| Abstract: |
This chapter considers the lives and afterlives of Angkor in modern Cambodian literature and lyric. An early 20th-century verse considering Angkor’s restitution to Cambodia from Siam, a late 1970s lyric evoking Angkor’s protective properties, and an early 21st-century poetry anthology resist Angkor’s reduction to an empty icon by evoking Angkor as a locus of emotion. Monuments to moments of historical rupture and personal transformation, these works reflect the hopes, losses, and lived experience of their authors. Crossing genres and eras, the chapter situates these works, their authors, and the temple complex in a broader cultural and environmental context. Through historical and literary analyses, I read these works as stanzas in the 20th- and 21st-century life of Angkor to illuminate the enduring traction of Angkor as a lodestone of belonging in turbulent times.
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