William Ritter Travels in Slovakia (1903-1914) – Images of a Dreamed-Of Country.
William Ritter Voyage en Slovaquie (1903-1914) – Images d’un pays rêvé.
Résumé
In 1903 the Swiss journalist William Ritter set out to walk through the Myjava region in the foothills of the Lesser Carpathians in the westernmost corner of Slovakia, which was still a part of the Kingdom of Hungary at the time. It was a revelation: he kept returning to this region until 2014, his passion for it inspired by the myth of a Slovak countryside protected from the effects of modernisation. However, Ritter, a dandy, aesthete and lover of boys, embellished this myth to fit his own dreams. He tirelessly made notes, drew, took photographs and enjoyed a relationship with Janko, who became his lover. He published articles on politics to pay the bills and wrote two sociographic novels (The/A Little Slovak Girl, 1903, and Slovak Stubbornness, 1910) and a study of the architecture of Myjava. But although he encouraged his friends – including Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the future Le Corbusier – to travel there, this country remained his own secret domain [private passion?].
During the years after 1900 Ritter was the author of pioneering articles on Mahler (the first in 1901), Studies of Foreign Art (1906), the first monograph in French on the Czech composer Smetana (1907), and reportage on Moravia and the painter Uprka (1912). But he could not lift the veil on his Slovakia.
This book of images was inspired by the restoration at the Neuchâtel Library of discovered photographs, which it complements with samples of graphic work and written sources.
En 1903, l’écrivain suisse William Ritter s’en va marcher dans les Petites Carpates. La région de Myjava, à la pointe occidentale de la Slovaquie qui fait encore partie du Royaume de Hongrie, est une révélation. Jusqu’en 1914, il y multiplie les séjours. Il note, dessine, aquarelle et photographie sans relâche… et se fait aimer de Janko, qui deviendra son compagnon. Il publiera des articles alimentaires sur la politique, un roman puis une nouvelle sociographiques, Fillette slovaque (1903) et L’Entêtement slovaque(1910), ainsi qu’une étude sur l’architecture de Myjava. Mais quoiqu’il incite ses amis – dont Ch.-E. Jeanneret, futur Le Corbusier – à y voyager, ce pays reste son jardin secret.
Durant les années d’après 1900, Ritter fut l’auteur d’articles pionniers sur Mahler (dès 1901), d’Etudes d’art étranger (1906), de la première monographie en français sur le compositeur tchèque Smetana (1907), de reportages sur la Moravie et le peintre Uprka (1912). Mais il n’aura pu lever le voile sur sa Slovaquie.
Ce livre d’images a été motivé par la restauration à la Bibliothèque de Neuchâtel de photographies retrouvées, qu’il complète d’un échantillon d’œuvres graphiques et de sources écrites.