The Reign of the Evil One

An except from the INTRODUCTION by Ernest Boyd. The style of M. Ramuz is coloured by this inevitable Protestant influence which is so unlike the movement of the French prose of France. Add to that his deliberate cultivation of popular Swiss speech, which has a harshness and a lack of grace at times intolerable to the ear accustomed to the finely polished instrument of cultured French. His critics have not hesitated to warn M. Ramuz of the risk he incurs of forgetting the definite limitations of his method, and passages of great slovenliness have been cited against him. In this respect his last four volumes show him to be impenitent, but they have marked a new phase in his development. "Le Regne de I'Esprit Malin, Les Signes parmi nous," and "La Gumson des Maladies," were all three published by the group of "Les Cahiers vaudois," and to them may be added his last novel, "Terre du del" (1921), which is in the same manner. These stories are of a mystical rather than a realistic character, and suggest at times the apparently ubiquitous influence of Claudel. But M. Ramuz is faithful to his Swiss peasants, and what he gives us, for instance in "La Guirison" is a sort of Protestant Claudelism. One prefers the human tragedy of "Aline" to the mystico-religious study of the miracle-working Marie, who takes to herself the diseases of the village, until the unsympathetic authorities remove her to hospital. In Les Signes the author essays to give the air of mysterious portents to the threat of two sinister events, which throw their shadow over a prosperous community in war time. The one, which is never named, is an epidemic of "Spanish influenza," the other is "bolshevism." M. Ramuz gives a vigorous and graphic description of the outbreak of industrial warfare, but, in the end, he rolls the clouds by most conveniently, and leaves his community in the happiest of circumstances. Terre du del is a characteristic novel of his later manner in its combination of scrupulous realism in the portrayal of manners with a charming element of legend and folk-lore, testifying once more to his preoccupation with the spirit of the Vaudois countryside. Ever since "The Reign of the Evil One" an element of satire has been perceptible in his work, and here it peeps forth at the very basis of his story. The whole fable is essentially a legend, whether drawn from actual folk-lore or conceived out of the author's own imagination, telling how paradise seems to the rustic adventurers who suddenly find themselves in heaven, and deriving a peculiar savour from the style in which it is cast. C. F. Ramuz: has always written a remarkable French, compounded of archaisms, folk-speech, and the idiom of his country, which differs markedly in rhythm and phrase from that of France. "Terre du del" is a typical piece of his prose, awkward and lumbering, but powerful, with the movement of bodies that have been bent over the plough and are no longer supple. It is the writing of one who seems peculiarly fitted to express the mind and interpret the imagination of the peasant, who has never been completely expressed in French literature. "The Reign of the Evil One" is a rural fantasia comparable to Synge's "Playboy of the Western World." I hope in its English form it may be the means of bringing a new public to the work of the greatest Swiss novelist, who is, at the same time, one of the most original writers in the French language now living.