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Literary critique of the works of C.F. Ramuz, Swiss writer and poet.
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.
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A mountain falls down and an alpine village is frozen in its summer state. When a ghostly figure appears the villagers are terrorised. Is it a soul trapped in limbo, come to make his baleful complaint? Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz sets his masterful tale of love and loss against the tectonic indifference of the high Alps.
Young villagers challenge fate by grazing their cattle on a mountain pasture despite a curse that hangs over it; and the reader shares their panic and final despair.
Jean-Luc Persecuted follows the ill-fated life of an unhappily married man. When Jean-Luc’s wife pursues an affair and leaves him with their child, Jean-Luc’s behavior becomes more and more erratic. He falls to drinking, behaving recklessly, and squandering his money. The narrative follows the explosive downfall of a lone man and his unstoppable mental collapse, surrounded by villagers unable to effect real change. This novel, never before translated, exemplifies the earthy, realistic, often allegorical style of iconic Swiss writer Ramuz.
The "world of letters" has always seemed a matter more of metaphor than of global reality. In this book, Pascale Casanova shows us the state of world literature behind the stylistic refinements--a world of letters relatively independent from economic and political realms, and in which language systems, aesthetic orders, and genres struggle for dominance. Rejecting facile talk of globalization, with its suggestion of a happy literary "melting pot," Casanova exposes an emerging regime of inequality in the world of letters, where minor languages and literatures are subject to the invisible but implacable violence of their dominant counterparts. Inspired by the writings of Fernand Braudel and Pi...
Young villagers challenge fate by grazing their cattle on a mountain pasture despite a curse that hangs over it; and the reader shares their panic and final despair.
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. This book is based on a 1922 text and has been re-edited and reset to improve the reader experience.