Tintin in Tibet
Encyclopedia
Tintin in Tibet is the twentieth title in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin
, written and drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé
. Originally serialised from September 1958 in the French language magazine named after his creation, Le Journal de Tintin
, it was then first published in book form in 1960. An "intensely personal book" for Hergé, who would come to see it as his favourite of the Tintin adventures, it was written and drawn by him at a time when he was suffering from traumatic nightmares and a personal conflict over whether he should divorce his wife of three decades, Germaine Remi, for a younger woman with whom he had fallen in love, Fanny Vlaminck
.
The plot of the book revolves around the boy reporter Tintin
who, aided by his faithful dog Snowy
, friend Captain Haddock
and the sherpa Tharkey, treks across the Himalayan
mountains in Tibet
in order to look for Tintin's friend Chang Chong-Chen
whom the authorities claim had been killed in a plane crash flying over the mountains. Convinced that Chang has somehow survived, Tintin continues to search for him despite the odds, along the way encountering the giant Himalayan ape, the Yeti
.
Released after the publication of the previous Tintin adventure, The Red Sea Sharks
(1958), Tintin in Tibet would differ from the other stories in the series because many of the core characters from the series, such as Thomson and Thompson
and Cuthbert Calculus, barely or didn't feature in it, whilst at the same time it was the only Tintin adventure to not pit Tintin against an antagonist. Tintin in Tibet is highly thought of by prominent Tintinologists, with Michael Farr
calling it "exceptional in many respects" and Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier describing it as "arguably the best book in the series". It has also been publicly praised by Tenzing Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama
and prominent Tibetan spokesman, who awarded his own Truth of Light award to the book and to Hergé. Adaptations of Tintin in Tibet have been made in various media, including an animated television series
, a radio series and a video game
in the 1990s, and then for the theatre in the 2000s.
with Captain Haddock
and Professor Calculus
, Tintin reads about a plane crash in the Gosain Than Massif in the Himalayas
. That evening at their hotel, Tintin dozes off while playing chess
with the Captain, who is having trouble deciding his next move. Tintin has a vivid dream that his young Chinese
friend Chang Chong-Chen
(introduced in The Blue Lotus
) is terribly hurt and calling for help from the ruins of a plane crash. The next morning, Tintin reads in the paper that Chang was aboard the plane that crashed in Tibet
. Believing that his dream was a telepathic vision, Tintin travels to Kathmandu with Snowy
, followed by a skeptical Captain Haddock. They hire a sherpa named Tharkey, and accompanied by some porters, they travel from Nepal
to the crash site in Tibet
.
Upon entering Tibet, they discover footprints in the snow that Tharkey claims belong to the yeti
. The porters abandon the group in fear, and Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey go on and eventually reach the crash site. Tintin sets off with Snowy to try and trace Chang's steps, and find a cave in which Chang carved his name on a rock, proving that he survived the crash.
Tharkey decides not to go on any further, believing Chang to be dead, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock travel on after Tintin spots a scarf higher up on a cliff face. While attempting to climb upwards and after having his pick-axe caught with St. Elmo's fire
, Haddock loses his grip and hangs perilously down the cliff wall, imperiling Tintin, who is tied to him. He tells Tintin to cut the rope to save himself, but Tintin refuses. Tharkey, who had had a changed of heart moved by Tintin's selflessness, returns just in time to save them. That night, they pitch their tent in a storm, but it is taken away by a storm. They trek onwards, unable to sleep lest they freeze, and eventually arrive within sight of the Buddhist monastery of Khor-Biyong before collapsing due to exhaustion. An avalanche
occurs, and they are buried in the snow.
Blessed Lightning, a monk at the monastery, 'sees' in a vision Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Tharkey being in peril. Up in the mountains, Tintin regains consciousness and, unable to reach the monastery himself, writes a note and gives it to Snowy to deliver. Snowy lets go of the message when he finds a bone, but then realises what he's done, and runs to the monastery to make someone follow him. The monks head after him as he is recognised as the white dog in Blessed Lightning's vision.
