Tintin in Tibet

While resting in the mountains, Tintin receives a letter from his Chinese friend Chang, who writes that he will soon fly to London and they will finally be able to see each other after a long separation. Chang's route to... Europe leads through Kathmandu, where the young Chinese man plans to visit his adoptive father's cousin. However, following the joyful news comes a tragedy: Chang's plane has crashed in the Himalayas. According to newspaper reports, there are no survivors from the crash, but, contrary to common sense, Tintin is convinced that his friend is alive - after all, he dreamt of him yesterday! Sinking in the snow, a weakened Chang reached out to Tintin and begged for help. Tintin decides to urgently fly to Kathmandu, from where he will ascend to the crash site. Of course, Captain Haddock cannot let him go alone...

The magazine publication of the anniversary, 20th volume of "The Adventures of Tintin" began in September 1958 and ended in November 1959 (the album version was released in 1960).
The work on the next story coincided for the author with a difficult period in his personal life, which cost him a deep depression. Hergé was on the verge of a long-overdue but extremely painful decision about divorce. For him, a man with extremely conservative views, who valued reliability and permanence above all in relationships, the need to make such a decision felt like a catastrophe. Once again, creativity became a safe haven for Hergé: it is no wonder, as he had long understood that Tintin was his best psychotherapist.

The initial idea for the 20th album came to the author at the end of the work on the previous volume ("The Red Sea Sharks", 1958): the plot would be about a crime, with the main character being Nestor, the steadfast butler of the Moulinsart Castle. However, the more Hergé thought about it, the less he liked it. At the same time, another thought came to him, which he described in a few words: "Tibetan wisdom - lamas - yeti" (the record is preserved in the archives - as is the mention that about 20 years earlier Hergé had already considered the idea of a "Tibetan" adventure). This seemed fruitful enough to the author. It remained to find a compelling reason to send his characters to Tibet. The first to come to the rescue was Tournesol: indeed, why wouldn't the restless professor want to find the yeti and thus uncover another scientific mystery? For this, he could well travel to Tibet - and of course, his friends would follow him. However, almost immediately Hergé dismissed this idea as completely unviable: Tournesol was too materialistic, too "mathematical" to be the main driver of the story, which the author saw not as an ordinary adventure, but rather as a kind of spiritual quest, an initiation. And it was then that Hergé remembered Chang, the character from "The Blue Lotus"! The seed of the idea had sprouted, and the rest was a matter of technique: meticulous preparatory work began.

The main sources of inspiration for Hergé were the writings of Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969), a French opera singer and tireless researcher of Tibet; accounts of the first Europeans, conquerors of Himalayan peaks - Edmund Hillary (Mount Everest) and Maurice Herzog (Annapurna), as well as the works of Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001), one of the pillars (and the actual creator) of cryptozoology. Hergé deemed it necessary to meet both Herzog and Heuvelmans in person, and these meetings only strengthened the author's belief in the correctness of the chosen plot. Incidentally, both of them had no doubt about the existence of the yeti: Herzog insisted that he had seen footprints in the snow that could not belong to any known living creatures.

"Tintin in Tibet" stands out in Hergé's work. Almost all Tintinologists consider this album the best. It solidified Hergé's status as one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, as evidenced by the ongoing stream of articles, studies, dissertations, philosophical treatises, parodies, and pamphlets (how could we do without them!) dedicated to various aspects of the series, even now, 40 years after the death of Georges Remi. "Tintin in Tibet" is an absolutely intimate, smooth album. It is almost a joke to say that it doesn't even have a conflict; moreover - not a single negative character! The number of characters is kept to a minimum. In the center of the narrative are three - Tintin, the captain, and Milou. For the first time in many years, we do not see the Duponts in the pages. Tournesol's appearances can be counted on one's fingers. There are almost no references to previous albums and familiar characters beloved by Hergé (except for the ever-present voice of Bianca Castafiore still carrying the eternal "Aria with Jewels" around the neighborhood). Nothing - only the dazzling whiteness of the vast snows of Tibet, in which the explorers (given the drastic changes in the author's personal life) see an allegory of a "clean slate", a new beginning. In other words, "Tintin in Tibet" is an initiation album, an immersion album (primarily, into oneself). Did Captain Haddock, for example, know that within him "lives a faith capable of moving mountains"?