Photo noir blanc de Ramuz de dos, assis à son bureau en train d’écrire. Le plan est large.

It is striking to see that the writer worked in a room with barred windows. This was the case at L’Acacia, the apartment where he lived on Avenue de Cour, Lausanne, between 1916 and 1929. His study there was on the first floor. At La Muette, it was on the mezzanine floor, in a room used by the steward when the house was attached to a wine estate: the bars were used to protect the money kept there. The barred windows at La Muette, to which Ramuz refers in several texts, became a symbol of the writer’s confinement. A veritable workaholic, Ramuz showed great discipline in his writing, to the point where he no longer pursued any other activity Over time, as he came to identify with his work, Ramuz became a solitary worker, to the point of obsession.

« I feel ever more acutely, in order to drive a work to its conclusion, how necessary isolation and concentration are: forget the outside world, live in the atmosphere of your characters, isolate yourself, make a vacuum around yourself and in a way momentarily deform yourself. »

Diary, July 26, 1901

Caption

C. F. Ramuz at his desk in La Muette, n.d.

© Keystone/Robert Walser Stiftung Bern/Carl Seelig