“Les Navigateurs”, by Serge Lehman and Stéphane de Caneva: the new myth of the old sea

The authors offer us an initiatory quest that will transport us to a parallel world, to an antediluvian era when Paris and Île-de-France were still under water. Very good French fantasy!

When Max, Sébastien and Arthur, three childhood friends now in their forties, learn that Neige has returned to Clamart, their entire adolescence resurfaces. Neige was the most beautiful girl in high school, and at the time, all the boys were around her… After the Baccalaureate, she crossed the Channel never to return, comforted by her success as a photographer in Grande -Brittany. To celebrate her return, Neige invites her former friends to her childhood home. The latter, having decided to redo the decor, asks Max’s opinion about a mysterious fresco that she discovered under the old wallpaper, without realizing that it has opened a door to an unsuspected universe…

Faithful to its priesthood, consisting of reintegrating the European “fantastic” literary tradition into global pop culture, Serge Lehman has highlighted here a marginal movement in 19th century art^e century, that of symbolist and esoteric painting. To do this, it focused more particularly on Odilon Redona tormented and offbeat artist who had his dark period, where he represented nightmarish chimeras, before moving towards more sober, more luminous themes. From there, Lehmanan erudite screenwriter with a fertile imagination, will weave a fictional and original universe by evoking imaginary letters from the great Jean Cocteaumissing works, obscure or invented artists such as Ferdinand Krebs, supposed author of the fresco in the room of one of the protagonists, Neige Agopian.

What if Serge Lehman refers to Cocteauit is not entirely by chance, since with The Navigatorshe takes up the artist’s credo of mixing dreams with reality. Through the discovery of a fresco hidden under old wallpaper, a strange adventure will be born, as if a door had been opened to the unknown, leading the protagonists towards a dreamlike dimension parallel to the more familiar reality.

Particularly well put together and of rare originality, this story takes us to the Paris region, where three childhood friends will carry out their own investigation to find their friend Neige who recently returned from abroad, the latter having disappeared body and property in the family home where she had just moved, in a very mysterious way. The psychology of the characters, both main and secondary, is very well drawn, and this is this author’s strong point. First there is Max Faubert, a technophobic writer with a love of poetry, editor-in-chief of a small publishing house inherited by Sébastien, a stylish daddy’s boy and very cultured false snob, with strong opinions. Living his life a little apart, Arthur is the rebel of the trio, the slightly asocial adventurer who has been around since childhood, equipped with a prosthetic shin which gives him the false air of a pirate. The latter, still living with his two aunts, without moderation consoles his various pains with alcohol or grass. As for Max, will this adventure allow him to exorcise deeply buried traumas, which cling to his psyche like the plaster he wears on his cheek?

The Navigators – Serge Lehman and Stéphane de Caneva — © 2024 Lehman / De Caneva / Delcourt

Throughout these captivating 200 pages, the clues will accumulate to gradually piece together all the pieces of an incredible puzzle, until this tipping point towards a parallel dimension with dreamlike accents, where an astonishing horrific poetry escapes. at all temporal landmarks, a poetry magnified by the excellent drawing of Stéphane de Caneva. And as the title suggests, The Navigators have to do with the world of the sea, of a very rich symbolic significance which goes from ancestral myths to Freudfor whom it represents the unconscious of the dreamer in its immensity, what Lehman will exploit abundantly here. This famous “world of the old sea” described in the book is based on hydrological research from the 19th^e century of the engineer Eugene Belgrandwho discovered that the Paris Basin was completely submerged by water in prehistoric times, that Montmartre was an island and Montreuil a coastal town… Wasn’t this the dream subject for the lover of myths and mysteries that is Serge Lehman ? So, as we will see, this adventure towards an alternative maritime reality will give Max the opportunity to cleanse his wounded soul…

Stéphane de Canevawhich is in its third collaboration with Serge Lehmangives us a mastered drawing that would evoke US comics, but in a style avoiding the violence often inherent to the genre. He adds a lovely poetic touch which reaches its peak in the last phase of the story, with an astonishing graphic variation to signify the shift into a parallel dimension.

A true invitation to dream, which also benefits from careful editing to highlight the very beautiful cover, The Navigators stands out as one of the best fantastic adventures of the year, with a more psychological initiatory quest on how to escape guilt-inducing trauma. Through extensive documentation which serves as a basis for his abundant imagination, Serge Lehman manages to re-enchant a country that really needs it (ours!), causing its citizens to continue to be disillusioned by the absence of political perspectives. From the beginning, Lehman is a transmitter – modernist and not nostalgic – of a fantastic literary tradition abandoned in France and Europe, often in favor of American or Japanese productions. And that is extremely valuable.