A haunting, allegorical Swiss masterpiece centered around a posse of villagers as they brave dark elements to ascend a mountain, thicketed with lore

Teeming with tension, this immersive, rhapsodic story transports readers to the Swiss mountainside, bringing to mind the writing of Thomas Mann while offering character studies as vivid and bracing as Eudora Welty's.

Feed is running low in a rural village in Switzerland. The town council meets to decide whether or not to ascend a chimerical mountain in order to access the open pastures that have enough grass to feed seventy animals all summer long. The elders of the town protest, warning of the dangers and the dreadful lore that enfolds the mountain passageways like thick fog.

They've seen it all before, reckoning with the loss of animals and men who have tried to reach the pastures nearly twenty years ago. The younger men don't listen, making plans to set off on their journey despite all warnings. Strange things happen. Spirits wrestle with headstrong young men. As the terror of life on the mountain builds, Ramuz's writing captures the rural dialog and mindsets of the men.

One of the most talented translators working today, Bill Johnston captures the careful and sublime twists and turns of the original in his breathtaking translation.

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 Beaut in 1927. This translation by Michelle Bailat-Jones is a gift for which English language readers have waited decades.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Ce 31 juillet 1918, Caille, un colporteur biblique, longe le lac et arrive au village...« et partout les Signes se levaient autour de lui La guerre...la grippe espagnole commence toucher les jeunes, les vieux et m me le docteur...deux, quatre, cinq morts...la gr ve des ouvriers de la verrerie...l'orage qui gronde...l'Apocalypse...la fin.
C' tait seulement un gros orage. En Champagne, les Alli s ont avanc de 7 kilom tres, fait 25000 prisonniers. Caille va reprendre la route, car le Seigneur a encore t mis ricordieux...

Ceux qui sont de l'autre c t du col s' taient empar s d'un beau morceau de p turage. Pour se venger, Firmin, un berger romand, enl ve Frieda, une jeune al manique. Mathias le colporteur fait, en secret, la liaison entre la prisonni re et Hans son fianc .
Durant l'hiver, Frieda manipule aussi bien Firmin que Manu, l'idiot du village et la fonte des neiges, les Al maniques entrent dans le village incendi par Manu, pendent le berger et repartent avec Frieda.

Ce livre aborde les souvenirs d'enfance de Charles Ferdinand Ramuz pour d crire sa participation la saison des vendanges Yvorne, dans le Chablais vaudois, vers 1890...

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 Pl iade Edition from Gallimard (Paris) and ditions Slatkine in Geneva has completed 29 volumes of Ramuz's Oeuvres Compl tes (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 Rh ne 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 & Literature Marxsen has taken the French lyrical prose and transformed it into English lyrical prose. - From the Foreword by Susan M. Tiberghien

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... Et là enfin l'océan était grand ouvert devant nous, tandis que Rouge cherchait à se l'imaginer, parce que, nous, on a bien de l'eau, mais elle est petite. Cent kilomètres tout au plus dans un sens, dix ou douze dans l'autre, une eau petite qui n'est qu'un lac et tout entouré de montagnes; et Rouge cherchait à se représenter là-bas cet espace non limité, ces autres eaux sans fin, coupées à ras du ciel en rond comme avec des ciseaux dans de la toile bleue...

Quelques-uns ont une faux au bout du manche de laquelle ils attachent leur baluchon, d'autres portent leurs bottes pendues autour du cou; il y en a des vieux, des jeunes, des grands, des petits, des moyens, des gras et des maigres; quels qu'ils soient et d'où qu'ils viennent, on sait assez qu'ils ne valent pas cher. C'est toujours la même mauvaise graine, saoulons, fainéants, querelleurs; et difficiles avec tout ça, capricieux, portés sur leur bouche: la honte des honnêtes gens.

The old man Sage taught Maurice Farinet many things and one of them was the location of a secret vein of gold. After Sage died, Farinet began to make coins. This story commences with Farinet's second escape from prison, hiding from the police in his beloved mountains, aided and abetted by the locals, in particular the waitress Josephine. It was she who smuggled file and rope into prison for him. But the law closes in and Farinet understands he cannot stay an outlaw forever. When a local offical brings him an offer from the government - to turn himself in and serve just six months Farinet has to consider. Based on a true story, Ramuz tells an extraordinary tale of mountains and villages, of independence and the price of freedom.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Un alpage appartenant à un village, le plus élevé, nommé Sasseneire, est inutilisé depuis vingt ans. Des malheurs s'y sont produits, que les vieux du village ont attribués à des causes surnaturelles: à les en croire, la montagne n'y tolère pas l'intrusion des troupeaux ni des hommes. Selon certains, Satan luimême s'en est mêlé. Cet alpage est remis en service grâce aux votes du clan des jeunes qui opposent leur rationalisme aux certitudes des anciens, syncrétisme de catholicisme et de croyances magiques. Très vite, un malaise s'installe parmi les gardiens du troupeau, les malheurs se succèdent et la situation vire peu à peu au drame... Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, né à Lausanne le 24 septembre 1878 et mort à Pully le 23 mai 1947, est un écrivain et poète suisse. Son oeuvre comprend des romans, des essais et des poèmes où figurent au premier plan les espoirs et les désirs de l'être humain.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Ce roman de Charles Ferdinand Ramuz explore la vie d'un jeune homme cherchant à trouver sa place dans le monde. À travers des personnages inoubliables et un récit touchant, Ramuz explore les éléments de la vie qui façonnent notre destin. Une lecture captivante pour ceux qui cherchent à donner un sens à leur vie.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.