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La voie royale (1930)

di André Malraux

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3351076,886 (3.52)16
One of Malraux's most exotic novels, The Way of Kings is a perfect companion to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. When Claude and Perken meet on a ship heading for Indochina, they decide to throw in their lots to form a dual expedition into the perilous jungles of Cambodia. Claude, a young Frenchman, is seeking adventure, fame, and fortune. Perken, a veteran Dutch explorer, is returning to his own little patch of Siam; appalled at the effects of age, he is aiming to recapture his former masculine pride. Facing death at every turn from the seething forest and "bestial” tribes people, they are nonetheless driven to leave their stamp on a world on the eve of its demise. Novelist, art historian, and statesman Andr#65533; Malraux is best known for his psychological masterpiece, Man’s Fate.… (altro)
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The Royal Way é um romance existencialista de André Malraux. Trata-se de dois aventureiros não-conformistas que viajam no "Caminho Real" para Angkor na floresta do Camboja. Sua intenção é roubar preciosas esculturas em baixo-relevo dos templos
  BolideBooks | Jun 26, 2021 |
Described on publication in 1930 as an adventure novel set in the romantic landscape of the temples of Angkor Watt. It must have been a puzzle to many readers at the time to have in their hands an existential tract written in feverish french with an overlay of erotisme. It was not an immediate success. Sure the main bones of the novel are that a young frenchman hooks up with an older more experienced explorer (Perken) in a search for a hidden temple on the royal way leading into the forest from Angkor Wat. Perken is also looking for another white man lost in the jungle and he has connections with hostile insurgents. They become trapped in a hostile village deep in the forest and are deserted by their guides. Death, disease and degradation dog their footsteps throughout their journey and these are the real subjects of the novel.

André Malraux had visited the temples of Angkor Wat in 1923 and in fact was charged by the French Colonial authorities for unlawfully removing bas-reliefs from one of the temples. He recovered from this early set back to become a successful author, a figure in the French resistance during the second world war, a recipient of the Croix de guerre and Minister of Information in General De Gaul's post war government. He was highly respected by the succeeding generation of french writers and philosophers with two major novels written either side of La Voie Royale; Les Conquerants in 1928 and La Condition humaine in 1933. La Voie Royale seems to be the less well thought of book in the trilogy of books set in Asia.

There is nothing uplifting in this soul destroying trudge through the scarcely explored forests on the edge of Cambodia. The Young Claude Vannec is driven by desire to find his fortune by robbing treasure from temples hidden in the forests. Perken is in league with insurgents and is looking to raise money to buy military hardware. The french legation while allowing Vannec to prospect in the forest warn him about Perken. Vannec seizes on the opportunities that come his way with prostitutes on the journey out to meet up with Perken and their initial conversations are full of allusions to local native women. Their trek through the jungle is hard, laborious, and full of biting insects, but a bond develops between the two men who talk about their fear of death. They find a temple deep in the forest, but they struggle to prise away three of the bas-reliefs and then have problems in loading them on to carriers, meanwhile Perken tells Vannec of his wish to follow any leads to find Grabot a white adventurer who has never reappeared after an expedition deep in the forests. There is much more talk about the meaning of life and the possibilities of dying in the forests as the insects become a constant pest and they are deserted by their guides. They stumble into a poor tribal village where they find Grabot as a slave in a pitiful condition. Perken negotiates a way out but becomes injured in the process; His knee gets infected and gangrene is a result. A local doctor says he must prepare himself to die a painful death as the only cure is amputation and there are no reachable facilities. Perken becomes feverish as the pain comes upon him in waves during an agonising final two weeks, his plans to help the insurgents have melted away and his search for Grabot has ended in his own death and the discovery of an emasculated wreck of a man who had been something of a hero to him.

There is nothing romantic about life in the Cambodian forests, it is a place where white men enter at their peril: the climate, the insects, the threat of injury is with them every step of the way. They are intruders in a hostile environment. Malraux emphasises this aspect of the story and then goes on to describe an experience that is degrading in every way. The feeling of being trapped becomes a living nightmare for the two men and their conversations and fears become disjointed in prose that effectively relates their overwhelming feeling that there is no escape. One can have little sympathy for the men who have gotten themselves into this situation and really by the end of the book I just wanted the forest to swallow them up.