Two days later, Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey awaken in the monastery and receive an audience with the monks. After Tintin tells the Grand Abbot why they are there, the Abbot tells him to abandon his quest and return to his country. However, Blessed Lightning has another vision, through which Tintin learns that Chang is still alive inside a mountain cave, but that the "migou", or yeti, is also there. Haddock doesn't believe the vision is genuine, but Tintin, after being given directions by the Abbot, travels to Charabang, a small village near the Horn of the Yak, the mountain mentioned by Blessed Lightning. Haddock initially refuses to follow Tintin anymore, but once again changes his mind and pursues him to Charabang. The two of them, and Snowy, head to the Horn of the Yak on the final lap of their journey.
They wait outside until they see the yeti leave the cave. Tintin ventures inside with a camera while Haddock keeps lookout, and he finally finds Chang, who is feverish and shaking. The yeti returns to the cave before Haddock can warn Tintin, and he reacts with anger upon seeing Tintin taking Chang away. As he reaches toward Tintin however, he sets off the flash bulb of the camera, which scares him away. Tintin and Haddock carry Chang back to the village of Charabang, and he explains to them that the yeti saved him after the crash and took him away from the rescue parties. Along the way, they briefly encounter the yeti again, and he is scared off this time by Haddock blowing his nose.
After Chang has been prepared for comfortable transport, he, Tintin and Haddock are met ceremonially by the Grand Abbot and an emissary group of monks, who present Tintin with a silk scarf in honour of the bravery he has shown, and the strength of his friendship with Chang. The monks take them back to Khor-Biyong, and after a week, when Chang has recovered, they return to Nepal by caravan. As their party travels away from the monastery, Chang muses that the yeti is no wild animal, but instead has a human soul, while the yeti sadly watches their departure from a distance.
, published in book form following its serialisation over the previous few years. Subsequently deciding to begin work on the next story in the series, he came up with numerous potential plot ideas. One of these was to send Tintin back to the United States
, where the reporter would once again meet with the Native Americans
, as he had done in the third adventure, Tintin in America
(1931–32). However Hergé eventually came to the conclusion that returning to the same country he had formerly sent Tintin to was "backward-looking". Another idea that he had was to base a story around the idea of Tintin having to prove that Haddock's butler Nestor
was framed for a crime that he didn't commit by his old employers, the Bird Brothers. Again, this was something he also chose to dismiss. A third idea was that Tintin be sent with Professor Calculus to one of the snow-covered poles, where Calculus was needed to help save a stranded group of polar explorers who had gone down with food poisoning, and although the setting in a snowy environment was eventually kept, this plot was also abandoned. Meanwhile the Belgian comic creator Michel Regnier, best known under the pseudonym of Greg (1931–1999), (who was then busy working on Belvision's animated television adaptation of the series, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin
), wrote two basic ideas for Tintin adventures that Hergé might potentially take up. This pair, Le Thermozéro
(The Thermozero) and Les Pillules (The Pills), both revolved around Tintin rescuing a secret agent
and then getting involved with a 'cold bomb' in the former, or 'radioactive pills' in the latter. Again, Hergé felt that this was not the story which he wanted to take up.
The idea of setting the story in Tibet had been influenced by Hergé's friend Jacques Van Melkebeke
(1904–1983), who had suggested it back in 1954, possibly being influenced by the fact that he had set the 1940s Tintin play M. Boullock A Disparu (The Disappearance of Mr Boullock) in that country. Initial ideas for the title of the work were Le Museau de la Vache (The Cow's Snout), Le Museau de l'Ours (The Bear's Snout) or Le Museau du Yack (The Yack's Snout), all of which would have been named after a mountain that featured in the latter part of the story. Initially, it was claimed that the title of Tintin in Tibet was chosen because market research indicated that people were more likely to buy a book with Tintin's name in the title, but Tintinologist Harry Thompson
instead believed that it was chosen because it was a "title [that] reflected the solo nature of [Tintin's] undertaking."
