Tintin in Tibet () is the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from September 1958 to November 1959 in Tintin magazine and published as a book in 1960. Hergé considered it his favourite Tintin adventure and an emotional effort, as he created it while suffering from traumatic nightmares and a personal conflict while deciding to leave his wife of three decades for a younger woman. The story tells of the young reporter Tintin in search of his friend Chang Chong-Chen, who the authorities claim has died in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Convinced that Chang has survived and accompanied only by Snowy, Captain Haddock and the Sherpa guide Tharkey, Tintin crosses the Himalayas to the plateau of Tibet, along the way encountering the mysterious Yeti.
Following The Red Sea Sharks (1958) and its large number of characters, Tintin in Tibet differs from other stories in the series in that it features only a few familiar characters and is also Hergé's only adventure not to pit Tintin against an antagonist. Themes in Hergé's story include extrasensory perception, the mysticism of Tibetan Buddhism, and friendship. Translated into 32 languages, Tintin in Tibet was widely acclaimed by critics and is generally considered to be Hergé's finest work; it has also been praised by the Dalai Lama, who awarded it the Light of Truth Award. The story was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion; the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. Tintin in Tibet was adapted for the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin, the 1992–93 BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of the Adventures, the 1996 video game of the same name, and the 2005–06 Young Vic musical Hergé's Adventures of Tintin; it was also prominently featured in the 2003 documentary Tintin and I and has been the subject of a museum exhibition.
Synopsis While on holiday at a resort in the French Alps with Snowy and Captain Haddock, Tintin reads about a plane crash in the Gosain Than Massif in the Himalayas of Tibet. He then has a vision of his friend Chang Chong-Chen, badly injured and calling for help from the wreckage of the crashed plane. Convinced of Chang's survival, Tintin flies to Kathmandu, via Delhi, with Snowy and a skeptical Captain Haddock. They hire a Sherpa named Tharkey and, accompanied by porters, travel overland from Nepal towards the crash site.
The porters abandon the group in fear when mysterious tracks are found, while Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey go on and eventually reach the crash site. Tintin sets off with Snowy to trace Chang's steps, and finds a cave where Chang has carved his name on a rock. On leaving the cave, he encounters a snowstorm and glimpses what seems to be a human silhouette. Tharkey believes that Tintin saw the Yeti and convinces him to abandon his friend and return with him to Nepal, since the area is too large to search. Tintin spots a scarf on a cliff face, concludes Chang is nearby, and continues with only the Captain. While attempting to scale a cliff face, Haddock slips and hangs out of reach, imperilling Tintin, who is tied to him. He tells Tintin to cut the rope to save himself, but Tintin refuses. Haddock tries to cut it himself, but drops his knife, alerting Tharkey, who has returned in time to rescue them. They try to camp for the night but lose their tent and must trek onwards, unable to sleep lest they freeze, arriving within sight of the Buddhist monastery of Khor-Biyong before being caught in an avalanche.
Blessed Lightning, a monk at the monastery, has a vision of Tintin, Snowy, Haddock, and Tharkey in danger. Tintin regains consciousness and, too weak to walk, gives Snowy a note to deliver. Snowy runs to the monastery, loses the message, but is recognised as the dog from Blessed Lightning's vision. Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey regain consciousness in the monastery and are brought before the Grand Abbot. The Abbot tells Tintin to abandon his quest, but Blessed Lightning has another vision, through which Tintin learns that Chang is still alive inside a mountain cave at the Horn of the Yak—and that the Yeti is also there. Tintin and Haddock travel on to the Horn of the Yak.
They arrive at a cave. Tintin ventures inside and finds Chang, who is feverish and shaking. The Yeti suddenly appears, revealed as a large anthropoid, reacting with anger at Tintin's attempt to take Chang. As it lunges at Tintin, it grabs Tintin's camera and triggers the flash bulb, which scares the Yeti away. Chang tells Tintin that the Yeti saved his life after the crash. Upon returning to inhabited lands, the friends are surprised to be met by the Grand Abbot, who presents Tintin with a khata scarf in honour of the bravery he has shown for his friend Chang. As the party travels home, Chang muses that the Yeti is not a wild animal, but has a human soul. The Yeti sadly watches their departure from a distance.
History Background and early ideas
In October 1957, Hergé sent his publisher, Casterman, the cover of his completed nineteenth Tintin adventure, The Red Sea Sharks, and for several weeks considered plot ideas for his next story. Fondly recalling the Scouting days of his youth, his first idea was to send Tintin back to the United States, as in the third adventure, Tintin in America, to help a group of Native Americans defend their land from a large corporation that wished to drill for oil; on reflection, Hergé came to believe that retracing old ground would be a step backwards. Another idea had Tintin striving to prove that Haddock's butler Nestor was framed for a crime committed by his old employers, the Bird brothers. He dismissed this as well, but kept the idea of an adventure with no guns or violence—the only Tintin story without an antagonist. A third idea sent Tintin and Professor Calculus to a snow-covered polar region, where a stranded group of explorers need Calculus to save them from food poisoning. He abandoned this plot also, but kept the setting in a snowy environment and decided to focus, not on Calculus, but on his main character Tintin.
