Farewell C.B.

Søren Krarup Olesen sko at acoustics.dk
Mon Aug 28 18:42:47 CEST 2000


It is sad news to hear that our Carl Barks has passed away.

Firstly, it really astonished me to read all your mails, then secondly I
realised that he meant a lot to me as well.

Like many others, I unfortunately didn't know the man in person.
However, reading the many mails from you boys and girls made me
reconsider; this was not just Mr. Everyone who died, or...was it?!

What really springs into my mind is the fact, that Carl Barks wrote and
drew for everyone of us. The stories were not dedicated children stuff,
nor adult, analytical stories that would force us to think twice. Only
the Italian artists made me do so, but still...

The greatest gift was perhaps (just speculating) that he accomplished
to deliver stories where one would be free to just "read" the panels,
*or* dig a little bit deeper.

I especially appreciated the mail from Leonardo Gori who said (allow me
to quote):

---

Don't forget that as this kind of artist, he had a great influence on
many generations of readers, but also for boys and girls in their
formative years, who became men and women with a deep sense of honesty,
with a feeling for culture and humanity, and the capacity of wonder in
a greed world.

---

This is exactly how it was for me, with focus on the last line, I feel.

Being some ten years of age, I indexed those stories. Of course I had
no idea of who the artist was or anything, but they were carefully
placed in my index and easy to recognise. They "stood out" so to speak.

This very Saturday I went to a great garden party (we were not exactly
sober), and someone early in the morning said, Hey Søren, you're
looking a bit sad, I saw in TV that Carl Barks died yesterday, is that
the reason? I said, No, I'm always like this. Later on I realised that
if that wasn't the direct reason, then at least it had "helped".

I know that Carl Barks will stay with us, and I know he'll be paid
attention or more, when they're going to write the big books of modern
history. In a thousand years when the future archeaologists dig up our
graves they'll find that the ducks we loved were not only quack quack...

Mr. Carl Barks added something important to my life.

Søren




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