Farinet's Gold

Literature & Fiction

Ramuz, Charles-Ferdinand

Literary

Skomlin

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 which English language readers have waited decades.

Beauty on Earth

"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 Complètes (Complete Works). The author's slightly blurred face has been on the Swiss 200-franc note for years and his Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier's Tale), written in collaboration with Igor Stravinksy in 1918, can easily be found on You Tube. But only recently have English translations of Ramuz's novels begun to appear and until now, his only epic prose poem has not been available in English. Patti M. Marxsen's translation of Ramuz's Chant de Notre Rhône brings this unique work to Anglophone readers as Riversong of the Rhone in a well-crafted bilingual edition that is ideal for students as well as general readers of poetry. Part ode to nature, part assertion of human freedom, part celebration, and entirely pure delight in language made musical, Marxsen's Riversong promises to be as enduring as the river and the landscape it describes. "Riversong of the Rhone is fueled by an entrancing, hymn-like music. Patti Marxsen's agile translation of the poem reveals a musicality within incantatory repetitions and images of a rocking cradle-an aural and visual evocation of a shared birthplace." -Jennifer Kurdyla, Music &amp; Literature "Marxsen has taken the French lyrical prose and transformed it into English lyrical prose." - From the Foreword by Susan M. Tiberghien

Riversong of the Rhône

Poetry

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 Charles Ferdinand Ramuz had explored many times before in his fiction-notably in a short story that he wrote in 1912, on the eve of another war-he bestowed upon the villagers of Upper Saint-Martin the dreadful knowledge that the sun was sick and would soon expire, leaving them to die alone in the cold and the dark. The prophecy falls from the lips of the village sage and healer, Antoine Anzévui. The weather seems to bear him out. But the sun abandons those parts for a few months every year, so to accept the prophecy means to have faith in the prophet-to believe him when he says that the life-giving star won't return as expected in the spring. What holds for Upper Saint-Martin holds for the rest of the world, because in Ramuz's novels the village is the world and the world is the village Written in Fench as Si le soleil ne revenait pas and translated into English for the first time by Michelle Bailt-Jones, here are both the 1912 short story and the 1937 novel - What if the sun...

What if the sun...

Ensuite ils étaient repartis, sans plus; ils étaient entrés entre des quartiers de rocs hauts comme des maisons où ils ont enfoncé dans la neige; ils étaient allés comme dans des petites rues pleines de neige entre ces blocs, ils étaient sortis d'entre ces blocs, ils s'étaient trouvés dans du cailloutis, puis sur la pente où l'herbe était comme du feutre, humide encore et élastique sous la semelle, parce que la neige venait seulement d'y fondre; - les hommes montaient toujours, ils sont parvenus sous la paroi.

La grande peur dans la montagne (French Edition)

Blurb

Les Pénates D'Argile: Essai De Littérature Romande (French Edition)

Contemporary

Nabu Press

Les Circonstances de la Vie, Roman (French Edition)

Aline: Histoire (French Edition)

A mountain falls down and an alpine village is frozen in its summer state. When a ghostly figure appears beyond the last house, the villagers are terrorised. Is it a soul trapped in limbo, come to make his baleful complaint? Only one of them recognises him as a survivor, her husband in flesh and blood. The village rejoices, but when the survivor declares his intention to return beneath the rubble, the old doubts resurface. Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz sets his masterful tale of love and loss against the tectonic indifference of the high Alps.

Derborence: Where the devils came down

Great Fear on the Mountain

United States

Archipelago

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