A collaborator of Hergé's, Jacques Van Melkebeke, had suggested in 1954 to set a story in Tibet, likely influenced by the play he adapted for Hergé in the 1940s, (Mr. Boullock's Disappearance). Bernard Heuvelmans, a cryptozoologist who had helped Hergé envision lunar exploration for the two-part Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon, had given him a copy of his book (On the Trail of Unknown Animals) in 1955, inscribing on the inside the suggestion that one day Tintin should meet the Yeti. By 1958, Hergé decided that Tibet would be the setting of Tintin's next Adventure. Initial ideas for the title were (The Cow's Snout), (The Bear's Snout), and (The Yak's Snout), all of which refer to the mountain in the latter part of the story. Although it was initially claimed that "market research" chose the title Tintin in Tibet suggesting sales would be better if the book used Tintin's name in the title, entertainment producer and author Harry Thompson suggested "the title reflected the solo nature of [Tintin's] undertaking".
Hergé's psychological problems Hergé reached a particularly traumatic period in his life and suffered a mental breakdown. In 1956, he realised that he had fallen out of love with his wife Germaine, whom he had married in 1932, and by 1958, he and Fanny Vlaminck, a colourist at Studios Hergé twenty-eight years his junior, had developed a deep mutual attraction. They began courting; Hergé's new companion lifted his morale and shared many of his interests. Germaine soon began interfering with the affair, causing Hergé to admit his desire had been to maintain a relationship with both women. When he failed to please either, he began to contemplate divorcing Germaine to marry Fanny. His Catholic upbringing and Boy Scout ethic, however, caused him to feel tremendous guilt. As he later related to interviewer Numa Sadoul: "It meant turning upside down all my values—what a shock! This was a serious moral crisis: I was married, and I loved someone else; life seemed impossible with my wife, but on the other hand I had this scout-like idea of giving my word for ever. It was a real catastrophe. I was completely torn up". During this period, Hergé had recurrent nightmares where he faced images of what he described as "the beauty and cruelty of white"—visions of white and snow that he could not explain. As he later told Sadoul: "At the time, I was going through a time of real crisis and my dreams were nearly always white dreams. And they were extremely distressing. I took note of them and remember one where I was in a kind of tower made up of a series of ramps. Dead leaves were falling and covering everything. At a particular moment, in an immaculately white alcove, a white skeleton appeared that tried to catch me. And then instantly everything around me became white".
At the advice of his former editor Raymond de Becker, Hergé travelled to Zürich to consult the Swiss psychoanalyst Franz Riklin, a student of Carl Jung, to decipher his disturbing dreams. Riklin latched on to the "quest for purity" that featured so prominently in Hergé's dreams, and ultimately in Tintin in Tibet. He told the author that he must destroy "the demon of purity" in his mind as soon as possible: "I do not want to discourage you, but you will never reach the goal of your work. It comes to one or the other: you must overcome your crisis, or continue your work. But, in your place, I would stop immediately!"
Although Hergé was tempted to abandon Tintin at Riklin's suggestion, devoting himself instead to his hobby of abstract art, he felt that doing so would be an acceptance of failure. In the end, he left his wife so that he could marry Fanny Vlaminck, and continued work on Tintin in Tibet, trusting that completing the book would exorcise the demons he felt possessed him. "It was a brave decision, and a good one", said British Tintin expert Michael Farr. "Few problems, psychological included, are solved by abandoning them". Thompson noted: "It was ironic, but not perhaps unpredictable, that faced with the moral dilemma posed by Riklin, Hergé chose to keep his Scout's word of honour to Tintin, but not to Germaine". Belgian Tintin expert Philippe Goddin summarised: "[Hergé] sought to regain a lost equilibrium, that he imposes on his hero a desire to seek purity ... considering it necessary for Tintin to go through the intimate experience of distress and loneliness ... and discover himself".
Influences In creating Tintin in Tibet, Hergé drew upon a range of influences. Setting it in the Himalayas, a snow-covered environment, followed his recurring dreams of whiteness and his need to create an adventure that "must be a solo voyage of redemption" from the "whiteness of guilt". The idea of a solo voyage led to Tintin being accompanied only by Snowy, their guide, and a reluctant Haddock—who supplies the needed counterpoint and humour.
While considering the character of Chang, absent since The Blue Lotus, Hergé thought of his artistic Chinese friend Zhang Chongren, whom he had not seen since the days of their friendship over twenty years earlier. Hergé and Zhang used to spend every Sunday together, during which Hergé learned much about Chinese culture for his work on The Blue Lotus. Later, Zhang moved back to his homeland and Hergé lost contact with his friend after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Hergé felt Chang and Tintin must be reunited, just as he hoped to see his friend again some day.