R AM U Z, CHARLES FERDINAND (1878— ), French-Swiss author, born at Cully, in the canton of Vaud. In the opening years of the loth century he gained a well-merited reputation in a restricted circle ; but nearly 25 years were to pass before proper appreciation was accorded by foreign critics to a writer of rare talent with a purely original style owing nothing to the "Latin" and "Classical" tradition. In his numerous works (from Aline, 1903, to La Beaute sur la Terre, 1927, including Samuel Belet, 'Vine Pache, Le Regne de l'esprit malin, La Gueri son des maladies, Passage du poete, etc.) Ramuz gives, with broad and simple strokes, a picture of primitive human senti ments in language, the rhythm and phrasing of which intimately recall a definite district—namely, the Leman basin above Lau sanne—a narrow strip of vineyard country backed by mountains and looking out over the Rhone and the luminous expanse of Lake Geneva. Though his outlook on the world and mankind is re
stricted to and conditioned by the influences of this district. Ramuz is the very opposite of a regionalist. In a country where so many others have abused the facile picturesque and have used "local colour" without distinction, his originality is the more striking. No one has approached him in his humble self-subjec tion to the spirit of the country; he is completely under the spell of nature seen at close quarters and under its daily changing aspects. His own thoughts and aspirations are expressed in his characters ; nevertheless his work is a most varied and representa tive picture gallery of a well-defined race, universal in its appeal though in appearance exclusively Vaudois. (C. CO