SPIRIT AND STONE
Angkor Wat in the twilight: an overscale "Versailles" whose fountains
have been stilled. On second thought, how unapt a comparison !
In what terms then can we designate a site that, as dusk falls, stretches
far beyond our field of vision, a site that dumbfounds the prestige "categorization" typifying our narrow cultural
outlook? For as gigantic as it is, Angkor Wat has never offered access to any mortal Sun King: here divinity
belongs to the gods, whose presence is intimated in the mirror images moat and sky throw back at each other.
Our cultural grids blur in the face of a site so inspiring as to expand
beyond any demarcation line between real and unreal. Gradually we intuit, in ever more pregnant fashion, that
here perhaps - and for the first time - discovery precedes acquired knowledge. Generally, the sum of our knowledge streams
downwards from our education and milieu, as we learn to integrate it with an eye to developing a conceptual
platform to serve as a "frame of reference" for our value judgements. But to set foot in Angkor is an upstream
experience bringing the exalting feeling that here exists a presence that is nigh to contemporary.
The Khmer civilization is doubly paradoxical: born and developed within
but a few centuries, it blossomed into a unique religious and artistic creation, only to be relegated to almost
complete oblivion for a long period of time. Yet archaeologists have charted over a thousand monuments that are,
today, scattered across Cambodia, not to mention those that have survived in Thailand and the rest of Southeast
Asia.
Now at last we are again allowed to marvel at one of civilization's wealthiest troves, not merely founded
in full by art but even so-to-speak "impregnated" by it, considering how close it all came to being reduced to
naught due to the vagaries of politics.
Thus, it is much as if we were being offered a chance to witness, even participate
in, a new birth. Such terms barely do justice to our awe upon seeing temple after temple emerge from the
forest, their contours modelled by light and shadow and, from time to time, accented by the saffron swish of a passing
monk's robe. One does not "pay visit" to Khmer temples. Rather, in their company, one aspires to the Hindu
and Buddhist dimensions once boasted by famous as well as lesser known priests of these religions. Indeed,
these would all have disappeared from the memory of man were it not for the far-reaching glow radiated by the Bayon
Temple: its multitude of faces sweeping the horizon; its bas reliefs teeming with life at the core of their
gleaming silence, and hosting the ineffably smiling apsaras who, as they flit by like a swarm of butterflies, testify to
the visibility of the invisible. Countless figures anchored in stone, yet that project forward in an invitation to join
the cosmic dance they at once animate and mediate. Now at last then, we can contemplate the earthly and divine
space once belonging to the Khmer, outside and inside - as it were - merging under our gaze. Complementaries flower
in stone scrolls that give off melodies, resonances, tones. The unheard of makes itself heard. Forms steal past
our need to identify them, dragging us along, above and beyond our gaze, into the movement that is the site's basic
unity.
However exalted - and exalting - they be, these sanctuaries cannot escape
the earth that houses them, the winds that blow across them, all of which serve to feed the giant roots that
entwine them to the point of bursting their walls and sculptures. Such terrestrial power takes us aback. Yet, reversing
the phenomenon's metaphorical implications, might we not just as legitimately consider these effects of
nature as acts of love, as if the roots could be said to hoist the temples up towards the tree foliage? As if, rather
than the cataclysm that meets the eye, there could be said to exist a secret alliance between stones
transformed into trees, and vegetation transformed into architecture?
In such fashion, the fury of the battles of yore is brought into harmony
with the serenity of the gods, turbulency is calmed into order, and immanence and transcendence form a third
unity forever veiled yet palpable. The prodigious grip of the elements holds sway, in the absence of any figures
or witnesses, lest it be the maidens here and there holding out their flute to us: their smile promises the rebirth
of creation, thanks to a single note of music springing forth from the lips of these, the mothers of tomorrow.
René Berger, Chevilly, 11 May 1997: Mother's Day