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Portrait de Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz



Ramuz with the hawk's eye

1 - He sees like no one else. He sees so keenly that he doesn't even need to look. Nor to see a lot at once. What he distinguishes first are the objects (he says) the bravest: salt, bread, painted sheet metal and soap water. And so are the colors! He is not the one who would confuse the old beam and the overcooked bread, the grocer's bag and dry earth, the ham skin and the bacon rind. He rubs our eyes, he carries out a great enterprise of cleaning up our sight.

We are embarrassed by our eye for a long time - I mean the eye we see when we look at it (or rather, alas! that we saw): until the day we realize that it is the eye of a kestrel, or a hawk.

All big words are in danger of becoming synonymous. Very clever who still distinguishes the true from the good, the beautiful from the just. In the end, all that remains is a confusion, very close to rot, where no one dares to fish out anything. But Ramuz's inner eye is no less sharp than the other: he is so well rewarded for his patience that he can speak without ridicule of the peasant, the worker, the bourgeois - as he would of a goldfinch, or of a little rabbit. And even greatness is a specific thing with him.
Where does the particular taste of his work come from: it is not the picturesque, or the harmony; This has nothing to do with beautiful singing. It tastes more like salt and iodine. Ramuz the Healthy.

2 - He is without bias. However, his great novels seem to mean something, which resembles the communion of saints, the reversibility of merits, the resurrection of the body. Here, believers and atheists agree to overwhelm him.
Believers, it is because he deals with mysteries without having gone through Revelation (which has fixed, they say, their meaning): it is therefore that he makes them into simple myths. But atheists wonder what it's all about: is the communion of saints in science? No. So he had to remain a Christian, without admitting it.
Personally, I would see quite clearly the greatness of Ramuz in light of the two criticisms. At least, his greatness as a writer. It is possible that a man well assured in his faith (like Claudel or Péguy) wins, in the eyes of the Churches. It is possible that a man assured of his knowledge (like Sartre or Zola) wins, in the eyes of a secular society. But from the simple point of view of Letters - which we must place ourselves in, since it is an author - they all have the same fault: with them we always know how it will end. Their work is less an adventure than a lesson. But when beyond death, fear and illness - the page of heaven once turned - the world of Signs among us begins to live again, I tell myself that hope could be true. Because they apply and popularize, but he seeks in all innocence. Ramuz, the man of adventure.

3 - The peasant, the worker, the simple people as they say, as soon as they express themselves, risk not saying enough: they lack words. The writer is quite the opposite: he knows too much, the danger at any moment is that he puts in more than is necessary. (This is what is sensitive among orators; and each of us is at any moment threatened by the orator.) He even has so many sentences at his disposal - which he has read in other writers, on which he has practiced at length - that he ends up forgetting that they are sentences: I mean matter, or rather material, and not so transparent as it seems, but always ready to flow into neighboring sentences, to to corrupt, to betray the intention.
Yet this is what Ramuz does not forget. Of course, he sometimes flies (like any orator), dances (like any poet). But it is a dance, or a flight, which remembers the walk; who follows her, in some way, step by step. He respects noise and spontaneous cries. When the pen stops him, he simply says it. He uses what comes his way, like a traveler cooking in the open air. He never pretended.
Which is why we hardly think about admiring him. Rather, we follow him, we marry him. There is a feeling there, which is like adoration. (That's what I can say, if he is no longer here to hear it.) Beauty is not something that is added to him. Wherever he goes, he goes there with a single movement, words and thoughts, body and soul. Ramuz, or fullness.

Jean Paulhan, 1947, in Oeuvres Complètes, Tchou.

Resources

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz by Georges Borgeaud (1958 / France Culture)

20th century (5/5): Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz / Maurice Achard

Biography of Ramuz in the Republic of Letters

Ramuz peasant, patriot and hero: construction of a myth, Cairn

Works available on Gallica

WikipediaWikidataDataBnfWorldcat

Bibliography of texts published in the NRF

The texts below, published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, are grouped into four main sets: texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, notes and columns by the author, texts about the author, and, when available, translations by the author.

Texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

  1. Épisode, 1931-10-01
  2. Le Cirque, 1931-12-01
  3. Adam et Ève (I), 1932-11-01
  4. Adam et Ève (II), 1932-12-01
  5. Adam et Ève (III), 1933-01-01
  6. Adam et Ève (Fin), 1933-02-01
  7. Questions (I), 1936-05-01
  8. Questions (Fin), 1936-06-01
  9. Besoin de grandeur (Fragments), 1937-03-01
  10. Introduction à La dramatique du moi, 1938-04-01
  11. Paris, 1939-04-01
  12. Paris (II), 1939-05-01
  13. Paris (Fin), 1939-06-01
  14. Pages d'un neutre, 1940-03-01
  15. Pages d'un neutre (Fin), 1940-04-01
  16. Désordre dans le Cœur, 1953-12-02
  17. Le Temps du grand Napoléon, 1957-05-01
  18. Il regarda d'abord..., 1967-07-01

Texts about Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

These texts may include thematic studies about the author, correspondence, reading notes on works by or about the author, interviews conducted by the author, or works edited by the author.

  1. Aline, par C. F. Ramuz (Grasset), by Marcel Caster, 1928-08-01, Notes : le roman
  2. Jean-Luc persécuté, par C. F. Ramuz (Grasset), by Henri Pourrat, 1930-09-01, Revue des livres
  3. Les signes parmi nous, par C. F. Ramuz (Grasset), by Denis de Rougemont, 1932-01-01, Notes : le roman
  4. Une main, par C. F. Ramuz (Grasset), by Denis de Rougemont, 1933-06-01, Notes : romans et récits
  5. Taille de l'homme, par C. F. Ramuz (Mermod), by Denis de Rougemont, 1934-04-01, Notes : littérature générale
  6. Notes [aux Questions de C. F. Ramuz], by Charles-Albert Cingria, 1936-05-01, articles
  7. Notes (II) [aux Questions de C. F. Ramuz], by Charles-Albert Cingria, 1936-06-01, articles
  8. Du côté de chez Ramuz, by Paul Claudel, 1938-02-01, articles
  9. Hommage à C. F. Ramuz (Porchet), by Denis de Rougemont, 1940-05-01, Notes : littérature
  10. Lettres, de C.-F. Ramuz (Clairefontaine), by Philippe Jaccottet, 1957-05-01, Notes : la littérature
  11. Une lettre à C.-F. Ramuz, by Jules Renard, 1967-07-01, Présence de C.-F. Ramuz

Chronological distribution of texts published in the NRF (1908-1968)

This chart shows the chronological distribution of texts across the four categories defined above: Texts, Notes, Translations, and Texts about the author.

Bibliography of texts published in the journal Mesures

The texts below, published in the journal Mesures, are grouped into two sets: texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz and texts translated by the author.

Texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

  1. Paysan, Nature, 15 octobre 1935 [188 p.]
  2. Besoin de grandeur, 15 octobre 1936 [174 p.]

Bibliography of texts published in Les Cahiers de la Pleiade

The texts below, published in Les Cahiers de la Pleiade, are grouped into three sets: texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, texts translated by the author, and texts about the author.

Texts by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

  1. Légende, été 1948 [184 p.]