Ramuz, Charles Ferdinand

Born Sept. 24, 1878, in Cully, near Lausanne in the canton of Vaud; died May 23, 1947, in Pully, near Lausanne. Swiss author.

Ramuz, whose works are written in French, graduated from the University of Lausanne. He idealized the patriarchal way of life and the peasants’ and artisans’ outlook, contrasting them with the falseness of modern bourgeois civilization. Ramuz’ first books, Aline (1905; Russian translation, 1928), The Circumstances of Life (1907), Aimé Pache, a Vaud Painter (1911), and The Life of Samuel Belet (1913) are based on the traditions of the 19th-century French psychological novel. In the 1930’s, Ramuz wrote his best novels, which unite realistic depiction of the life of ordinary people with literary mastery and profound philosophic conclusions. These works include Adam and Eve (1932), Farine! (1932), Derborence (1934), and The Savoyard Boy (1936). Ramuz welcomed the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia in his lyric philosophic essay The Great Spring (1917) and in The Need for Grealness (1937).