal. Does art transcend crime? Was it just a gaffe perpetrated by young Malraux? Or was it a deviant act by a writer on behavioral supremacy? When I ask the French people about this their faces all seem troubled, and they tend to evade the subject. A Play written by Mishima Yukio at a Single Sitting The Bayon, which happens to be the central temple of Angkor Thom, is positioned at the intersection of the roads linking the north, south, east, and west gateways. I mentioned earlier a fifth castle gate, namely the “Gate of Victory.” The road from this gate ends at the façade of the vast royal palace, stretching to the northwest of the Bayon. This was a terrace, and it was used for reviews of victorious returning troops. What lies to the north of this “elephant terrace” is the “Terrace of the Leper King.” Here there was a statue of a naked figure having one knee, and it has been popularly dubbed the “Statue of the Leper King.”