Salonica World Lit: Woman on Wire

Woman on Wire

Ramuz on Swiss Franc Note

“What will people be reading in the year 2000? Not much more than Barbusse, Paul Morand, Ramuz and myself…” opined the author Louis-Ferdinand Céline...

Ah, I love Céline. I wish this statement were true, but it's been a rough millenium for Swiss writers. And in particular, Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, a stalwart of the Swiss literati because of his poetry, short stories, novels and films based on his novels. Also, he won the prestigious Swiss literary award Prix Gottfried Keller. But many of his translated works have fallen into obscurity. That's why The Young Man from Savoy by Host Publications is such a refreshing find.

True, this novel may seem like an odd choice for the current a Salonica theme of Sex and Seduction, but seduction is present in this work which evolves into obsession. In fact, there is very little sex in this book, but when it does happen it is associated with murder. Sex and seduction intimates pleasure, a sultry journey through physical attraction. When seduction becomes obsession and has no outlet, the obsessor loses his own sense of reality.

In The Young Man from Savoy, Jospeh Jacquet falls is seduced by the grace, strength and beauty of high- wire circus performer Miss Annabella.

She is on a dusting of air, on a vaporous column, she is standing on a cloud, and as she stops, the music sets her swaying. She has lifted her arms her white armpits glisten. She stretches, as if at home; she is moving among the clouds. Thrust forward, her thigh starts to swell, and now right down to the knee has grown larger; the other leg, which is bent, slides behind her. Her body comes forward, her hair comes forward, and her arms come forward. Her arms are white with pink highlights, soft and pure. At first she let them hang down, but there now--she is moving them gently about like a butterfly beating its wings. Transparent, shot with light, they slowly climbed, her head following behind. And we saw her face again, and her face was smiling. Around those teeth was a beautiful smile. A smile where there was no effort, not stopping, a smile without end and without a beginning. A smile that could never end, since it never began. Her teeth were white, her mouth was red; and between her shoulders there was a warm shadow that moved like wheat in a winnowing basket. But now she was standing, stretched out up there, her leg in the air. You saw her flesh rise in places then retract, swell again, then go down, like little waves on the lake when the weather is fine. She became just music, motion forward and then back - retreats, appearances, vapor, clouds. She has climbed higher, aways higher, always farther above us, lighter and lighter, more and more aerial;and Joseph had to lift his head to follow her, he lifted his head higher still.

Obviously, Joseph is mesmerized by Miss Annabella. Of course she would be compelling to a young man from a small Swiss village, a village so small that the circus doesn't stop there. Her beauty, her high-wire arabesques, her translucent skin lit by the colored lights is something Joseph has never seen before. She embodies the charms the capture Joseph's romantic nature, appeals to his dreamy mind and awakens his nomadic soul.

Joseph works on a barge, the Vauderre, which takes him away from his village and gives him tiny orts of what the world has to offer. But when the barge is sold and he loses his job and his only way to experience the world outside of his village, the obsession with Miss Annabella grows, becoming his only escape. He accepts his impending marriage to Georgette, a local village girl. He accepts the he must forget Miss Annabella and the traveling life and settle into the simplicity of a rustic, rural life.

Joseph finds brief respite in local barmaid of Mademoiselle Mercedes, a woman whose skin reminds him of Miss Annabella. After her sleeps with her, he realizes that an ersatz lover makes him feel worse.

She had her hands under her head. The artificial curls of her hair were distributed all about her head like the wood shavings on a carpenter's workbench. Kisses now, they spoil lipstick. He saw that the line of her lips had spread out around her mouth as when a child has been eating jam. Kisses now, they spoil the eyes, because all the black had run. And me too, I've got red on my lips, he's thinking, on my lips there's a sweet taste. A little black, a little red, a little pink, because everything's false, nothing holds up, everything goes away, all those beautiful things you just put on, all those beautiful colors are just trickery. He moistens his finger, he runs it over her cheek. She grumbles, she says, "What's the matter?" He says, "Nothing." She says, "Oh, it's you, darling." She goes back to sleep. You let yourself be fooled by what's false. All that, it's falseness, even if she's just dressed in her skin - even skin lies, fixing itself up with the appearance of beauty, the better to entice you. He sees her bosom, which is too white. He sees her belly, which is white and blue. They rub their bodies with a liquid just for that; they imitate a flower, a flower's odor and the colors of nature. They take from nature what's beautiful; they take it for themselves so as to draw you in.

The simple, sparse, and poetical style of Ramuz feels like the cadence of life in a small rural Swiss town. Ramuz's style is deceptive, though, because as it quietly leads you along while you uncover the fierce despair and primal urges that lead to death. There is Old Pinget's suicide that the villagers accept with a matter-of-fact complacency.

There was a head down there. And there was a body connected to the head, but you couldn't see it very well because it was hanging straight down. Also, it kept revolving a bit. Old Pinget had tied the rope around his neck and jumped. The only thing you could see was his head, the top of his head. The crows had gnawed at it already. It was red. There were white spots where the bone showed.

This unassuming style of Ramuz highlights the grotesqueness and sadness of Old Pinget's choice to end his life. He had spent his life working on the Vauderre, originally seduced by the traveling life of a man who worked the sea, and when that was taken away from him he saw no other choice. The villagers take this fact calmly. Just as Old Pinget couldn't continue living with the seduction of the sea, after sleeping with Georgette, Joseph knows that she is not the answer either and there is only one way to sate his hunger for Miss Annabella is to be with her. Running from the village and a murder he committed, he escapes in a small boat.

But at that same moment, he notices that a wire has been stretched above him from a mountain peak on one side of the lake to a peak on the other. Is it above or below? Does he see her from below looking up, or is he seeing her from the top looking down? Above and below, it's the same thing. He rotates the blade of the knife one more time; and she is slipping away, but he is slipping away from himself, and so will catch up with her.

Not the escape we want for Joseph, but it is the only escape he sees.
<>br There are few writers who have such a restrained, lyric style that examine the metaphysical questions the arise in life with such honesty. This is not only a novel well worth reading, but a writer worth discovering.