This is the third of four blogposts. For the others, see the first, the second, and the fourth.
Scenes from the cultural history of Atlantis
In this third part of my blogposts on the application of the Atlantis myth in the comic book series El Capitán Trueno, I will now address what elements of the cultural history of Atlantis have been used by Ricard Ferrándiz in his story Atlántida. Having given a brief introduction to the reception of Atlantis in post-medieval culture and a quick recapitulation of the story itself, I will now talk about how Ferrándiz’ Atlántida compares with other Atlantis fantasies through an investigation of selected elements common to such stories.
The location of Atlantis
As mentioned, the location of Atlantis in this story is not specified, beyond
that it lies in the Atlantic Ocean and that its vegetation suggests a
subtropical climate. The fact that there is an active volcano on the island
makes it tempting to point to a location near the Canary Islands (which were
not known to European sailors until the fourteenth century), although it seems
that the accuracy of this matter has been deliberately avoided by Ferrándiz.
That Atlantis is situated in the ocean with which it is onomastically linked is
not surprising, although it bears pointing out since some stories place
Atlantis in North Africa (as we shall see below), and the Mediterranean has
likewise been held as a good candidate for the location of the fabled empire. In
particular, the island of Santorini is suggested to have served as an
inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis myth, and the islanders themselves seem to
encourage this suggestion, as Santorini has restaurants, hotels and even a
bookshop carrying Atlantis in their names. However, the Atlantic Ocean is by
far the most common location of the lost continent in most of its reception
history, although there are differences of opinion as to where in the Atlantic
Ocean it can be found. Olof Rudbeck the Elder equated Atlantis with
Scandinavia, while the iconic map found in William Scott-Elliott’s Story of
Atlantis depicts the continent as stretching between the Caribbean and
Europe. Arthur Conan Doyle, in his novel The Maracot Deep (1929),
situates Atlantis in a submarine ravine in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge some days’
voyage south of the Canary Islands. The continent has even been suggested to
have changed location, as in Pezzin and Da Vita’s Topolino e l’Atlantide continente perduto, where a comet strikes Atlantis which such force that it is moved
south and becomes the modern-day continent of Antarctica. These few examples,
in short, indicate that Ferrándiz follows the general consensus of Atlantis’
reception history in placing the remnant of the continent somewhere in the
Atlantic Ocean.
Aside from the geographical location, another feature to be noted is
that in Atlántida the surviving Atlanteans have moved underground. This,
too, is a topos very common to the Atlantis stories, and it comes in
several variations. In The Maracot Deep, the surviving part of Atlantis
is buried under tons of mud on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and although
the inhabitants utilise this terrain as a hunting ground through their diving
gear, it is a world that can only be accessed temporarily, which means that in
practical terms the Arthur Conan Doyle’s Atlanteans are subterranean. In the Thorgal
comic book series, the location of Atlantis is expressly revealed in volume
26 (from 2001), Le Royaume sous le Sable (the kingdom under the sand),
where it is found under the mountains somewhere in North Africa. In this
location, Jean van Hamme possibly follows Pierre Benoit’s L’Atlantide,
who situates the surviving remnants and the descendants in the Ahaggar
Mountains of Southern Algeria. It should be noted, however, that although
Benoit has placed the Atlantean court in a system of man-made caves, and
although most of the exchanges between the protagonists and the Queen Antinea’s
retinue take place inside the mountain, the Atlanteans are able to leave their
caverns as they please, so their lives are not entirely subterranean. In Atlántida,
the subterranean life of Djad-dze and his fellow Atlanteans is on the one hand
similar to that of Benoit’s story, in that they live in caves in the mountains,
like moles, as Djad-dze himself says. On the other hand, this subterranean
lifestyle is also similar to the kind of confinement we see in The Maracot
Deep, in that Dajd-dze and his compatriots have grown so unaccustomed to
sunlight that overexposure can prove fatal – as evidenced by the dead crew
encountered by Capitán Trueno, Sigrid, and the others. What allows Djad-dze to
move about on the island – albeit in safe distance from the red men – is its
perpetual fog owing to the volcano. Consequently, although Atlántida
deals with the topos of subterranean dwellings in a manner that is
unique to the way Ferrándiz has constructed his version of Atlantis, it
nonetheless fits with established tradition.
