http://chocolate-ocelot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-chocolate-ocelots-bookpile.html
It's a mixture of Herman Melville's Moby Dick and H. P. Lovecraft's dark mythos god Cthulhu. It looks lovely and has a particularly fine cover, but it's in French, and unlike a few other popular graphic novels like Blueberry and Blacksad, it hasn't been translated into English.
Over-ambitious fool that I was, I thought I might be the person for the job.
I managed eight and a bit pages. Jeez, 19th century French whaling terminology is hard to translate. And this self-imposed project has hung around my neck like a Gallic-Cthulhu-shaped millstone ever since
So the time has come to put away failed projects like this and move on. I'm giving the Grand Anciens book(s) away and putting the sorry affair out of my mind. But to preserve what little progress I made for anyone who fancies getting ahold of a copy and continuing my work, I include here the first few pages and my efforts and translation.
Grand Anciens, or
The Great Old Ones
Part 1: The White
Whale
By Jean-Marc Laine
and Bojan Vukic
Translated into English by Helena Nash
Caption: The
whaling port of New Bedford…
…on the Atlantic coast of Bristol county, in Massachusetts…
…a misty autumn in the middle of
the 19th century…
Caption: My
name is Ishmael.
Melville: So.
Tell me, my young friend Ishmael…
…you want to be a sailor?
Page 4
Melville: What could induce a well-respected,
educated young man to share the life of salt, blood and death of whalers?
I’m quite curious to learn the answer to this mystery!
Ishmael: I’m
afraid I have no extraordinary reasons like those in the great novels.
My life
wouldn’t even warrant a chapter, Mr
Melville.
Melville: Nonsense,
my young friend. Don’t be so modest.
I tell you, if I were to look for
characters, I’d have my hands full. Look around us. The Admiral Benbow is full of characters.
Ishmael: “The
Admiral Benbow”! The landlady was having a laugh
when she named her inn!
Melville: Oh, Moira’s not the landlady. She just serves the beer and
kicks drunken sailors out the door.
The real landlord’s James Hawkins. His story’s well-known
throughout Bristol county. People say he found treasure and built several inns
like the one in which he grew up in England.
The inns are all called “The
Admiral Benbow”, and they all serve the same English beer!
Ishmael: The same English beer? That’s stupid!
Why would people want to drink the same beer in places that all look alike?
Melville: Haha! The world is full of surprises.
Melville: I believe that you do have reason,
my young friend Ishmael.
You want to board a ship and travel the world. You’ll love it!
Page 5
Melville: Yes,
truly, the life of a sailor will
teach you much.
But you already have your sea legs, if I am not mistaken.
Ishmael: You…
you know how to read people, Mr
Melville…
Melville: It’s
my job, my young friend.
Ishmael: I…
don’t know where to begin.
Melville: At
the beginning. What convinced you to
leave the merchant navy?
Caption: The
open sea, Mr Melville. The sea!
Look at New Bedford! This town
sprang up thanks to the whaling industry! Look at the ships, all the inns and
the stalls that live off that trade.
And Nantucket, off the coast!
It’s the greatest whaling port of them all, greater even than New Bedford…
Nantucket is Whale Town! They’ve
got a whalers’ chapel over there!
Ishmael: It even seems that when a girl
gets married in Nantucket, her
father gives a whale as a dowry!
Melville: You
wouldn’t be a little obsessed by
sperm whales would you?
Ishmael: Obsessed? Me?
No! Not at all!
Ishmael: Don’t be angry, my young and
impetuous friend!
Obsession is something I can understand, believe me!
Ishmael: You’re
obsessed by what, mister writer?
Sailors?
Melville: This will surprise you, Ishmael,
but I have found something more exciting
than sailors or the creatures of the sea.
Even though sea monsters fill many pages of this notebook.
Melville: No, for my part, I am obsessed by obsession.
Or rather, fascinated by fascination.
Melville: It’s been almost thirty years now,
since the whaling ship Essex sank in
the Pacific ocean.
Melville: The Essex left Nantucket in 1819
and must have sailed for two and a half years before returning. No survivors
were recovered.
Melville: The whaling ship sank after a
fight for several hours with a white
whale.
Melville: At
least, that’s what they said.
Ishmael: How’s
that?
You think that it wasn’t a sperm whale that destroyed the Essex?
Melville: The story that I am going to tell
you, my friend, goes back several years and has as a protagonist Captain Ahab when he still had both
legs.
Have you heard of Captain Ahab,
Ishmael?
Page 7
Caption: What
I am about to recount to you took place some years ago.
As usual, Captain Ahab was on the
quarterdeck.
Standing.
The look-out alerted the crew as he spotted their prey…
…the white whale!
The sailors had seen the snowy
white, wrinkled head of a great sperm whale, and the Pequod sped over the waves in the wake of that gigantic shroud-coloured
body.
On his two legs, Ahab kept his eyes fixed on the whale.
His form seemed cast in bronze,
and his skin was that of a man pulled from the pyre just as the flames were
about to consume him.
Page 8
Stubb was Ahab’s second mate
during that time. He was without equal at harpooning whales.
Stubb: Onward
lads! Onward!
Caption: Whalers
who took to the sea flew over the waves, and cut through the water like air.
And the harpooner cried: “Make it
afraid! You’re like the thunder!
The crewmen followed Stubb as
they followed the other mates Starbuck and Flask.
Because as well as being their
bosses, they were also sailors.
And because they were on the Pequod.
And because Captain Ahab was at the helm.
Page 9
Caption: You will discover many things
when you sign on with your first crew,
Ishmael!
You will learn the tales and legends of the ocean.
You will listen to the most incredible
stories, like the one about the
white whale being everywhere at once, and in both hemispheres at the same time.
You will hear stories about the
wildest fishing, the farthest voyages, and you will learn that your fellow
sailors are a taciturn and secretive
breed of men, but superstitious.
Because among the fables that
plague the hearts of men, they will tell you of the scourge of the whalers…
… the Wrecker…
… the Kraken!
Page 10
Ishmael: The Kraken?
Are you…
Melville: The
sea is full of myths, especially for whalers…
Caption: …and
Captain Ahab is a sailor, without a
doubt one of the best.
He knows the legends that
frighten his crew. He knows that men of
the sea, who come from all walks of life and speak every tongue, invent stories
to warm the heart…
…stories that end up haunting them.
Ahab is not a man who believes in
bogeyman tales.
But the captain is a man of decisions.
Quick decisions.
Ishmael: And
what did Captain Ahab decide to do?
Set sail to hunt the Kraken?
Melville: It’s
not that simple.
Melville: Rumours
being what they are, they spread.
While they circulate and the
sailors are still on deck, running scared or with laughter on their lips, it
doesn’t matter.
But when it comes to pass that
sailors refuse to go to sea, then it’s the turn of the owners to be concerned.
Ishmael: You
seem to know all of the workings of
New Bedford, Mr Melville.
