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Ramuz’s sense of the tragic and his taste for pranks are two facets of the same personality. Though distrustful and lacking in confidence in all things (starting with himself), Ramuz was not without a sense of humor. In his letters, in his published texts and in his conversations, he liked to poke fun and mock, and had a penchant for irony and sarcasm.

In Ramuz, notre parrain, Hélène Cingria recalls a man far removed from the image established by literary success. A character close to children, always ready to play and joke, completely free of constraints and whimsical, much to the delight of the offspring of the painter Alexandre Cingria, a long-standing friend of the author, but to the despair of their mother, for whom Ramuz’s visits were synonymous with noise and disorder. Hélène Cingria called him Maruz.