The Dark Cities of Peeters and Schuiten
Prof.
Dr. Roberto Elísio dos Santos[1]
The Cuban-Italian writer (1923-1985) presents cities with feminine names, all of which were mentioned by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. Because the places are invisible, they cannot be found. Thus, over the millennia, there are those that are known worldwide, those that are unknown and forgotten (found only by diligent archaeologists), grandiose in their heyday and buried under earth and sand in their old age. There are also mythical ones told in fictional texts based on the creative imagination of poets and novelists, such as Atlantis and El Dorado.
The cities imagined by the French researcher and screenwriter Benoît Peeters and the Belgian cartoonist François Schuiten, who uses the light-line style, have retro-futuristic architecture, with glass buildings, ramps, staircases and, as in Brentano's L'ombre d'un homme, furniture based on close-up photographs of flowers and plants taken by German photographer and sculptor Karl Blossfeldt, whose name was simplified to designate the city where the story takes place. The helicopters, streetcars and trains follow the same shape, mixing old and modern elements. It is through this environment that the man whose shadow is transformed wanders. Each story of the series Les cités obscures focuses on sick and melancholic men who, like sleepwalkers or “soulless drunks”, seem to wander through dreamlike, nightmarish, maze places that hide secrets. The women, in turn, are, at the same time, sensual, courageous and impetuous, like Sarah, Sofia and Milena, among many others.
The inspiration for Les
murailles de Samaris may have been the historic walled city of Samaria,
located in the present-day Cisjordania (West Bank). Today, all that remains are
ruins, columns, wide stone-paved paths and intact rustic housing. In the album,
it is presented as “an architecture that seemed to blend together”, with tall
buildings and palatial and religious constructions, but “preserving traces of
the civilizations it sheltered” over time. One can also observe the combination
of components from different eras in the costumes worn by the characters. It is
there that a flâneur seeks to discover the secrets of the place, while
observing alleys and their inhabitants, in order to write a report for the
rulers of the imaginary metropolis of Xhystos. As he walks, he notices the
“bizarreness” of the windows and doors that are always closed, the absence of
children and the impression that the buildings changed location every time.
In La fièvre
d’Urbicande, on the other hand, the setting is a city designed entirely in
straight lines. The narrative begins with a petition written by the “urbictect”
Eugen Robick, who dislikes the baroque and art nouveau style of Xhystos and
other places – the chapter numbers, for instance, have a constructivist and
modern design. The character’s goal is to build a third bridge between the
north and south, separated by a river, so that his architectural project can be
completed and to create aesthetic harmony. However, the authorities do not want
the two banks to be joined for xenophobic, political and social reasons. The
change begins when the protagonist is given a cube made of an unknown material
(ore?) that grows “like a plant” and ends up connecting the two sectors. At
first, the situation is seen as a threat, especially by a conservative
politician. After the union, the structure allows the inhabitants to meet and
exchange, and they organize parties. The expansion of the building continues
until it disappears into the sky, which forces the creation of a connection
between the two Spaces, the third bridge.
La Tour, like La fièvre d’Urbicande, is printed in
black and white, except for painted images and the final part, which takes
place outside the Tower. The protagonist, Giovanni Battista, is a conservator –
his mission is to keep the building intact and repair the walls when the stones
become loose. Waiting in vain for an inspector to appear, he decides to
descend. To do so, he builds a kind of parachute that breaks apart and causes
him to fall to a city, where he is given the mission of reconnoitring (like the
protagonist of Les murailles de Samaris) and reaching the top. He
accepts the task and sets off, taking the young Milena with him. The costumes
are reminiscent of the Renaissance, but the buildings indicate that its
beginnings were built ages ago. Each floor has a different architectural style,
as do the objects and machines. The reason for erecting this monumental work,
inspired by Babel, is justified by the desire to “touch God with one’s own
hands”. It is also worth highlighting the use of fonts that resemble Roman
characters carved into stones, debris or remains of columns that appear at the
beginning of each chapter, synthesizing the album’s next narrative.
Other cities, imaginary
or not, are the space of the next albums. Even existing ones, such as Brussels
and Paris, are not as they are known, but shown in different ways, to the point
that only some elements are recognizable, for example the Eiffel Tower
surrounded by circular structures, as seen in L'ombre d'un homme.
References
CALVINO, Italo.
As cidades invisíveis. São Paulo:
Folha de S. Paulo, 2003.
PEETERS, Benoît; SCHUITEN, François. L’ombre dun homme. Bruxelles: Casterman, 1999.
PEETERS, Benoît; SCHUITEN, François Les Murailles de Samaris. Bruxelles: Casterman, 2007.
PEETERS, Benoît; SCHUITEN, François. A febre de Urbicanda. Lisboa: Edições 70, 1987.
PEETERS, Benoît; SCHUITEN, François. A Torre. Lisboa: Edições 70, 2019.
[1] Jornalista, professor
aposentado do Programa de Pós-graduação da Universidade Municipal de São
Caetano do Sul (USCS), livre docente em Comunicação pelo CJE/ECA-USP e vice
coordenador do Observatório de Histórias em Quadrinhos da ECA-USP.