Culture of the Atlanteans
Despite Atlantis most often being situated somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean,
most, if not all, stories of the mythic kingdom depict its culture as being
related to that of Ancient Greece or Ancient Egypt, and sometimes – as in the
case of Atlántida – a mixture of the two. This is perhaps only to be
expected, given that the oldest known textual source for the transmission of
the story is one of Plato’s dialogues, and that Plato claims that this
knowledge has been transmitted from the Egyptians. In the case of Edgar P.
Jacobs’ L’Énigme de l’Atlantide, the subterranean Atlantis – accessible
through a system of caves on one of the islands of the Azores – has continued its
culture which resembles that of Ancient Greece in its mythology, part of its clothing,
and its titles. For instance, the leader of the Atlantean air force is called aerostratego, meaning air-general, the leader is addressed as Basileus, i.e. king,
and its capital is named Poseidopolis. In the long-running story arc of the
Scandinavian The Phantom universe Mörkrets hjärta (Heart of
Darkness) written by Claes Reimerthi and drawn by Joan Boix, the prologue which
takes place in Atlantis shows architecture and ships clearly modelled on
Ancient Egypt. In Topolino e
l’Atlantide continente perduto, on
the other hand, Atlantis of 10 000 years ago resembles a Mesopotamian
culture with ziggurats and beards modelled on Assyrian and Babylonian reliefs.
Moreover, a joint Mesopotamian and Egyptian inspiration can be seen in the name
of the culture’s divinity, Ishta-Ra, combining the names of the Assyrian
goddess Ishtar with the Egyptian god Ra. In what seems to be a curious attempt
at emphasising the chronological otherness of the high-cultured Atlantis,
dinosaurs have survived and are used as domestic animals.
In Ferrándiz’ story of Capitán Trueno, the cultural affiliation of Atlantis is
somewhat more mixed and curious. Its architecture and its pantheon, judging
from what little we see of either, are both decidedly Greek, and soldiers
depicted in a flashback wear typical Greek helmets. Yet the ship encountered by
Trueno and Sigrid underway to Atlantis bears a stronger resemblance to Egyptian
ships than the triremes of Greece, and the name Djad-dze seems modelled on some
idea of Egyptian names rather than Greek names. (I would like to note that its
similarity to the contemporary Malian name Djadja, as exemplified in Aya
Nakamura’s 2018 single, could be used to connect Ferrándiz’ Atlantis with the Saharan
location of Benoit’s L’Atlantide, but this is merely a fun coincidence.)
What is curious about Ferrándiz Atlantis and its culture is not its blend of
Greek and Egyptian elements, as these are fairly well established in the
reception history of the fabled continent. What is curious, and, to my
knowledge, a novel detail, is the Atlanteans’ ability to communicate in Latin,
as this language – at least as a written language – presumably postdates the apogee
of Atlantis. Naturally, Ferrándiz has chosen Latin so as to enable a medieval
European like Trueno, presumably receiving some basic education in the
cathedral schools of Spain, to read the message and to read the volumes of
Atlantean knowledge bestowed upon the group by Djad-dze. The curious nature of
Latin being used by an Atlantean need not be unduly problematised since it
mainly serves to make the story possible, but it does open up for a lot of interesting
implications of Atlantis’ place in the storyworld of Capitán Trueno. Have the
Atlanteans managed to monitor the development of the outside world to keep up
with some of its linguistic developments, for instance?
