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A review by angelayoung
Beauty on Earth by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
5.0
This is an astonishing novel. I speak nothing but ordering-in-a-restaurant / booking-a-hotel-room French so I can only think that Michelle Bailat-Jones, the translator, is a poet as well as - obviously - a fluent French speaker because this novel, which I read in her translation, reads like liquid music. It flows between different points of view, including the first person plural so that we, the readers, are drawn in to the story, and it flows between events and characters seamlessly.
As I was searching for the right words to describe the novel's effect on me, I found them - as so often with a good novel - in the text itself. Water is very important to the main character, Juliette, and to the men she goes to stay with. She has come from across the water and they are fishermen or, as one of them says, 'We're water people ... [not land people who are] forced to follow a path ... between two walls, between two hedges ... . It's full of rules [on the land]. Full of No Trespassing ... . As for me ... for us, we go where we want. We've got everything because we have nothing.' This novel is as fluid as the water it loves.
And having everything because we have nothing. That seems to me to be what Beauty on Earth is about, and also how it is written: each reader must engage with the images the words conjure and see what she finds, like looking at trees reflected in rippling water. 'We'll cross water,' says the same character, later on, 'we'll cross the water and over there it's another country and they can't do anything to us ... it will be better.' We will find meaning if we float where the novel takes us.
And it's about how beauty cannot be - and should not be - pinned down or possessed. The beauty of the young woman who comes from another country is never exactly described, which makes it possible for us to imagine her for ourselves:
But, naturally although sadly, there are attempts to tie beauty down, to possess her, because the villagers cannot cope with such beauty in their midst. They don't know what to do with her, or how to live alongside her. They react in different ways but their ways are all destructive. The only person who has no desire to destroy beauty is an ugly hunchbacked musician whose music she loves.
As for the exact nature of the story, it seemed to me that parts of it must be divined from the beautiful images it creates and lodges in the reader's mind. Like beauty itself the story cannot be described exactly. Each reader must divine the story for herself, must be the beholder and discover the story's beauty for herself. And therein lies its attraction.
As I was searching for the right words to describe the novel's effect on me, I found them - as so often with a good novel - in the text itself. Water is very important to the main character, Juliette, and to the men she goes to stay with. She has come from across the water and they are fishermen or, as one of them says, 'We're water people ... [not land people who are] forced to follow a path ... between two walls, between two hedges ... . It's full of rules [on the land]. Full of No Trespassing ... . As for me ... for us, we go where we want. We've got everything because we have nothing.' This novel is as fluid as the water it loves.
And having everything because we have nothing. That seems to me to be what Beauty on Earth is about, and also how it is written: each reader must engage with the images the words conjure and see what she finds, like looking at trees reflected in rippling water. 'We'll cross water,' says the same character, later on, 'we'll cross the water and over there it's another country and they can't do anything to us ... it will be better.' We will find meaning if we float where the novel takes us.
And it's about how beauty cannot be - and should not be - pinned down or possessed. The beauty of the young woman who comes from another country is never exactly described, which makes it possible for us to imagine her for ourselves:
The girl, the girl had nothing but a little black dress with a black lace handkerchief tied around her hair (which we thought must have been the fashion in the country where she came from). It didn't matter ... the first words which had flown through the air had painted her in another way and with beautiful colours; that description still served.Or
This is when she reappeared; and there was great joy on the mountains. She walked forward, she walked beneath her silk scarf; as she walked forward, we could see the long fringe slide up the length of her legs, then split to fall along each rounded side of them. She placed her lovely bare feet on the stones. And then, suddenly the yellow shawl was gone, - at the same time Decosterd pushed the Juliette [the boat the fishermen have named after her] into the water, at the same time the mountains shone bright, the fish were jumping out of the water. - but she was shining now too, her bare arms shone, her broad shoulders shone.
But, naturally although sadly, there are attempts to tie beauty down, to possess her, because the villagers cannot cope with such beauty in their midst. They don't know what to do with her, or how to live alongside her. They react in different ways but their ways are all destructive. The only person who has no desire to destroy beauty is an ugly hunchbacked musician whose music she loves.
As for the exact nature of the story, it seemed to me that parts of it must be divined from the beautiful images it creates and lodges in the reader's mind. Like beauty itself the story cannot be described exactly. Each reader must divine the story for herself, must be the beholder and discover the story's beauty for herself. And therein lies its attraction.