This is not a particularly long novel, but reading is a little bit of an endurance test, I admired the atmosphere and setting that Malraux had created to rehearse some existential ideas, but it was a setting that had a morbid fascination that I was happy enough to put down at the end. 4 stars. ( )
2 vota baswood | May 24, 2020 |
Sometime in the 1920s, Claude and Perken, linked by “an obsession with death,” meet on a ship headed to Indochina and plot to steal antiquities. The Dutchman Perken, with “a hostility towards established values” is more experienced in the region than his French admirer, Claude. His intensity, once in the jungles of Cambodia is “a poignant, hopeless joy, like a piece of wreckage rescued from an abyss as deep as that of the darkness around them.”

The Colonel Kurtz-like Perken was originally tasked in some quasi-official capacity with locating a missing man named Grabot, but has now staked out his own territory and has his own army.

Death and decay are pervasive in the story. Claude and Perken seem to court death even as they fight it. As the Dutchman says: “the only reason to kill yourself is to exist. I don’t like people to be duped by God.” ( )
  Hagelstein | Aug 26, 2015 |
Der Autor und Kulturminister de Gaulles André Malraux wurde 1923 beim Versuch Basreliefs aus einem kambodschanischen Tempel zu stehlen, verhaftet und zu einer dreijährigen Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt. Der Prozess rückte die Tempeln von Angkor in das Bewusstsein der Weltöffentlichkeit. Mit dem Roman "Der Königsweg" verarbeitet er seine diesbezüglichen Erlebnisse: Der junge französische Abenteurer Vannec und der erfahrene Südostasienreisende Perken schließen sich in den 1920ern zusammen, um im Auftrag Frankreichs den "Königsweg" zu suchen, eine von Vannec vermutete Verbindung zwischen den damals großteils noch im Dschungel verschollenen Tempeln Angkors. Die wissenschaftliche Theorie dient jedoch nur als Staffage, tatsächlich planen die beiden Kunstwerke zu stehlen und nach Europa zu verschieben. Nachdem sie tatsächlich fündig werden und sich raffgierig und rücksichtslos wertvoller Khmer-Reliefs bemächtigen, wählen sie aus Angst vor behördlicher Verfolgung nicht den sicheren Weg zurück nach Französisch-Indochina sondern jenen ins unabhängige Siam durch teilweise unerforschtes Gebiet. Schon bald sehen sie sich der Unwegsamkeit der Natur und feindlichen Stämmen gegenüber, sodass ihre Flucht ein Kampf auf Leben und Tod wird. Dabei stellen sich die Protagonisten den existenziellen Fragen des Lebens und entscheiden sich für Freiheit und Nonkonfirmismus...

Was spannend klingend ist leider nicht unbedingt leicht zu lesen, der teilweise rastlose, abschweifende Stil Malraux' belohnt nur aufmerksame Leser. Die Schilderungen der Erlebnisse in den unerforschten Gebieten erinnern wiederrum mehr an einen fiktiven Abenteuerroman (mit nicht allzu einfallsreicher Story), denn an eine autobiographische Schilderung. ( )
  schmechi | Mar 18, 2015 |
I read this in French in 1970 a couple of days before my French exam having cut it a bit fine as usual. I absolutely loved it and really regretted having missed the lectures about it. As a young reader I relished the daring adventures in palpably lush locations including jungle-covered ancient temples that I vowed to travel to at the first opportunity. This was quite a while later of course, what with the Vietnam War and the savage Pol Pot regime which ravaged Cambodia for many years. The book is partly fictionalised autobiography, as Malraux himself stole relief carvings on an expedition to Angkor in his youth, well before (ironically) becoming the French Minister for Culture. At Angkor we made a point of visiting beautiful Banteay Srei, by then cleared of enveloping jungle, danger instead being provided by residual land mines in the area. We couldn't find where Malraux had stolen carvings from. I bet there's a sign by now. ( )
  Eurydice2 | Mar 11, 2013 |
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Cette fois, l'obsession de Claude entrait en lutte : il regardait opiniâtrement le visage de cet homme, tentait de distinguer enfin quelque expression dans la pénombre où le laissait l'ampoule allumée derrière lui.
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One of Malraux's most exotic novels, The Way of Kings is a perfect companion to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. When Claude and Perken meet on a ship heading for Indochina, they decide to throw in their lots to form a dual expedition into the perilous jungles of Cambodia. Claude, a young Frenchman, is seeking adventure, fame, and fortune. Perken, a veteran Dutch explorer, is returning to his own little patch of Siam; appalled at the effects of age, he is aiming to recapture his former masculine pride. Facing death at every turn from the seething forest and "bestial” tribes people, they are nonetheless driven to leave their stamp on a world on the eve of its demise. Novelist, art historian, and statesman Andr#65533; Malraux is best known for his psychological masterpiece, Man’s Fate.

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