, a far younger assistant who worked at his Studios Hergé
. He began to contemplate divorcing Germaine in order to marry Fanny, with whom he shared many mutual interests, something Germaine did not. As he would later relate, "It meant turning upside down all my values - what a shock! This was a serious moral crisis: I was married, and I loved someone else; life seemed impossible with my wife, but on the other hand I had this scout
-like idea of giving my word for ever. It was a real catastrophe. I was completely torn up." During this period, Hergé had begun suffering from repeating nightmares in which he was consistently faced by images of what he described as "the beauty and cruelty of white". As he would later relate to the interviewer Numa Sadoul
:
He decided to visit a psychoanalyst
to try and decipher what his disturbing dreams meant and what could be done about them. He went to visit the Swiss psychoanalyst Franz Ricklin, a student of the prestigious psychoanalyst Carl Jung
, who told him that he must destroy "the white demon of purity" within his mind as soon as he could. Ricklin further advised Hergé that "I don't want to discourage you, but you will never finish your life's work. In your place, I would just stop working now." Although Hergé was tempted to take up Ricklin's advice and abandon the continued writing of Tintin in Tibet, following which he could devote himself to his hobby of abstract art
, he decided to instead follow his old scout motto of "A scout smiles and sings through all his difficulties." He would divorce his wife to marry Fanny, and would also continue the writing and illustrating of Tintin in Tibet. As Tintinologist Harry Thompson
noted, "It was ironic, but not perhaps unpredictable, that faced with the moral dilemma posed by Ricklin, Hergé chose to keep his scout's word of honour to Tintin, but not to Germaine".
, a snow-covered environment, was due to his repeating dreams of whiteness, and as Harry Thompson noted, "Hergé's fundamental need was to draw a white, snowy adventure" that had to "be a solo voyage of redemption for Hergé." Thompson believed that it was because of this idea of a personal voyage that most of the series' supporting cast were left out of the book, with Tintin only being accompanied by Snowy and Haddock on his journey. Hergé was also fascinated with "extra-sensory perception
and the mysticism of Tibetan Buddhism
", interests that he shared with his new wife Fanny, and these played important themes within Tintin in Tibet. He had learned about many aspects of the Tibetan esoteric from books such as those of Belgian explorer Alexandra David-Neel
as well as the Englishman Lobsang Rampa
's controversial work The Third Eye (1956, published in French in 1957), the accuracy of which has been heavily disputed.
To learn more about the Yeti
, which he depicted as a particularly benevolent creature in his story, Hergé contacted the cryptozoologist
Bernard Heuvelmans
(1916–2001), who had formerly aided him in his study of hypothetical moon exploration for Destination Moon
and Explorers on the Moon
. After reading the section on the Yeti in Heuvelmans' book Sur La Piste Des Bêtes Ignorées (On the Tracks of Unknown Animals), Hergé also went on to perform as much research into the cryptid as possible. According to Harry Thompson
, Hergé "interviewed mountaineers, including Maurice Herzog
, who had spotted the tracks of an enormous biped which stopped at the foot of a sheer rock face on Annapurna
. Even the way in which the creature cares for the starving Chang is taken from a sherpa's account of a Yeti which rescued a little girl in similar circumstances."
Hergé collected together a large assortment of clippings, largely from National Geographic Magazine
, that he filed away and used as a basis from which to draw Tintin in Tibet. Images found in the book such as the monks with their musical instruments, the sherpas with their backpacks and the plane crash wreckage, are all visually based upon clippings in Hergé's collection. Members of his Studio Hergé also helped him gather together source material for the story, for instance Jacques Martin
(1921–2010), a member of the Studio and a comic strip writer in his own right, researched and drew all the costumes for the book.
In 2001 the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been previously released with the title "Tintin in China's Tibet". The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title.
When the book was published in Chinese the Chinese authorities had renamed it Tintin in China's Tibet. Herge and his publishers protested and the title was changed back to its original name.
