Word: clara
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...three new labels, Seraphim ("Angels of the highest order") has the brightest roster of musicians, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Philips' World Series has less prominent but still lustrous names (Clara Haskil, Marcel Dupré) and an equally broad selection of works. Epic's Crossroads, the only one of the trio with all recent, all truly stereophonic recordings, has culled its list from that of the Czechoslovak firm Supraphon and thus gives voice to the Czech Philharmonic, the Smetana Quartet, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Some jewels in new settings...
Without a Sou. At the time of the adventure, Malraux was a 22-year-old cubist poet. He and Clara were very broke, following a highly unartistic attempt to make a killing on the Bourse. Intrigued by archaeology, especially by a little-known Cambodian temple called Bantéay Srei on the way to Angkor Vat, Malraux got permission from the French colonial administration to explore. Off they went first-class-without a sou for the return trip. When they finally found Banteay Srei, says Clara, "It was a kind of Trianon in the jungle...
They set about some minor demolition, using saws they had brought from France. These broke, recalls Clara, but it turned out that ropes were all it took to topple the uncemented, nearly life-size devatas, or guardian goddesses, from their niches. The statuary was then smuggled back to Pnom Penh by riverboat. Malraux was met by curious inspectors who had been tipped off. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison...
While Malraux sweltered, awaiting a hearing on his appeal, Clara hurried back to Paris where she got a petition from impressionable intellectuals urging the French colonial government to spare him. The signatures included André Gide, François Mauriac, André Maurois, Louis Aragon, André Breton and old Anatole France. The upshot was a reduction of Malraux's sentence to one year, which colonial authorities quietly did not bother to enforce...
...with the laws of French colonial bureaucracy as the start of Malraux's fervent anticolonialism. Indeed, he did return to Indochina to start an independence movement, beginning his long flirtation with revolutionaries that led him to fight in China during the 1920s and Spain in the 1930s. Clara is hardly bitter; she even seeks to justify the theft. "Love," says she, "gives one rights...