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Ariane Devanthéry et Claude Reichler (Edited and presented by), Vaut le Voyage ?

Histoires de Guides. Genève, Editions Slatkine, 2019
Maria Gravari-Barbas
Traduction de Nelson Graburn
Cet article est une traduction de :
Ariane Devanthéry et Claude Reichler (Edité et présenté par), Vaut le Voyage ? [fr]

Texte intégral

1The editors of this carefully thought out work, published on the occasion of the twenty years of the Cultural Association for Travel in Switzerland, invited twenty-six authors to speak about travel guide books, seen in the broadest sense: "old and recent, literary or scientific, with or without text, from here or elsewhere” (p. 16). They organized the work into five sections, two thematic (“In Distant Countries” and “Black Tourism”) and three that could be described as mood or opinion: the “For”, the “Against” and the "Quite the Contrary".

2The book thus adopts a double approach: that of analyzing guide books, what they are and what they "do" to travel. But also of what guide books inspire as a literary genre. Why do tour guide books in particular carry behind them tales of "stubborn disaffection or even contempt"? (p. 12). Considered according to Roland Barthes to be "instruments of blindness" which, in wanting to describe the world, only select pieces and erase "the reality of the earth and that of humanity", they are immediately suspect for what they are supposed to contribute as a literary genre. Claude Baechtold says it well in his text: "the guide book is a deprecated, even shameful format, which, immediately out of the bag, unmasks the tourist disguised until then as an adventurer" (p. 66).

3Could we approach this still relatively unknown literature any differently? This is what editors think of approaching the guide books as a terrain to be traveled themselves, an approach far from reading them in a linear fashion like a novel, "it hovers over, it pecks at" (p. 14) the subject. They thus approach modern travel guides as a new mode of communication, invented along with tourism, with all their semantically important typographical paraphernalia (letters in italics, in bold, in small capitals) or their star ratings and their keywords in the margins.

4The first part “In Far off Countries” is made up of six chapters. These are quite heterogeneous, the style of entry into particular places (Venice, China) and by the personalities of the authors of these stories about guides. In the first category, we might find memorable the article by Marie Wyss which looks at the "Eight views of Jiahe", a 14th century work of art, in the form of a 5-meter long scroll, presenting views of the city accompanied by texts and calligraphic poems. This pre-tourist guide, an ancestor of contemporary written guides, is designed as a poetic map to help travelers find the best views of the region or, for those who do not travel, to move them there in spirit. The printed guide “Illustrated Odes to Nanking” from the 17th century, interpreted by the same author, is, for its part, a guide for a “recumbent trip”, a supposedly superior form of travel since it is reserved for those who have the deep qualities necessary for a good appreciation of the beauty of a site and its history. Three centuries later, the "travel system" of the Underwood brothers presented by Daniela Vaj, also aims to provide a journey "not for the body, but for the spirit, without being any less real." He reveals one of the guide books' ambitions which is to offer "a vision as if one were there in the flesh" (p. 52). In the second category we must mention the hilarious text by Claude Baechtold, who tells how he managed to organize the chaos of the Afghans thanks to his Ultimate visual guide. Putting "the beards on one side and the mustaches on the other, the burkas on the left and the soap dishes on the right and so on for thousands of shots" has achieved a feat neither the British in the 19th century nor the Russians in the 20th had managed to do! A visual guide that puts everything in its place!

5The “For” section brings together six chapters that give voice to those who write them. Bertrand Lévy explains how he went about bringing together the texts for the "Taste of Geneva", voluntarily composed of heterogeneous literary texts and on various themes. At the antipodes of the Blue Guides, the "Tastes of ..." are part of a new generation of guides which assume a subjectivity, in order to bring out "founding myths, archetypes, images, metaphors, comparisons and significant anecdotes" (p. 89). But it is the text of Eugène, author of a fabulous Guide to Pamukalia, an imaginary country, which fully reveals the power of guide books: the detailed and mapped presentation of a country that never existed (according to the rules of presentation for guides of a real country, endowed with its history, its cultural traditions, its gastronomy, its national anthem, its geography and its cities), produces shared realities around a Pamukale meal caught in a "country" setting. The power of such guides is highlighted here in an extreme way: a guide book also serves to bring about realities that do not exist...