Truth of Light award. "For many people around the world Tintin in Tibet was their first introduction to Tibet, the beauty of its landscape and its culture. And that is something that has passed down the generations," said the International Campaign for Tibet
's Simon van Melick. During the awarding ceremony copies of Tintin in Tibet in Esperanto
(Tinĉjo en Tibeto) were distributed among the attendees and journalists.
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
, written and drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...
. Originally serialised from September 1958 in the French language magazine named after his creation, Le Journal de Tintin
Tintin (magazine)
Le journal de Tintin or Kuifje , was a weekly Belgian comics magazine of the second half of the 20th century...
, it was then first published in book form in 1960. An "intensely personal book" for Hergé, who would come to see it as his favourite of the Tintin adventures, it was written and drawn by him at a time when he was suffering from traumatic nightmares and a personal conflict over whether he should divorce his wife of three decades, Germaine Remi, for a younger woman with whom he had fallen in love, Fanny Vlaminck
Fanny Rodwell
Fanny Rodwell is the second wife of well-known comic creator Hergé. She founded the Hergé Foundation in 1987 and is the copyright owner of Hergé's works after his death. She received an award on behalf of the foundation from the Dalai Lama in 2006.She financed the building of the Hergé Museum in...
.
The plot of the book revolves around the boy reporter Tintin
Tintin
Tintin, Tin-Tin or Tin Tin may refer to:* The Adventures of Tintin , the series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé...
who, aided by his faithful dog Snowy
Snowy
Snowy may refer to:* The condition of having snow; having to do with snow* Snowy , a dog companion of Tintin, a Belgian comics character* Snowy River, a river in Australia...
, friend Captain Haddock
Captain Haddock
Captain Archibald Haddock is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
and the sherpa Tharkey, treks across the Himalayan
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
mountains in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
in order to look for Tintin's friend Chang Chong-Chen
Chang Chong-Chen
Chang Chong-Chen is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
whom the authorities claim had been killed in a plane crash flying over the mountains. Convinced that Chang has somehow survived, Tintin continues to search for him despite the odds, along the way encountering the giant Himalayan ape, the Yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
.
Released after the publication of the previous Tintin adventure, The Red Sea Sharks
The Red Sea Sharks
The Red Sea Sharks is the nineteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero...
(1958), Tintin in Tibet would differ from the other stories in the series because many of the core characters from the series, such as Thomson and Thompson
Thomson and Thompson
Thomson and Thompson are fictional characters in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. Thomson and Thompson are detectives of Scotland Yard, and are as incompetent as they are necessary comic relief...
and Cuthbert Calculus, barely or didn't feature in it, whilst at the same time it was the only Tintin adventure to not pit Tintin against an antagonist. Tintin in Tibet is highly thought of by prominent Tintinologists, with Michael Farr
Michael Farr
Michael Farr is a British expert on the comic series Tintin and its creator, Hergé. He has written several books on the subject as well as translating several others into English...
calling it "exceptional in many respects" and Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier describing it as "arguably the best book in the series". It has also been publicly praised by Tenzing Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
and prominent Tibetan spokesman, who awarded his own Truth of Light award to the book and to Hergé. Adaptations of Tintin in Tibet have been made in various media, including an animated television series
The Adventures of Tintin (TV series)
The Adventures of Tintin is an animated television series based on The Adventures of Tintin, a series of books by Hergé. It debuted in 1991, and 39 half-hour episodes were produced over the course of three seasons...
, a radio series and a video game
Tintin in Tibet (video game)
Tintin in Tibet is a video game loosely based on the Tintin in Tibet comic book written and drawn by Hergé. It was released for PC , Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and the Sega Mega Drive by the late 1995....
in the 1990s, and then for the theatre in the 2000s.
