The Adventures of Tintin. The Jewels of Castafiore

One fine spring day, Tintin, who is visiting Captain Haddock, receives a letter from Bianca Castafiore. The opera diva writes that she is tired of the hustle and bustle and has decided to take a little rest... And not just anywhere, but in Moulinsart! Haddock is horrified: he is ready to run away from his own home, just to avoid meeting "this walking cyclone". But then His Majesty Chance intervenes, and the captain finds himself confined to a wheelchair for two weeks. With a heavy heart, he is forced to tolerate the loud-mouthed guest, her retinue and the ubiquitous journalists who scurry around the castle in search of cheap sensations. And the sensations are not long in coming: first, a story appears in the press about the engagement of the “Milanese nightingale” and the “retired admiral Haddock”, and then a theft occurs in the house - a priceless emerald, given to Castafiore by Maharaja Gopal, disappears...

The twenty-first volume of The Adventures of Tintin began publication in Tintin magazine in July 1961 and was completed in September 1962; the album version was released in 1963. For the first time in Hergé's work, the story barely goes beyond the territory of Moulinsart and its environs, replacing the adventure plot that had been unchanged for the previous 20 albums with the traditional classic detective story plot of a "crime in a confined space". Tintin scholars are unanimous: among other things, this testifies to the author's serious physical and psychological fatigue (which Hergé himself confirms in one of his interviews) and his desire for "peace and quiet", the main bearer of which in the book is Captain Haddock. But, as we know, if the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed goes to the mountain - which is what happened to the unfortunate captain, who instead of the desired "peace and quiet" received - literally with home delivery! - a "walking cyclone" in the form of Bianca Castafiore with a retinue consisting of a costume designer, an accompanist and... a parrot!

However, if you dig a little deeper, the genre of "Jewels..." is more correctly defined differently: being a detective story in form, it is essentially a comedy of total mutual misunderstanding. Or not even a comedy, but a farce! While working on the translation, I kept recalling the title of an old album by the group "Nautilus Pompilius": "Ni komom ni kabelnost". And indeed, the level of "ni komom ni kabelnost" in this album is off the charts: here, no one understands anyone. More precisely, everyone understands something other than (or not quite) what is actually happening... As one of the researchers said, "in this album, everything that is true is implicit, and everything that is obvious is not true." Hergé peppered the plot with false trails, which are picked up not only by Tintin, who once again took on the functions of Sherlock Holmes, but also by the reader. Although, as befits any self-respecting author of detective stories, Hergé literally immediately gives the attentive reader a key clue. However, see below about this, so as not to start with spoilers!

Hergé's characteristic attention to world events also played a significant role in the choice of subject: in 1960, the glossy press was savoring the details of the theft of Sophia Loren's jewels and the paparazzi's attack on the private life of Maria Callas.

It remains to add that, despite the enthusiastic reception of critics and intellectuals of all stripes (philosophers, historians, linguists, comics scholars, psychologists, psychotherapists...), who consider "The Jewels of Castafiore" an absolute and indisputable masterpiece, the general public received the album with less enthusiasm: the absence of the usual (especially for young readers) adventurous component, with which most people associated the series, had an effect. Indeed, this is the most unusual, the most complex in structure and text, the most, if you like, "adult" volume of "The Adventures of Tintin", requiring many readings to appreciate it in its entirety.

Recommended reader age: 7+

Author: Hergé
Artist: Herge
Translation: Mikhail Khachaturov
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Melik-Pashayev
Cover type: Hardcover
Dimensions: 290 × 217 × 10 mm
ISBN: 978-5-00041-612-9
Series: The Adventures of Tintin