At a time when our last trip is beginning to date and the next one is unfortunately no longer on the agenda, a few great classics fortunately allow us to travel from his sofa. The opportunity to dust off the books in his library or to order some ebooks on the Internet to pass the time while respecting the confinement. Le Petit Futé therefore offers you a dive into the works of authors who have made us travel. After following in the footsteps of the late Albert Uderzo in Gaul, as in the rest of the world, accompanying Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway to the four corners of the planet, we now move on to the fourth opus in our series: Hergé and his famous reporter Tintin.
Europe, between imagination and reality
Tintin and Snowy, Belgian residents of their state, have naturally travelled the Old Continent. From the first album, released in 1930, our heroes take the train to Russia and Moscow in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. A story that will also see them pass through Stolbtzy (Stowbtsy), in the Minsk region of Belarus. Still in the north of Europe, Tintin will cross the English Channel to survey the roads of England and Scotland in The Black Island, where he will dismantle a traffic of counterfeit banknotes, while in The Mysterious Star, he will cross the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean, between Iceland and Greenland, in search of the famous meteorite. Tintin and Snowy will also head for Eastern Europe in Ottokar's Sceptre, published in 1939. For the first appearance of the famous singer Bianca Castafiore, the reporter will go to the East in the context of the rise of nationalism (one of the villains is called Müsstler, a word suitcase with the names of the dictators Mussolini and Hitler). After passing through Germany and Prague in the Czech Republic, Tintin and Snowy travel to Syldavia and Borduria, two imaginary countries in the Balkans. Two nations that we also find in The Sunflower Affair, along with Switzerland and its famous Lake Geneva
Finally, some adventures will take place in Tintin's place of residence. Belgium (in Les Sept Boules de cristal or Le Secret de la Licorne), since the traveling reporter works for Le Petit Vingtième, the supplement of a Belgian daily newspaper, and lives at 26, rue du Labrador. A fictitious address in Brussels, inspired by the rue Terre-Neuve in the centre of the capital. It is also found in the famous Moulinsart castle, inspired by the castle of Cheverny in Sologne, in Les Bijoux de la Castafiore, among others. But Tintin will very often leave his Belgian or French homes during his adventures.
From North to South, America unveils itself
He will also set down his suitcases in the United States in Tintin in America. This album (the best-selling in the world) is mainly set in Chicago, in the middle of the Prohibition period. We find there Al Capone, the Redskins and many other images of Epinal of America at the time. After a passage at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea in The Treasure of Rackham the Red, where the mythical Professor Sunflower is seen for the first time, Tintin will survey South America on several occasions. In The Broken Ear, we find our hero in San Theodoros, a fictitious republic that includes elements taken from many Latin American countries at the time: Central American countries, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia... It is this same republic that we find in Tintin and the Picaros. Then it is in Peru, that the Belgian journalist will make the discovery of the Inca civilization in The Temple of the Sun. From Lima to Callao, passing through the region of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, this work of Hergé is considered as showing a great realism, even historical veracity
From Africa to the Middle East, on the way to the East
Tintin will also take his reporters' notebooks to the African continent. Tintin's adventure in the Congo is set in the Belgian Congo and will not fail to raise criticism for the author's colonialist and racist vision, which will push Hergé to rewrite certain passages in the following re-editions. In Le Crabe aux pinces d'or, Tintin will leave Brussels and meet for the first time his faithful sidekick Captain Haddock on board the freighter Karaboudjan on the Atlantic Ocean. An adventure that will take him to the Sahara and the French Protectorate of Morocco to meet the Berbers. In Tintin au pays de l'or noir, if Palestine is evoked in a first version, Hergé then imagines an imaginary Arab country answering to the name of Khemed. Located somewhere on the shores of the Red Sea, on a peninsula that could be Saudi Arabia, Khemed is also the setting for the album Coke en stock, where the Emir's refuge is inspired by Khazneh, one of the most famous ancient monuments in the city of Petra in Jordan. Finally, in The Cigars of the Pharaoh, which marks the arrival of the famous detectives Dupont and Dupond in the adventures of Tintin, the action takes place in Egypt, from Port Said to Cairo. But we also find Tintin and Snowy on the Red Sea, in Saudi Arabia, before landing in India, the British Raj (the British colonial regime) at the time, at the home of the Maharajah of Rawhajputalah. An arrival in Asia that he would later pursue even further
In Asia, in the heart of China and on the roof of the world
For The Blue Lotus, which will take the Belgian reporter from India to Shanghai in China, is in fact the sequel to the Pharaoh's Cigars. This fifth album of the saga is considered to be the first where Hergé gets rid of the clichés and shortcuts for which he has been much criticized. This plunge into the China of the time, studded with small interesting details, makes Les Aventures de Tintin tip over into the universe of the demanding and realistic comic strip. Asia is also in the spotlight in the unmissable Tintin in Tibet. This twentieth opus takes us to the Himalayas, to the famous mountain of Shishapangma, and to Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital
Finally, Flight 714 to Sydney, Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and Professor Sunflower, who are due to travel to Australia for an aeronautical congress, live their adventures in Oceania and on an imaginary island of Indonesia Pulau-Pulau Bompa. A long way from Moulinsart Castle!
To the moon!
And how can we not conclude this dive into Tintin's adventures with his most incredible epic, the one that will lead him to the Moon? In Objectif Lune and On a marcher sur la Lune, the companions set off from a secret base inSyldavia, that imaginary Eastern European country already visited in Le Sceptre d'Ottokar and L'Affaire Tournesol, to become the first men to walk on the Moon! An adventure for which Hergé was a visionary, since the Belgian author published it in 1954, 11 years after the Apollo 11 mission that took Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon
