Ramuz, Charles-Ferdinand (1878-1947). Swiss novelist and poet and acknowledged leader of the renaissance vaudoise, which first gave intellectual coherence to francophone literature in Suisse Romande [see Swiss Literature In French]. Born in Lausanne, he studied at Lausanne University before starting an uncompleted thesis on Maurice de Guérin in Paris (1900-1). After a brief return to teach at Aubonne, he returned to Paris in 1902 to start a literary career, publishing his first poems on Swiss peasant life (Le Petit Village, 1903), tutoring in Weimar (1903-4), and contributing to a Suisse-Romande literary collection, Les Pénates d'argile (1904), which developed into La Voile latine, dedicated to creating a Suisse-Romande literature.
Living in Paris (1904-14) he published a first novel Aline (1905) and Les Circonstances de la vie (1907). After a first stay in the Valais (1907) he began his ‘Valaisan’ novels, notably Le Village dans la montagne (1908), Jean-Luc persécuté (1909), La Séparation des races (1923), Farinet (1932), Derborence (1934), and the semi-autobiographical novels Aimé Pache, peintre vaudois (1911) and Vie de Samuel Belet (1913), portraying the vocational dilemma of Swiss artists. He married a painter, Cécile Cellier, and visited Cézanne in 1913. In 1914, with Budry and Ansermet, he launched Cahiers vaudois (1914-19), breaking away from Gonzague de Reynold and publishing a literary manifesto, ‘Raison d'être’, in the first issue, formulating the idea of enracinement.
He left Paris for Switzerland just before the out-break of war. Meeting Stravinsky in 1915, he and Auberjonois collaborated with him to produce Histoire du soldat (1918). He moved to Lausanne in 1916, and finally to Pully (1930), publishing with Grasset from 1924, when French critics finally acknowledged his talent. He was awarded several prizes, including the Grand Prix Romand (1928).
Ramuz's works are remarkable for their lyricism, vernacular style, and powerful mythical, tragic, poetic vision of the mountain peasant, his rituals, stoicism, and resilience. His literary landscapes have a Cézanne-like painterly quality and symbolism. It is a work rooted in the landscape in which he was born. Like his hero Aimé Pache, ‘il portait en lui sa race’ and ‘on ne saurait l'imaginer que Suisse’ (Gide).
— Sam Taylor
Bibliography
- G. Guisan, C.-F. Ramuz (1966)
- D. G. Bevan, The Art and Poetry of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1977)