Synopsis
While on holiday in a resort in the French AlpsFrench Alps
The French Alps are those portions of the Alps mountain range which stand within France, located in the Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions....
with Captain Haddock
Captain Haddock
Captain Archibald Haddock is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
and Professor Calculus
Professor Calculus
Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
, Tintin reads about a plane crash in the Gosain Than Massif in the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
. That evening at their hotel, Tintin dozes off while playing chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
with the Captain, who is having trouble deciding his next move. Tintin has a vivid dream that his young Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
friend Chang Chong-Chen
Chang Chong-Chen
Chang Chong-Chen is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
(introduced in The Blue Lotus
The Blue Lotus
The Blue Lotus , first published in 1936, is one of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Hergé featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It is a sequel to Cigars of the Pharaoh, with Tintin continuing his struggle against a major gang of drug...
) is terribly hurt and calling for help from the ruins of a plane crash. The next morning, Tintin reads in the paper that Chang was aboard the plane that crashed in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
. Believing that his dream was a telepathic vision, Tintin travels to Kathmandu with Snowy
Snowy (character)
Snowy is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is a white Wire Fox Terrier and Tintin's four-legged companion who travels everywhere with him...
, followed by a skeptical Captain Haddock. They hire a sherpa named Tharkey, and accompanied by some porters, they travel from Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
to the crash site in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
.
Upon entering Tibet, they discover footprints in the snow that Tharkey claims belong to the yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
. The porters abandon the group in fear, and Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey go on and eventually reach the crash site. Tintin sets off with Snowy to try and trace Chang's steps, and find a cave in which Chang carved his name on a rock, proving that he survived the crash.
Tharkey decides not to go on any further, believing Chang to be dead, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock travel on after Tintin spots a scarf higher up on a cliff face. While attempting to climb upwards and after having his pick-axe caught with St. Elmo's fire
St. Elmo's fire
St. Elmo's fire is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a coronal discharge from a grounded object in an electric field in the atmosphere St. Elmo's fire is named after St. Erasmus of Formiae St. Elmo's fire (also St. Elmo's light) is a weather phenomenon in which luminous...
, Haddock loses his grip and hangs perilously down the cliff wall, imperiling Tintin, who is tied to him. He tells Tintin to cut the rope to save himself, but Tintin refuses. Tharkey, who had had a changed of heart moved by Tintin's selflessness, returns just in time to save them. That night, they pitch their tent in a storm, but it is taken away by a storm. They trek onwards, unable to sleep lest they freeze, and eventually arrive within sight of the Buddhist monastery of Khor-Biyong before collapsing due to exhaustion. An avalanche
Avalanche
An avalanche is a sudden rapid flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers or human activity causes a critical escalating transition from the slow equilibrium evolution of the snow pack. Typically occurring in mountainous terrain, an avalanche can mix air and water with the...
occurs, and they are buried in the snow.
Blessed Lightning, a monk at the monastery, 'sees' in a vision Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Tharkey being in peril. Up in the mountains, Tintin regains consciousness and, unable to reach the monastery himself, writes a note and gives it to Snowy to deliver. Snowy lets go of the message when he finds a bone, but then realises what he's done, and runs to the monastery to make someone follow him. The monks head after him as he is recognised as the white dog in Blessed Lightning's vision.
They wait outside until they see the yeti leave the cave. Tintin ventures inside with a camera while Haddock keeps lookout, and he finally finds Chang, who is feverish and shaking. The yeti returns to the cave before Haddock can warn Tintin, and he reacts with anger upon seeing Tintin taking Chang away. As he reaches toward Tintin however, he sets off the flash bulb of the camera, which scares him away. Tintin and Haddock carry Chang back to the village of Charabang, and he explains to them that the yeti saved him after the crash and took him away from the rescue parties. Along the way, they briefly encounter the yeti again, and he is scared off this time by Haddock blowing his nose.
After Chang has been prepared for comfortable transport, he, Tintin and Haddock are met ceremonially by the Grand Abbot and an emissary group of monks, who present Tintin with a silk scarf in honour of the bravery he has shown, and the strength of his friendship with Chang. The monks take them back to Khor-Biyong, and after a week, when Chang has recovered, they return to Nepal by caravan. As their party travels away from the monastery, Chang muses that the yeti is no wild animal, but instead has a human soul, while the yeti sadly watches their departure from a distance.
