Tintin and literary awards

King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939) - Page 07

The literary awards season is now over  -  at least in France. You may be surprised to find many writers revealing Tintin as a source of inspiration or the stimulus for them to put pen to paper. Let's find out who they are.



A Tintinesque Nobel Prize


The 2008 Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Born in Nice in April 1940, he had a lonely childhood, despite the company of his older brother Yves-Marie, and his mother, a musician who performed piano recitals of the music of Maurice Ravel, much to the delight of her two sons. He confesses that he loved to daydream and read about Tintin’s adventures, which awakened his fascination for explorers, other countries and remote civilisations. JMG Le Clézio already had these things in his blood: his family tree is as impressive as that of Captain Haddock, descended from the Knight of Haddock! In 1794, François-Alexis Le Clézio left Morbihan (Brittany) for the Île de France (the contemporary Mauritius). The island was annexed by the British in the Napoleonic era, and the Clézio family (meaning ‘enclosures’ in Breton) became British.



In the image of Tintin


J.-M.G. Le Clézio’s grandfather built a hot-air balloon in his garden and met the poet Arthur Rimbaud, but what will really strike a chord with Tintin readers are the writer’s travels. After winning the Prix Renaudot at 23 years of age for his book The Interrogation, Le Clézio spent four years (between 1970 and 1974) living with two Indian tribes, the Ember and Waunana, in Panama. Tragically, these people were slaughtered by drug traffickers, and Le Clézio narrowly escaped being murdered during his last visit to the Ember. In 1977 he discovered first-hand the misery of the Indian reserves of Mexico, and would make the connection with Tintin in America. He travelled tirelessly: the western Sahara, Nigeria, the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and so on. His book Voyages au Pays des Arbres (Journeys to the Tree Country) is suitable for readers of any age.



Tintin, French teacher in Kabul


Atiq Rahimi, the Afghan writer and winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt, was born in Kabul in 1962. Remembering his time as a student at the French-Afghan lycée Esteqlal (independence), he speaks of days whiled away in the library: "I spent hours reading Tintin books. The pictures helped me to develop my understanding of the subtleties of French." It would be no exaggeration to say that his study paid off. Atiq Rahimi wrote his novel Syngué Sabour, Pierre de Patience, directly in French! A coup in his country closed the doors of the lycée, which was considered too "bourgeois". In 1984, along with 24 other young people, Atiq fled Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, he has returned to Kabul and noted that the French lycée barely survives, and without French teachers.
Tintin and the Prix Goncourt juror


Bernard Pivot is a member of the Académie Goncourt, which awarded its prize to Atiq Rahimi (the first Prix Goncourt was awarded in 1903). He is also a Tintin fan. He hosted Hergé on the first broadcast of his television programme, Ouvrez les Guillemets, on 8 October 1973. A few years later, in January 1979, Bernard Pivot would again invite Hergé onto his new show, Apostrophes. "It was always a pleasure to meet the creator of Tintin," he reminisces. "He was an immensely cultured man, very aware of current affairs and the cultural movements that marked the twentieth century. He had views on any subject we discussed, and his views were convincing. He was a gentleman in the spirit of the eighteenth century…." … as quoted from Bernard Pivot in the programme Bouillon de Culture, which he hosted from 1990 to 2001. His view of Hergé’s qualities was echoed by another writer, Jacques Chancel, in his broadcast Radioscopie.



Arriba Tintin!


Let’s go off to the Pyrenees to meet Arturo Pérez-Reverte, creator of the character Capitaine Alatriste, tireless warrior in the service of the kings of Spain in the years that followed the reign of Emperor Charles V. Pérez-Reverte is also the author of crime novels such as La Peau du Tambour, the sleuth of which is a priest, Lorenzo Quart, whose pious readings are fortunately livened up by his familiarity with King Ottokar’s Sceptre. Hergé was, according to Arturo Pérez-Reverte (who was a journalist before devoting his life to writing), one of the major authors of the twentieth century. The Argentine writer Rodrigo Fresn, of the fantastic school of literature (Esperanto, Les Jardins de Kensington, La Vitesse des Choses) and based in Barcelona, claims to know all the Tintin stories by heart, save one, which he has never read and which, true to his reputation for dreamscapes and the absurd, he does not want to name.



Tintin at sea


Regular guest of Les Grosses Têtes hosted by Philippe Bouvard on RTL Radio, Olivier de Kersauson is, above all, passionate about the sea. Also a writer when so inclined (he has been publishing books since 1976, the last of which is Ocean’s Story), he considers Hergé to be the "crème de la crème". Recently interviewed by L’Equipe Magazine, he said,I must have read Hergé’s masterpieces a thousand times. I am the undisputed champion in Tintin trivia. What did the little yellow and yellow and black flags of the Pachacamac mean? The ship was under quarantine. What does the little Indian say to Captain Haddock in Prisoners of the Sun? "When llama is angry, he always do that." What are the natives singing in the canoe in Tintin in the Congo? ‘U-élé-u-élé, ma-li-ba, ma-ka-si. "I could go on for hours. There is nothing like it in literature. It’s the best." Blistering barnacles, this little ship’s boy really knows his stuff! Faced with such an outpouring of knowledge, even Haddock would be lost for words.
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