CORTO MALTESE & THE CELTS, ENJOYING A SPECIAL DAY

Today is The Grandma's birthday and the weather has wanted to give her a lovely rainy day, perhaps because it knows that The Grandma really likes these rainy and introspective days, fantastic for a good read and good company.

She will have the best company this afternoon when Claire Fontaine and Joseph de Ca'th Lon, who is some days in Barcelona, come to see her and all together enjoy the French football cup final, a very important match for the Northern Star, and she will have a good read before and after accompanied by Corto Maltese and his Celtic adventures.

Celtic Tales (or The Celts) is a volume of comics that brings together six adventures of Corto Maltese, a Maltese sailor. These stories were written and drawn by the Italian comic book creator Hugo Pratt, and published for the first time between 1971 and 1972 in the French comic magazine Pif Gadget. They take place in Europe, during World War I, between 1917 and 1918. The stories are:

-The Angel in the Window to the Orient

-Under the Flag of Gold

-Concerto in O Minor for Harp and Nitroglycerin

-A Midwinter Morning’s Dream -Côtes de Nuit and Picardy Roses

-Burlesque Between Zuydcoote and Bray-Dunes

Hugo Pratt has produced numerous additional drawings of the characters and places relating to the stories in this album, as he did with other episodes of the series. Here, for example, he drew different places in Ireland and historical or legendary characters.

Among the many covers existing for Celtic Tales, one of them shows a poem in which Corto Maltese thanks different characters, mostly from Celtic legends:

-Merlin, the enchanter or wizard featured in Arthurian legend (like the followings three characters);

-Morgan le Fay and Viviane the Lady of the Lake;

-King Arthur; 

-Oberon (king of the fairies) and Puck;

-The Irish leprechauns; 

-The Cornish Pixies;

-The Scottish boggles;

-The Breton Korrigans; 

-The Welsh miners, Wales being renowned for its coal industry;

-The French elves;

-The Druids of Folle Pensée (name of a locality in the Paimpont forest);

-The little folk of the forest of Brocéliande;

-The royal ravens of Stonehenge;

-W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet; 

-And the harp of the wind somewhere to the north.

Hugo Pratt won the Prix Saint-Michel, for "Best Realistic Writing" in 1977, for the story A Midwinter Morning's Dream.

Twenty years after the death of Hugo Pratt, his ex-assistant Lele Vianello, another Italian comic book creator, gave him a tribute album. Entitled Twenty after... Homage to Hugo Pratt, it includes drawings inspired by the story A Midwinter Morning’s Dream, where Corto and characters from Celtic legends await Pratt on the day of his death to welcome him into their world.

More information: The Slings & Arrows

I haven't decided the date of my death yet.

Corto Maltese