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Front cover of Riversong of the Rhône
Skomlin Press

Riversong of the Rhône

Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (Author) · Patti M Marxsen (Translator) · Susan Tiberghien (Foreword by)

ISBN 9780987401434

Format Perfect BoundPages 104USD $16.95 · GBP £11.95 · EUR €14.95 · AUD A$20.95Category TRAVEL / Europe / Switzerland
"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 Pléiade Edition from Gallimard (Paris) and Éditions Slatkine in Geneva has completed 29 volumes of Ramuz's Oeuvres Complètes (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 Rhône 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

Riversong of the Rhone is a beautiful book. And still more beautiful if we take the time to listen to it as well as to read it. To listen to the song of the river. It is the music that turns the pages that tunes the heart of the reader to the beauty of the words. To the beauty of the Rhone River and its riversides the home of the author—and composer—C.F. Ramuz.Riversong of the Rhone is a beautiful book. And still more beautiful if we take the time to listen to it as well as to read it. To listen to the song of the river. It is the music that turns the pages that tunes the heart of the reader to the beauty of the words. To the beauty of the Rhone River and its riversides the home of the author—and composer—C.F. Ramuz.

To order

Available to the trade through Ingram / Lightning Source International. Order by ISBN 9780987401434 through iPage, by EDI, or by calling 1-800-937-8000. Skomlin Press publisher ID is 6060282. Full ordering information.

Contributors

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947) was a French-language Swiss novelist and poet, born in Lausanne, in the canton of Vaud. Writing in a distinctive, incantatory prose rooted in the landscape and peasantry of French-speaking Switzerland, he became the central figure of Suisse romande literature; his portrait later appeared on the Swiss 200-franc banknote, and his Histoire du soldat (1918) was written in collaboration with Igor Stravinsky. Skomlin publishes six of his novels in English translation: Beauty on Earth, The Reign of the Evil One, Riversong of the Rhone, What if the sun..., Derborence, and Farinet's Gold.
Patti M MarxsenTranslator
Patti M. Marxsen is an American essayist, biographer and translator whose work has appeared in Asymptote, The French Review and the Women's Review of Books. Her critical biography Jacques Roumain: A Life of Resistance won the 2019 Haitian Studies Association Book Prize, and her essay 'Gateau de Payerne' took the inaugural Geneva Writers' Group Literary Award for Non-Fiction. A devotee of Ramuz during her years in Switzerland, she has translated both his prose-poem Riversong of the Rhone and the novel Passage of the Poet. This bilingual edition carries a foreword by Susan Tiberghien.
Susan TiberghienForeword by