Initial plot ideas
In 1958, Hergé saw the nineteenth of his Tintin adventures, The Red Sea SharksThe Red Sea Sharks
The Red Sea Sharks is the nineteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero...
, published in book form following its serialisation over the previous few years. Subsequently deciding to begin work on the next story in the series, he came up with numerous potential plot ideas. One of these was to send Tintin back to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where the reporter would once again meet with the Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, as he had done in the third adventure, Tintin in America
Tintin in America
Tintin in America is the third title in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin, written and drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé...
(1931–32). However Hergé eventually came to the conclusion that returning to the same country he had formerly sent Tintin to was "backward-looking". Another idea that he had was to base a story around the idea of Tintin having to prove that Haddock's butler Nestor
Nestor (Tintin character)
Nestor is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is the long-suffering butler of Marlinspike Hall....
was framed for a crime that he didn't commit by his old employers, the Bird Brothers. Again, this was something he also chose to dismiss. A third idea was that Tintin be sent with Professor Calculus to one of the snow-covered poles, where Calculus was needed to help save a stranded group of polar explorers who had gone down with food poisoning, and although the setting in a snowy environment was eventually kept, this plot was also abandoned. Meanwhile the Belgian comic creator Michel Regnier, best known under the pseudonym of Greg (1931–1999), (who was then busy working on Belvision's animated television adaptation of the series, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin
Hergé's Adventures of Tintin
Hergé's Adventures of Tintin was an animated television series based on Hergé's popular comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin. The series was produced by Belvision and aired from 1959 to 1963, with 104 five-minute episodes produced...
), wrote two basic ideas for Tintin adventures that Hergé might potentially take up. This pair, Le Thermozéro
Le Thermozéro
Le Thermozéro is an abandoned comics project from two of Hergé's series : The Adventures of Tintin as well as Jo, Zette and Jocko.-History:...
(The Thermozero) and Les Pillules (The Pills), both revolved around Tintin rescuing a secret agent
Secret Agent
Secret Agent is a British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young...
and then getting involved with a 'cold bomb' in the former, or 'radioactive pills' in the latter. Again, Hergé felt that this was not the story which he wanted to take up.
The idea of setting the story in Tibet had been influenced by Hergé's friend Jacques Van Melkebeke
Jacques Van Melkebeke
Jacques Van Melkebeke was a Belgian painter, journalist, writer, comic strips writer.Friend of Hergé, he took part in a semi-official way in the development of some of the storylines of The Adventures of Tintin, adding a number of cultural references. He is also supposed to have contributed to...
(1904–1983), who had suggested it back in 1954, possibly being influenced by the fact that he had set the 1940s Tintin play M. Boullock A Disparu (The Disappearance of Mr Boullock) in that country. Initial ideas for the title of the work were Le Museau de la Vache (The Cow's Snout), Le Museau de l'Ours (The Bear's Snout) or Le Museau du Yack (The Yack's Snout), all of which would have been named after a mountain that featured in the latter part of the story. Initially, it was claimed that the title of Tintin in Tibet was chosen because market research indicated that people were more likely to buy a book with Tintin's name in the title, but Tintinologist Harry Thompson
Harry Thompson
Harry William Thompson was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer....
instead believed that it was chosen because it was a "title [that] reflected the solo nature of [Tintin's] undertaking."
Hergé's psychological issues
Hergé had reached a particularly traumatic period in his life. He realised that he had fallen out of love with his wife Germaine Remi, whom he married in 1932, and had instead developed a deep mutual attraction with Fanny VlaminckFanny Rodwell
Fanny Rodwell is the second wife of well-known comic creator Hergé. She founded the Hergé Foundation in 1987 and is the copyright owner of Hergé's works after his death. She received an award on behalf of the foundation from the Dalai Lama in 2006.She financed the building of the Hergé Museum in...
