Pierre Loti's Angkor Pilgrim
by prudence on 05-Apr-2010
Another old colonial traveller. Another empire. Another civilization. Another fascinating read.
Loti's invocation of Angkor is elegiac, to say the least. As a child, he had seen pictures of the temple, and they had formed part of his early inspiration to travel. But when he finally gets there, at age 51, after many sojourns in various parts of the world, it is not a childhood vision that he encounters, but a very complex reality.
And this complexity seeps through every page. There's a constant war, it seems, between civilization (perishable) and nature (indomitable), and humans seem to well and truly belong to the civilization bit of the equation. So there's a kind of melancholy all along the route. Where Isabella is gung ho, as she strides through the mud in her long Victorian skirt, Loti is much more contemplative. Nature has a didactic role to play in his story.
And there's certainly no shortage of Nature... It is like a permanent Greek chorus in Loti's account. He speaks of the forest enveloping the ruins, smothering them, and crushing them, as would the tentacles of an octopus. He's regularly subjected to rain, heat, storms, and dew. His daily journeys are cut short by the fear of falling foul of the very real perils lurking in the darkness. He's assailed by mosquitoes. The silence of the temples is often broken by the slitherings and scurryings of unseen creatures. And on one occasion, he is ignominiously routed by a colony of bats.
Neither are his spirits buoyed by the noble imperial mission. Unlike Isabella, who retains a basic faith in British imperial rule, even when she sees it going awry at times, Loti is not a believer. With the supreme example of fallen empire right in front of him in the forest, he notes that now "other adventurers ... are slightly troubling the eternal forest. They have founded, not far from here, the semblance of a little empire. But this new episode will lack grandeur, and above all will lack durability. Soon, when these pale conquerors have left behind many of their own in the earth of Indochina -- many poor young soldiers, alas, who were not responsible for the whole absurd escapade -- they will have to pack their bags and flee. Then we will no longer see them, wandering around the region, as I am doing -- these white men, who desperately covet the chance to rule age-old Asia, and to disturb everything there."
So it's a solemn account. Empires lost and doomed. Humanity fragile and errant. A little miserable, but very evocative.
At the end, however, I can no longer follow him. Ten years after his trip to Angkor, he returns to his childhood home, and looks at the little things that were so influential in inspiring him to travel, these "little bits of nothing, which, looked at over time at an early age, are enough to influence one way or another the whole course of a person's destiny". They are still enough to almost give him "the anxious shiver that comes with the thought of unknown countries, to which I want to run and escape".
But no, "there's no more unknown, and I've emptied the cup of adventures". He thinks of all the amazing places he's travelled, and wonders, "Really? Is that all there is to the world? Is that all there is to life?" He looks at the ancient aspect of the French provincial scene in front of him, and is horrified to think this is all carrying on while his life is finishing. And the only thing he retains, he reckons, from his amazing life of travel, is the idea that God is a God of pity.
Well, amen to that. But this is too morose by half. Sheesh, he's only 60... Let this be a warning to us all -- let us avoid the bedrooms of our childhood. Get out of that miserable, autumnal mausoleum, M. Loti, and go find some more stuff to discover. (Which he did, actually, but not in ideal circumstances. Four years later, he'd be out of retirement and fighting the Germans.)
Anyway, I hope the day will never come when I find that original incentive to travel -- what would it be? some old copies of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's Chalet School books, which first gave me the idea that being ABROAD sounded really cool? -- and feel disappointed. I never want to undervalue a single mile of a single trip. However familiar I look on the outside, once I no longer feel "the anxious shiver that comes with the thought of unknown countries, to which I want to run and escape", it won't really be me at home.
Loti's invocation of Angkor is elegiac, to say the least. As a child, he had seen pictures of the temple, and they had formed part of his early inspiration to travel. But when he finally gets there, at age 51, after many sojourns in various parts of the world, it is not a childhood vision that he encounters, but a very complex reality.
And this complexity seeps through every page. There's a constant war, it seems, between civilization (perishable) and nature (indomitable), and humans seem to well and truly belong to the civilization bit of the equation. So there's a kind of melancholy all along the route. Where Isabella is gung ho, as she strides through the mud in her long Victorian skirt, Loti is much more contemplative. Nature has a didactic role to play in his story.
And there's certainly no shortage of Nature... It is like a permanent Greek chorus in Loti's account. He speaks of the forest enveloping the ruins, smothering them, and crushing them, as would the tentacles of an octopus. He's regularly subjected to rain, heat, storms, and dew. His daily journeys are cut short by the fear of falling foul of the very real perils lurking in the darkness. He's assailed by mosquitoes. The silence of the temples is often broken by the slitherings and scurryings of unseen creatures. And on one occasion, he is ignominiously routed by a colony of bats.
Neither are his spirits buoyed by the noble imperial mission. Unlike Isabella, who retains a basic faith in British imperial rule, even when she sees it going awry at times, Loti is not a believer. With the supreme example of fallen empire right in front of him in the forest, he notes that now "other adventurers ... are slightly troubling the eternal forest. They have founded, not far from here, the semblance of a little empire. But this new episode will lack grandeur, and above all will lack durability. Soon, when these pale conquerors have left behind many of their own in the earth of Indochina -- many poor young soldiers, alas, who were not responsible for the whole absurd escapade -- they will have to pack their bags and flee. Then we will no longer see them, wandering around the region, as I am doing -- these white men, who desperately covet the chance to rule age-old Asia, and to disturb everything there."
So it's a solemn account. Empires lost and doomed. Humanity fragile and errant. A little miserable, but very evocative.
At the end, however, I can no longer follow him. Ten years after his trip to Angkor, he returns to his childhood home, and looks at the little things that were so influential in inspiring him to travel, these "little bits of nothing, which, looked at over time at an early age, are enough to influence one way or another the whole course of a person's destiny". They are still enough to almost give him "the anxious shiver that comes with the thought of unknown countries, to which I want to run and escape".
But no, "there's no more unknown, and I've emptied the cup of adventures". He thinks of all the amazing places he's travelled, and wonders, "Really? Is that all there is to the world? Is that all there is to life?" He looks at the ancient aspect of the French provincial scene in front of him, and is horrified to think this is all carrying on while his life is finishing. And the only thing he retains, he reckons, from his amazing life of travel, is the idea that God is a God of pity.
Well, amen to that. But this is too morose by half. Sheesh, he's only 60... Let this be a warning to us all -- let us avoid the bedrooms of our childhood. Get out of that miserable, autumnal mausoleum, M. Loti, and go find some more stuff to discover. (Which he did, actually, but not in ideal circumstances. Four years later, he'd be out of retirement and fighting the Germans.)
Anyway, I hope the day will never come when I find that original incentive to travel -- what would it be? some old copies of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's Chalet School books, which first gave me the idea that being ABROAD sounded really cool? -- and feel disappointed. I never want to undervalue a single mile of a single trip. However familiar I look on the outside, once I no longer feel "the anxious shiver that comes with the thought of unknown countries, to which I want to run and escape", it won't really be me at home.