Article

Article Information
TitleAndreas. What I wanted to tell you...
AuthorJean Louis Lechat
AboutAndreas
Year1984
Context Information
Magazine PublicationTintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl) (1984, number 3)
Thanks to Hans Heltzel.
Article Contents
from the article "Andreas. What I wanted to tell you... (1984)":
The publication of a new Andreas story is a special event each time. Of all our authors he holds back most. Along with that, the subjects he treats, fuzzy and mysterious as they are, are often somewhat disconcerting to the reader unused to his unconventional writing style. "The cave of memories", whose second part now commences, resembles personal experience even more, that is lifted up from the fantastical to the metaphysical. We wanted to know it for long. But only today we dared to ask...
"First of all you need to know," Andreas explains, "that these two complete stories make up a larger single story of 50 pages. To me it is important to emphasize that this is about a larger whole, of which the deeper meaning becomes clear only when the following parts have been read. That was one thing. Furthermore, it will come as no surprise that my thoughts and imagination is strongly influenced by many witness accounts of the old Celtic civilisation one still finds in Brittany - where I live. The idea of this story came while reading the works on druids and Celtic religion. A religion that has completely disappeared, blown away by Christianity, and seemed to me to be very liberating as compared to this Christianity with its stringent dogmas. I let the druid concepts work in on me. The Celtic ideas of death and the hereafter have made a great impression on me. I thought I could use this "relevation" and came up with the idea to reconstruct paradise as the druids saw it, by adapting it to our time and let the story play in the sombre regions of northern France and southern Belgium. We are situated in our time, in the industreal area with many coal mines and iron mills. Hence the sombre and monotonous-grey colors. My hero, who has not been initiated the the druid mysteries, has a strange experience: he enters a hostile world, that looks familiar at first, but soon turns out to be the land of death. Because he doesn't know the laws that govern this land where he considers himself to be lost, he has some unpleasant experiences at first. But isn due time, when he learns to read the tokens, he discovers...but it will leave this for you to discover...
The fact that I have been fascinated by Celtic mythology so profoundly is no doubt because it matches my personal imagination. But perhaps also because it tightly linked to the German fairy tales and legends I heard in my youth. You will find the same names, concepts and gods. But don't think that all this constantly occupies my mind. I am certainly not tormented by thoughts of death. As of the hereafter... I was never really occupied by it..."