, a far younger assistant who worked at his Studios Hergé
Studios Hergé
The Studios Hergé were, between 1950 and 1986, a SARL grouping comics author Hergé and his collaborators, who assisted him with the creation of The Adventures of Tintin and derived products...
. He began to contemplate divorcing Germaine in order to marry Fanny, with whom he shared many mutual interests, something Germaine did not. As he would later relate, "It meant turning upside down all my values - what a shock! This was a serious moral crisis: I was married, and I loved someone else; life seemed impossible with my wife, but on the other hand I had this scout
Boy Scout
A Scout is a boy or a girl, usually 11 to 18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement. Because of the large age and development span, many Scouting associations have split this age group into a junior and a senior section...
-like idea of giving my word for ever. It was a real catastrophe. I was completely torn up." During this period, Hergé had begun suffering from repeating nightmares in which he was consistently faced by images of what he described as "the beauty and cruelty of white". As he would later relate to the interviewer Numa Sadoul
Numa Sadoul
Numa Sadoul is a French writer, actor, and director, who has been a resident of France since 1966....
:
- "At the time I was going through a time of real crisis and my dreams were nearly always white dreams. And they were extremely distressing. I took note of them and remember one where I was in a kind of tower made up of a series of ramps. Dead leaves were falling and covering everything. At a particular moment, in an immaculately white alcove, a white skeleton appeared that tried to catch me. And then instantly everything around me became white."
He decided to visit a psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
to try and decipher what his disturbing dreams meant and what could be done about them. He went to visit the Swiss psychoanalyst Franz Ricklin, a student of the prestigious psychoanalyst Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, who told him that he must destroy "the white demon of purity" within his mind as soon as he could. Ricklin further advised Hergé that "I don't want to discourage you, but you will never finish your life's work. In your place, I would just stop working now." Although Hergé was tempted to take up Ricklin's advice and abandon the continued writing of Tintin in Tibet, following which he could devote himself to his hobby of abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, he decided to instead follow his old scout motto of "A scout smiles and sings through all his difficulties." He would divorce his wife to marry Fanny, and would also continue the writing and illustrating of Tintin in Tibet. As Tintinologist Harry Thompson
Harry Thompson
Harry William Thompson was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer....
noted, "It was ironic, but not perhaps unpredictable, that faced with the moral dilemma posed by Ricklin, Hergé chose to keep his scout's word of honour to Tintin, but not to Germaine".
Influences
In writing and drawing Tintin in Tibet, Hergé drew upon a wide range of influences. The concept of setting the plot in the HimalayasHimalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
, a snow-covered environment, was due to his repeating dreams of whiteness, and as Harry Thompson noted, "Hergé's fundamental need was to draw a white, snowy adventure" that had to "be a solo voyage of redemption for Hergé." Thompson believed that it was because of this idea of a personal voyage that most of the series' supporting cast were left out of the book, with Tintin only being accompanied by Snowy and Haddock on his journey. Hergé was also fascinated with "extra-sensory perception
Extra-sensory perception
Extrasensory perception involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by Frederic Myers, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, clairaudience, and...
and the mysticism of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
", interests that he shared with his new wife Fanny, and these played important themes within Tintin in Tibet. He had learned about many aspects of the Tibetan esoteric from books such as those of Belgian explorer Alexandra David-Neel
Alexandra David-Néel
Alexandra David-Néel born Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David was a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners...
as well as the Englishman Lobsang Rampa
Lobsang Rampa
Cyril Henry Hoskin , more popularly known as Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, was a writer who claimed to have been a lama in Tibet before spending the second part of his life in the body of a British man. Hoskin described himself as the "host" of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa...
's controversial work The Third Eye (1956, published in French in 1957), the accuracy of which has been heavily disputed.
To learn more about the Yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
, which he depicted as a particularly benevolent creature in his story, Hergé contacted the cryptozoologist
Cryptozoology
Cryptozoology refers to the search for animals whose existence has not been proven...
