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How To Dream Over a Map (Adventure Tales as Constellations, or James Oliver Curwood and Hugo Pratt as producers of «objet imaginaires»Sixth Clipping)
Adventure novels bestow upon any reader the chance to call forth or create constellations of words and images which are like Pratt’s watercolors—maps to be contemplated—imaginative devices spawning images, associations and meanings—so that reading adventure tales and beholding pictures or illustrated dustwrappers, as well as to read poetry, are experiences going well beyond the enjoyment of craftily told yarns or artfully executed drawings—like staring into a catoptromantic mirror to open underworld gateways, or dreaming over a map, as Hugo Pratt declared:
«Poi mi è cara un’altra cosa delle carte geografiche, che, a parte il fatto di farti sognare, sono anche poetiche; tanti scrittori, Salgari ad esempio, hanno sognato sulle carte geografiche, hanno letto libri di geografia, per parlarne poi nei loro racconti: la cosa più bella di uno scrittore di romanzi d’avventura è di morire trafitto, come dice Alberto Ongaro, da meridiani e paralleli sul tavolo di lavoro. Io metto sempre la geografia; i miei uomini, i miei personaggi camminano sempre sulle mappe».
More radically, Walter Benjamin once wrote,
«People whose imagination does not wake at the perusal of such a text [the reference here is to «the handy, minutely detailed, and durable map» of Paris, the Plan Taride], people who would not rather dream of their Paris experiences over a map than over photos or travel notes, are beyond help».
Quotations, in order of appearance, are from the following books…
Hugo Pratt, a cura di Vincenzo Mollica e Mauro Paganelli, Montepulciano (SI), Editori del Grifo, 1980, pp. 46-47.
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London (England),
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999, [C1a,4] p. 85.
All were running ankle-deep among rustling & crackling fallen leaves…
Hugo Pratt, a cura di Vincenzo Mollica e Mauro Paganelli, Montepulciano (SI), Editori del Grifo, 1980, pp. 46-47.
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London (England),
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999, [C1a,4] p. 85.
All were running ankle-deep among rustling & crackling fallen leaves…