{"id":6097,"date":"2009-09-17T02:55:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T01:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=6097"},"modified":"2019-06-05T03:12:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T02:12:27","slug":"la-route-darmilia-by-schuiten-peeters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2009\/09\/17\/la-route-darmilia-by-schuiten-peeters\/","title":{"rendered":"La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"armilia1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Ferdinand and Hella look down on the skyscrapers of Br\u00fcsel.<\/em><\/p>\n

La route d’Armilia<\/em> (1988) by Fran\u00e7ois Schuiten and Beno\u00eet Peeters is the next substantial story in the Cit\u00e9s Obscures series after La Tour<\/em>; there was also a book about transportation in the Obscure World, L’Encyclop\u00e9die des transports pr\u00e9sents et \u00e0 venir<\/em>, published the same year. La route d’Armilia<\/em> is the book where Schuiten and Peeters’ Jules Verne influence comes to the fore, with the story of a young boy whose name is derived from Verne characters, Ferdinand Robur Hatteras, undertaking an airship journey to Armilia at the Obscure World’s northern pole. As with the earlier L’archivist<\/em>, this is mainly an excuse for Schuiten to demonstrate his prodigious architectural invention and draughtsmanship, although the story this time is more of a piece. The journey takes us from the city of Mylos\u2014a dismal place of factories, chimneys and smoke, like one of the polluted cities of the early Industrial Revolution\u2014over the cities of Porrentruy, Mukha, Br\u00fcsel, Bayreuth, Calvani, Genova and K\u00f8benhavn. Each city is substantially different from the last, and one of the pleasures is seeing what the next stop along the way will be like.<\/p>\n

\"armilia2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

left: the airship passes through the canyon streets of Porrentruy; right: in Br\u00fcsel a woman hangs perilously from a ledge. Acrobatics or accident, we never discover which.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>The story itself seems rather slight at first, like a Verne tale for children, with the airship crossing desert regions, ocean and ice fields, observing various spectacles along the way. Ferdinand has been given the task of conveying a special code to Armilia which will help correct some machinery there whose operation somehow affects the whole of the Obscure World and whose nature is only revealed near the end. Why a small boy is given this important task is one of a number of conundrums in an ostensibly light narrative which only reveals its truer, darker nature at the conclusion. As with some of the other stories in this series, to say more would be to spoil it for would-be readers. During the journey Ferdinand discovers a girl, Hella, who has managed to stow herself away on the airship, a detail which reinforces the children’s story aspect, as well as the Verne-like narrative.<\/p>\n

\"armilia3.jpg\"<\/p>\n

left: the Winsor McCay-like pleasure city of K\u00f8benhavn; right: Mount Gla\u00ebver.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tempting as it is to see this story as a comment on adventure tales, it’s the travelogue quality which is the most important for the artist, and Schuiten fills his pages with stunning views of the cities. Many of these pictures are so beguiling you immediately want to know more about the places they depict, although it’s a shame for me that the city of Calvani (possibly named in homage to Italo Calvino) is only glimpsed through a window. Schuiten has a fondness for greenhouses and terrariums, and it’s no surprise that Laeken in Brussels contains a splendid example of the former<\/a>. Calvani is a city of elegant greenhouses built to skyscraper proportions, and while we might not enjoy a decent view of the city in this story a whole page is devoted to Mount Gla\u00ebver, a peak in a waste of snow and ice whose summit is capped with glass spires enclosing trees and other vegetation. By this point in their books, Schuiten and Peeters resist the temptation to go into too much detail about these enigmatic structures, and they leave them all the more fascinating as a result.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The fantastic art archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters<\/a>
\n\u2022 La fi\u00e8vre d\u2019Urbicande by Schuiten & Peeters<\/a>
\n\u2022 Les Murailles de Samaris by Schuiten & Peeters<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Fran\u00e7ois Schuiten<\/a>
\n\u2022 Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls<\/a>
\n\u2022 Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Hetzel editions of Jules Verne<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ferdinand and Hella look down on the skyscrapers of Br\u00fcsel. La route d’Armilia (1988) by Fran\u00e7ois Schuiten and Beno\u00eet Peeters is the next substantial story in the Cit\u00e9s Obscures series after La Tour; there was also a book about transportation in the Obscure World, L’Encyclop\u00e9die des transports pr\u00e9sents et \u00e0 venir, published the same year. … Continue reading “La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,2,42,51,9,4,21,48,20],"tags":[712,710,407,715,349,1663,717],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-books","category-cities","category-comics","category-design","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","category-science-fiction","tag-benoit-peeters","tag-francois-schuiten","tag-italo-calvino","tag-jules-verne","tag-paul-delvaux","tag-raoul-servais","tag-winsor-mccay"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-1Al","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}