One final point of interest with regards to the cultural affiliation of Atlantis is the so-called red men. These serve as the cultural and intellectual foils of the Atlantean empire, and they are presented as living in the stone age, eating raw meat, clothed in furs, and their appearance is reminiscent in part of the stereotypical relict Neanderthal of pulp fiction, in part of Conan the Barbarian. If the latter resemblance is more than a mere coincidence, Ferrándiz might have created a reversal of Robert E. Howard’s origin story of the Cimmerians of his story world, who were descendants of colonists from Atlantis. In Ferrándiz’ story, however, it is the Atlantean empire that has been colonised by these men of the perpetual stone age. Be that as it may, the term “hombres rojos” for this people is also noteworthy and might contain some suggestion of Ferrándiz’ inspiration. One possibility is that it is drawn from the theosophical Atlantis mythology, as exemplified by, but not unique to, William Scott-Elliot, where the red men were degenerate Atlanteans. Another possibility is that they are meant to invoke the Native Americans, suggesting perhaps that Atlantis once connected Europe and America, and that the stone age appearance of these red men provides another indicator of the antiquity of Atlantean cataclysm. The idea of contact between Atlantis as Native American cultures is far from new to Ferrándiz’ story. For instance, in L’Énigme de l’Atlantide, Edgar P. Jacobs has imagined a neighbouring subterranean culture whose technological level is inferior to that of Atlantis, but which is modelled on the apogees of the Meso-American cultures of the Maya and the Aztecs. There are, of course, other possible sources for Férrandiz’ hombres rojos, but they do nonetheless seem to fit with one of the tropes of the reception of Atlantis in popular culture, namely the counterpart to the high culture of the Atlanteans, be that culture Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian or a conglomerate of all.
Pre-war ritual of the neighbouring civilization to the Atlanteans
From Edgar P. Jacobs’ L’Énigme de l’Atlantide
Despite the obviously high technological level of the underground civilisation based on the Maya culture, they nonetheless serve as the barbarian foil to the even more technologically advanced Atlanteans in Edgar P. Jacobs' L’Énigme de l’Atlantide
The red men, hombres rojos, serving as the technological foil to Ferrándiz' Atlanteans
Tecnhological advancement
Perhaps the most famous common denominator of all Atlantis fantasies is its culture’s high technological level. In some cases, the height of this technology level is relative to other contemporary cultures, meaning that Atlantis is a culture of its time. An example of this can be seen in Topolino e l’Atlantide continente perduto, where the architectural and astronomical achievements on the one hand antedates the Mesopotamian cultures which inspired it by millennia, but where the anachronisms do not extend to modern technology. In other cases, the technological level of Atlantis is imagined to have been higher than even the technology of the twentieth century. This latter group can be further divided into stories where this high level of technology was reached already prior to the cataclysm, and stories where the high technological level is reached after the cataclysm has happened.
n the case of Atlantis in the storyworld of Capitán Trueno, its technological and scientific advancement is an interesting case when seen in comparison with other Atlantis fantasies. There are no inventions that appear wildly and even ludicrously anachronistic, neither with regards to the pre-classical origin of Atlantean history or the twelfth-century setting of the story. The one item that is notable for its sophistication are the explosives, which appear to be far more volatile yet far more controllable than anything known from the Middle Ages, resembling nitro-glycerine rather than the grenades that would be produced centuries later. In other words, these explosives seem impossibly out of place and time in the twelfth century. On the other hand, as the manufacture of these explosives is not explained, the disbelief is suspended, and the technology behind it appears advanced yet not necessarily far-fetched. Another item worth noting is the invention of a ventilation system designed to enable the mole-like subterranean continuation of the Atlantean culture. This is also an element found in other Atlantis fantasies where the surviving Atlanteans are trapped underground, as in the case of The Maracot Deep.
One final technological detail worth mentioning is interesting because it at first appears almost mundane, but which really points to the advancement of the Atlantean culture in Ferrándiz’ version. This is the invention of the codex, which is a ubiquitous feature in Djad-dze’s library. By making the codex the primary form of textual transmission in the Atlantean culture, Ferrándiz has both made this culture centuries ahead of its contemporaries of the classical era – supposing that the invention of the codex either antedated or followed shortly after the cataclysm – and also on the level of the medieval setting of the story. While scrolls also have an important part in Atlantean textual culture, a flashback during Djad-dze’s recounting of the survival of the Atlanteans shows that already during its early stage of survival, Atlantis had made good use of the codex. This is significant, as the invention of the codex in the classical world appears to be in the first century CE, with the codex taking over the importance of the scroll by the early seventh century. While the Atlantean codex of Atlántida is not as eye-catchingly advanced as the explosives, or as the sundry machines of other Atlantis fantasies, to a historian of text such as myself, the codex remains the most interesting invention of Ferrándiz’ Atlantis, and also a sublimely elegant way of signalling how the technology of Atlantis has advanced relative to its contemporaries of the classical era but without reaching an impossibly advanced level.
In the next and final blogpost in this series, I will summarise some of my reflections on Ferrándiz' Atlántida.