Bernard Heuvelmans
Bernard Heuvelmans
Bernard Heuvelmans was a Belgian-French scientist, explorer, researcher, and a writer probably best known as "the father of cryptozoology"...
(1916–2001), who had formerly aided him in his study of hypothetical moon exploration for Destination Moon
Destination Moon
Destination Moon can refer to the following:* Destination Moon , a 1950 science fiction film* "Destination Moon" , a story by Robert Heinlein adapted from his screenplay for the above...
and Explorers on the Moon
Explorers on the Moon
Explorers on the Moon, published in 1954, is the seventeenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. Its original French title is On a marché sur la Lune...
. After reading the section on the Yeti in Heuvelmans' book Sur La Piste Des Bêtes Ignorées (On the Tracks of Unknown Animals), Hergé also went on to perform as much research into the cryptid as possible. According to Harry Thompson
Harry Thompson
Harry William Thompson was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer....
, Hergé "interviewed mountaineers, including Maurice Herzog
Maurice Herzog
Maurice Herzog is a French mountaineer and sports administrator who was born in Lyon, France. He led the expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m, Annapurna, in 1950, and reached the summit with Louis Lachenal. Upon his return, he wrote a best-selling book about the expedition...
, who had spotted the tracks of an enormous biped which stopped at the foot of a sheer rock face on Annapurna
Annapurna
Annapurna is a section of the Himalayas in north-central Nepal that includes Annapurna I, thirteen additional peaks over and 16 more over ....
. Even the way in which the creature cares for the starving Chang is taken from a sherpa's account of a Yeti which rescued a little girl in similar circumstances."
Hergé collected together a large assortment of clippings, largely from National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, is the official journal of the National Geographic Society. It published its first issue in 1888, just nine months after the Society itself was founded...
, that he filed away and used as a basis from which to draw Tintin in Tibet. Images found in the book such as the monks with their musical instruments, the sherpas with their backpacks and the plane crash wreckage, are all visually based upon clippings in Hergé's collection. Members of his Studio Hergé also helped him gather together source material for the story, for instance Jacques Martin
Jacques Martin
Jacques Martin may refer to:*Jacques Martin , , hockey coach*Jacques Martin , , French TV host and producer*Jacques Martin , French writer and artist of comics*Jacques-Paul Martin, French curial cardinal...
(1921–2010), a member of the Studio and a comic strip writer in his own right, researched and drew all the costumes for the book.
Publication
Due to his emphasis on accuracy, Hergé added the logo of a genuine airline, Indian Airways, to the crash debris in Tintin in Tibet. However, this annoyed the company themselves and a representative complained to Hergé about the adverse publicity that they might suffer, arguing that "It's scandalous, none of our aircraft has ever crashed. You have done us a considerable wrong." Because of this response, Hergé changed the logo in subsequent editions to the fictional Sari-Airways, however he also observed that there were so many Indian airlines that it was possible that there really was a Sari-Airways.In 2001 the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been previously released with the title "Tintin in China's Tibet". The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title.
When the book was published in Chinese the Chinese authorities had renamed it Tintin in China's Tibet. Herge and his publishers protested and the title was changed back to its original name.
Reception
On June 1, 2006, Tintin became the first fictional character to be awarded the Dalai Lama'sDalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
Truth of Light award. "For many people around the world Tintin in Tibet was their first introduction to Tibet, the beauty of its landscape and its culture. And that is something that has passed down the generations," said the International Campaign for Tibet
International Campaign for Tibet
The International Campaign for Tibet is a private non-profit advocacy group working to promote democratic freedoms for Tibetans, ensure their human rights, and protect the Tibetan culture and environment. Founded in 1988, ICT is the world's largest Tibet-related NGO, with a total membership of...
's Simon van Melick. During the awarding ceremony copies of Tintin in Tibet in Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
(Tinĉjo en Tibeto) were distributed among the attendees and journalists.
External links
- Tintin in Tibet at Tintinologist.org