WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #345 - Culture, Reading Jacques Tardi, 20 years old in May 1871 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A beautiful summary of black humor in homage to the Communards. A comic
without bubbles, but very sparkling. All the art of suggestion by
Jacques Tardi! ---- We opted for the blackbird, but these crows have
beaks! A winged hourglass, held by a smiling reaper, mocking crows...
But where are we? ---- At Père-Lachaise, not this site that millions of
tourists visit every year, but these places that Jacques Tardi knows
very well. Many times he visited this Père Lachaise with his pen, during
his drawings in the company of his fanciful characters from the
burlesque adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec.

He loves this time at the end of the 19th century. This disastrous
wandering, this time leads a emaciated old man, at the end of his life,
for a last singular tribute to an emblematic place in the Père-Lachaise
cemetery.

A sort of ultimate homage or ultimate outrage! It is only in the last
plates that the purpose of this last meditation will be revealed to us.

We of course all think of this emblematic place, the Mur des Fédérés;
well no! Jacques Tardi guides our steps towards Avenue de la Chapelle.
This is where the imposing mausoleum of Adolphe Thiers stands.

It is in this place that he orders an improbable posthumous meeting
between his character, twenty years old during the bloody repression of
the Communards, and Adolphe.

His character undertakes a final journey to address the executioner of
the Commune of 1871, a final gesture of rage.

How can we forget the terrible battles of Bloody Week and its massacres
ordered by Thiers?

His character saw all these men, women and children, shot, buried in the
common grave, that of common mortals. He has encountered some of them
and some, he cannot erase them from his memory in the face of this
insolent monument.

Tardi's black and white line is powerful. No frills, the drawing is
precise. The sobriety fits perfectly with the place, contrasting with
the mischievous eyes of Death and the mocking crows. Humor and irony
emerge from his angry pencil.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Jacques Tardi, 20 years old in May 1871, Martin De Halleux, 19.90 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Jacques-Tardi-20-ans-en-mai-1871
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