In seinen Erzählungen wählt Ramuz «den ganz ursprünglichen
und einfachen Menschen. Aus Liebe zu den ursprünglichen und
wesentlichen Gefühlen, jenen Gefühlen, die allen Menschen
gemeinsam sind.»
Die Heimat schildernd, verfällt er indessen nicht einer folkloristischen
und volkstümelnden Betrachtungsweise: Seine Erzähltechnik,
sein Stilwille, der Verzicht auf einen die Handlung tragenden
Helden bewahren ihn davor.
Through the door of a Swiss inn the reader steps into a painting. Two men talk to each other and before long the writer -someone like them, one of them- begins to address us. Thus commences the fugue that is Beauty on Earth, in which the coming of a beautiful orphan to her uncle's inn brings a gradual chaos upon his town. Swiss novelist Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz published La Beauté in 1927. This translation by Michelle Bailat-Jones is a gift for...
On a quiet summer evening in a Swiss mountain village, a stranger comes to stay, the generous ever helpful shoemaker, Branchu. All who did business with him profited very well by the exchange. Only the insane and ultimately hapless Luc was never fooled. In masterful strokes the Swiss writer, Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, unleashes an apocalyptic fantasia and gives us a remarkable epic fable.
One sings here of the soul of a river, and this soul never dies." C.F.Ramuz Nearly seventy years after the death of Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947), it is safe to say that the reputation of Switzerland's legendary poet of the people is secure, at least in French. Since 2005, his 22 novels have appeared in a two-volume Pléiade Edition from Gallimard (Paris) and Éditions Slatkine in Geneva has completed 29 volumes of Ramuz's Oeuvres Complète...
What might the end of the world look like, to people who inhabit high mountains, whose lives are governed by the dependable revolution of the seasons? Perhaps the sun might slip beneath a western ridge one evening, and not return in the morning. In the first half of the 20th century, that terrifying prospect represented a mild version of hell. Real hell would be knowing in advance that it was going to happen. And so, revisiting a theme that Ch...
Célébration d’une des valeurs fondamentales aux yeux de C.F. Ramuz, la liberté, Farinet dénonce en outre l’hypocrisie et la brutalité d’une société qui confond son ordre avec le Bien, ses lois et règlements avec la justice et la vérité.(Gilbert Guisan, C.F. Ramuz, Seghers, 1966, coll. Les poètes d’aujourd’hui.).
Joseph-Samuel Farinet a bel et bien existé. Né en 1845 et mort en 1880, ce faux-monayeur est vite devenu un héros fabuleux.
Ce n’...
