Charismatic and charming comic book hero and alter ego of his creator Hugo Pratt enchanted numerous admirers of the ninth art. Magical and real, brutal and tender, a maestro on the fine line between reality and dreams. A dreamer with open eyes. A visionary and an opponent of a repressive society.
Who is Corto Maltese?
The myth of the irresistible sailor in the charismatic uniform of iconographic efficiency begins in the multicultural cauldron of the port of Genoa. A few months ago, Palazzo Ducale hosted the exhibition Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas by the curator Patrizia Zanotti, which I visited for romantically crazy reasons.
Take a deep breath of the tobacco smell and join me on a spacious journey in Corto Maltese style, in an intimate ballad with coffee, cigarettes, rum and tango.
Coffee with Corto Maltese
He ordered two espressos.
We were sitting in front of ordinary town cafe on a small town’s square, surrounded by the chatter of citizens and the cooing of town pigeons. I don’t like espresso because it is too short, too intense and too bitter.
I thought you were drinking real coffee, he looked at me in amazement from under the peak of his sailor’s cap. I wanted to tell him that it’s not about the coffee at all, but his company and our conversation, with or without espresso, anywhere and anytime, about anything, but I’m an insignificant unnamed street girl, and he’s a world-class sailor, Captain Corto Maltese. A classy sailor with fast fists and an even faster tongue, who realized in his early childhood that he didn’t have a destiny line on his palm and cut it with a razor – himself. A rebel with a reason, a brazen swindler of unrefined words, unbridled pride and wild charm.
Hey sailor. Thank you for your time, I smiled at the pretentious swabbie.
He lifted the collar of his black coat, adjusted the pink scarf around his neck, stretched out his long legs in off-white trousers and crossed them. Calm and serene as the focus of a tornado, he lit a cigarette and offered me a fire. A few moments too late, as my dose of slow poison was already burning. He stared past me into the distance, towards the open sea. A cloudy bottle of rum settled on the table.
The town’s cacophony died down, from somewhere tango melodies floated to the surface.
The beginnings of Corto Maltese in Genoa
In the 1960s, the Genoese businessman Florenzo Ivaldi decided to realize his dream – to create a comics magazine in which he would publish the artist he most admired. No one will ever know what exactly Ivaldi and Pratt talked about in Venice in 1967, but the fact is that in the same year Hugo Pratt moved to Genoa and began publishing in the comics magazine Sgt. Kirk.
For this occasion, he created a novelty, the comic story Ballad of the Salt Sea. He opened the way for Corto Maltese who for the next 28 years travelled the continents and oceans, meeting friends and enemies, and most of all himself, stopping only in search of Atlantis.
When Hugo Pratt created Corto, he already had a mile of western comics behind him, different styles of visualization and storytelling, but the sailor is his most famous character, a pop culture icon that has its own canon and loyal fan base. Why?
Because of his stories about idealists, revolutionaries, adventurous women and extraordinary men and their relationships forged through adventures around the world. The Caribbean, the Amazon, Asia, Venice, Normandy, Stonehenge, Africa… and their link, Captain Corto Maltese.
Hugo Pratt was a wide-eyed dreamer, a tireless and eternal seeker for his own, elusive and undefined place under the sun … which he faithfully portrayed in Corto Maltese and other characters in complex stories with lavish historical embellishments.
The Ballad of the Salt Sea
In The Ballad of the Salt Sea (1967) we meet convincing strong protagonists. Corto Maltese does not stand out, but his character traits and values are indicated, which will develop over the years to world fame and the admiration of a fan base of readers. Our sailor is objective in his and other people’s whirlwinds of emotions, distant and phlegmatic with his relaxed wit.
His understanding of the world has a cosmopolitan logic, so as a precisely profiled character and catalyst of storytelling, he rises above human stupidity.
Perhaps what has pushed generations of readers into his complex adventures is precisely the idea of an authentic hero who faces his own weaknesses and fears and the individual experience of adventures as a challenge to himself to maintain the high level of values he believes in.
His adventures are not always completely successful, after personal losses we observe the hero’s skeptical view of his own (non)achievements and intimate dissatisfaction with the resolution of the situation, which leads him to melancholy, even resignation and bitter cynicism.
Women and Corto Maltese
We meet them through his, Corto’s (Pratt’s) eyes, with respect, without vulgarity and explicitness. He is interested in charismatic individualists with strong characters, dominant and proactive, mysterious and warm.
His relationships with women are portrayed as platonic, of limited duration, with gentle hints of teenage angst, (although he is a master at masking his emotions), while adventures call him forward before he can even allow himself deeper connections.
He runs away from deep emotions and often shoots himself in the knee in important conversations with women. His many female friends are undoubtedly his inspiration because their energy generates thoughts that make his head spin.
But Sailor Corto Maltese must keep his dignity, right?
Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas
The exhibition consists of more than 200 original works, including drawings, watercolors, very rare comic panels and original multivision. It’s curated by Patrizia Zanotti, Hugo Pratt’s long-time coworker and assistant, and the only woman Corto Maltese was never able to say goodbye to.
If you ever have the chance, immerse yourself in the real and fictional journeys of Corto Maltese and Hugo Pratt, filled with sails, seas and mysterious horizons. Irresistible, magical and enchanting. With the smell of salt.
May the wind be in your sails, Captain Corto Maltese
The rum was gone. Also, his words and mine. I smiled at the ashtray full of our stubs.
Grazie, Corto. I sighed and got ready to leave, although I would prefer to remain forever trapped in time in front of the town’s cafe, with him, in the salty smell of a dirty industrial town. Arrivederci.
Ciao. He blew away the smoke. I wasn’t sure if my balance would keep me on my feet, or if I’d crawl into his arms, soft-kneed and giddy from tango tunes, deadly nicotine, and bittersweet rum, like a stray street cat. I would love to curl up in a ball and (finally) fall asleep. At least his upper arm would probably be useful for support and a walk to the station. But Captain Corto Maltese was convincingly firmly anchored in the comfort of the coffee house and would not be moved by storms or floods, let alone an invitation for a stroll.
Every now and then I order an unsweetened espresso and sink into a bitter black melancholy that we both know very well. Alone, in the Corto Maltese coffee bar in port of Rijeka, Croatia (bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao), because it reminds me of him and the lost opportunities for adventures and experiences that we will never set sail into … together.
photos taken by: Tanja Cvitko, exhibition Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa 2022
originally published in Slovene (local newspaper Večer) and in Croatian (webportal Turističke priče), 2022
Tanja Cvitko 