Corto Maltese: Le Elevetiche Rosa Alchemica - Hugo Pratt

We're more used to see Corto Maltese deal with mysticism in the context of African or Asian ceremonies and dark voodoo rituals. There's another stream of European mysticism to be found in (of all places) Switzerland in Le Elevetiche Rosa Alchemica. The manner in which Corto is drawn into this world is very much like that of a hallucinogenic trip, and it's a very trippy experience that takes up the majority of the album.

Corto accompanies old friend Professor Jeremiah Steiner to Montagnola in the canton of Tessin, Switzerland. He's as interested as Steiner in a conference being held by Herman Hesse on esoterica and alchemy. Arriving at their destination, they are met by a strange ambiguous figure of indeterminate age, who looks 10 but claims to be either 4 or 730, who introduces themselves as Klingsor or Hermann Hesse. They are in a strange place all right, but it's about to get even stranger. Soon Corto is conversing with images of medieval sages on the wall about Swiss mages and the history of Klingsor, Parsifal and the flowermaidens from von Eschenbach to Wagner.

In another dream state in the aptly named Pensione Morfeo, Corto encounters a scarecrow in a field of sunflowers and is tasked with finding La Rosa del Peccato the Rose of Thuringia, the Alchemical Rose. As a Parsifal figure he encounters Kundry, Death and converses with ravens here rather than the more typical seagulls of a Corto Maltese 'experience'. He meets an ogre who is to be the dreamt monster of King Kong, dancing skeletons and medieval demons, all the while seeking entrance to a castle in search of the Holy Grail, the key to mythology and divinity known as the Alchemical Rose. He even faces an infernal trial that includes Joan of Arc, Cain, Judas Iscariot, Dick Turpin and his old enemy Rasputin on the jury.


As Klingsor observes, what had started as a magic fable full of spiritual beauty and knightly heroism has been lost to a vulgar exchange between Corto and a gorilla. That just about sets the tone of this adventure, as is often the case in Pratt's world of Corto Maltese, blending esoterica, the arcane, voodoo rituals, Asian mysticism, secret societies, romance, war, history and mythology with romance and adventure, slipping here into hallucinogenic absurdity with some tongue-in-cheek humour. Pratt also clearly enjoys the freedom to  depict this strange dream environment, the art having a certain looseness, presenting the dream reality not as something grand and imposing, but fluid and understated.


Reading notes:  Le Elevetiche Rosa Alchemica by Hugo Pratt (1980). Original black and white edition, Italian language published by Rizzoli-Lezard. Read from Kindle eBook edition.

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