6The six chapters in the “Against” section share a certain aversion to the allegedly prescriptive nature of the guides. Blaise Hofmann says in his text entitled "Death to guide books!" that guide books "close the imagination" (p. 135), that they "all look more or less alike: they plagiarize, translate, retrieve the same information from the Internet" (p. 135)! And no doubt they also misinform: this is what the Victorian writer John Ruskin thought of the Murray guides (André Hélard, p. 156) with whom he maintained a correspondence, pleasant at first, much more tense later: how can a paper guide decree that such a work deserves to be seen? And why do we value these often too abusive restorations of Ruskin's mind? Ruskin's books written in Italian "vituperated" (p.158) against the Murray guides (Handbooks for Travellers, since 1836, London). Ruskin is out to sue the guides which kept on being reprinted again and again: ready-made recipes for travelers in a hurry or rushed. The authors who are "against" demand the emancipation of the traveler loud and clear. Thus, while accusing guide books of wanting one to "submit to the choice of others", Frédéric Wandelère also confides in the pleasure that a Baedeker guide from 1913 can give him today. Its prescriptions (however strong, such as the length of the skirt that ladies must wear), now appear delightful because they are so disconnected from any possible context of a visit today.

7The fourth section "Quite the contrary", is probably the most eclectic, in bringing together its five texts. We will dwell most on Aude Seigne's planned obsolescence which refuses to mourn those long-outdated guide books, “fragile papers of childhood” (p. 218) while printed guides are being replaced by online applications that inform, offer or translate, making the tourist jump “from one Wifi island to another”.

8
Three fascinating chapters finally make up the fifth section on "Black Tourism" showing the "dark side" of tourist guides (Matos-Wassem, p. 223) which meet the demand of tourists for sites associated with death or the macabre, suffering or disaster. Let us not forget the "Complete Instructions for Suicide" which also offers a guide to the most favorable places to commit suicide in Japan, a sort of anti-guide for the happy tourist...

  • 1 Gilles Chabaud, Évelyne Cohen, Natacha Coquery, Jérôme Penez, 2000, Les Guides imprimés du XVIe au (...)

9The twenty-six pieces in this collection are heterogeneous and unequal. And unlike guide books whose effectiveness depends on the way they organize their material in clearly identifiable rubric-drawers, it is difficult to say here that the organization into five sections, themselves eclectic, leads to the most effective analysis. The "For" are sometimes "Against" and vice versa. But this is by no means important. Having chosen very short texts, this work about guide books itself reads like a guide to guide books: we take texts at random, attracted to certain images, or titles - as we would in a travel guide. It would obviously be a mistake to compare this work to more monumental enterprises (Chabaud et al., 20001). His ambition is quite different: to entice the reader's desire to venture into the formidable country of guide books, by opening as many windows contextualized by time and space. Because this book succeeds in demonstrating, including in the virulent section "Against", that the guide books do not tell a reality "already there". They make it happen, but only with the support and complicity of their readers.

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Notes

1 Gilles Chabaud, Évelyne Cohen, Natacha Coquery, Jérôme Penez, 2000, Les Guides imprimés du XVIe au XXe siècle. Villes, paysages, voyages, Paris: Belin, coll. Mappemonde. 

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Référence électronique

Maria Gravari-Barbas, « Ariane Devanthéry et Claude Reichler (Edited and presented by), Vaut le Voyage ? », Via [En ligne], 17 | 2020, mis en ligne le 20 octobre 2020, consulté le 10 juin 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/viatourism/5382 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.5382

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Auteur

Maria Gravari-Barbas

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

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Traducteur

Nelson Graburn

University of California, Berkeley

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

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