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Into the Sun
It’s been a hot summer for a Swiss lakeside town—both bucolic and citylike, old-fashioned and up-to-date—when a “great message,” telegraphed from one continent to another, announces an “accident in the gravitational system." Something has gone wrong with the axis of the Earth that will send our planet plunging into the sun: it’s the end of the world, though one hardly notices it, yet ... “Thus all life will come to an end. The heat will rise. It will be excruciating for all living things … And yet nothing is visible for the moment.”
For now the surface of the lake is as calm as can be, and the wine harvest promises to be sweet. Most flowers, however, have died. The stars grow bigger, and the sun turns from orange-red to red, and then to black-red. First comes denial: “The news is from America, you know what that means.” Then come first farewells: counting and naming beloved things—the rectangular meadows, the grapes on the vines, the lake. In its beauty the world is saying, “Look at me,” before it ends.
The prophetic Into the Sun vividly voices the initial disbelief, the rejection of the increasingly obvious facts, and the suppression of the gnawing doubts. Ramuz describes denial, fear, melancholy, despair, reckless abandon, and a swift slide into anarchy. Everyone seeks relief in the lake while the sun drinks it up “as if through a straw.” Ramuz’s terrifyingly gripping scenario of a burning planet and the demise of humankind—now so fatefully on our horizon—is a stirring blast from the past, a truly hair-raising tour de force.
For now the surface of the lake is as calm as can be, and the wine harvest promises to be sweet. Most flowers, however, have died. The stars grow bigger, and the sun turns from orange-red to red, and then to black-red. First comes denial: “The news is from America, you know what that means.” Then come first farewells: counting and naming beloved things—the rectangular meadows, the grapes on the vines, the lake. In its beauty the world is saying, “Look at me,” before it ends.
The prophetic Into the Sun vividly voices the initial disbelief, the rejection of the increasingly obvious facts, and the suppression of the gnawing doubts. Ramuz describes denial, fear, melancholy, despair, reckless abandon, and a swift slide into anarchy. Everyone seeks relief in the lake while the sun drinks it up “as if through a straw.” Ramuz’s terrifyingly gripping scenario of a burning planet and the demise of humankind—now so fatefully on our horizon—is a stirring blast from the past, a truly hair-raising tour de force.
144 pages, Paperback
Published August 19, 2025
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December 30, 2025Perhaps a little too cerebral for my tastes, but the premise is compelling enough I’m sticking with this
September 29, 2025
It seems these days, that few books live up to their exciting premise, but this, though I hurriedly add was first published in 1922, certainly does.
One day the news of earth’s imminent destruction is announced by telegram. “Because of an accident within the gravitational system,” the telegram says, “the Earth is rapidly plunging into the sun.” It continues, “The heat will rise and rapidly everything will die.”
Science fiction, perhaps, but such an impossible scenario may better be termed as speculative fiction. But Ramuz picks it up and runs with it, and it enables him to do some great things. His characters, none of which he seems to like very much, are banded together without status; everyone is about to die at the same time, ‘For there is no longer any difference between them.’
This news arrives to an idyllic Swiss village in June, enjoying an unusually hot and dry, and splendid summer. At first it fails to penetrate the consciousness of the villagers and vacationers, they think it’s from America, and invented to liven up the newspapers. But events proceed rapidly; there is a workers’s uprising, the trains cease, revolution turns to anarchy.
It’s republication in a new translation a couple of months ago by New Directions is opportune. A natural disaster threatening civilization, the news greeted with denial, an unbearable heat, struggles over resources, a growing sense of doom. But this was 1922, and though one might expect World War references this is more like a fable told in Ramuz’s lyrical prose. He manages to keep the ‘what if it’s true?’ sense of alarm throughout. It’s less of a warning to mankind, rather a meditation on mortality.
One day the news of earth’s imminent destruction is announced by telegram. “Because of an accident within the gravitational system,” the telegram says, “the Earth is rapidly plunging into the sun.” It continues, “The heat will rise and rapidly everything will die.”
Science fiction, perhaps, but such an impossible scenario may better be termed as speculative fiction. But Ramuz picks it up and runs with it, and it enables him to do some great things. His characters, none of which he seems to like very much, are banded together without status; everyone is about to die at the same time, ‘For there is no longer any difference between them.’
This news arrives to an idyllic Swiss village in June, enjoying an unusually hot and dry, and splendid summer. At first it fails to penetrate the consciousness of the villagers and vacationers, they think it’s from America, and invented to liven up the newspapers. But events proceed rapidly; there is a workers’s uprising, the trains cease, revolution turns to anarchy.
It’s republication in a new translation a couple of months ago by New Directions is opportune. A natural disaster threatening civilization, the news greeted with denial, an unbearable heat, struggles over resources, a growing sense of doom. But this was 1922, and though one might expect World War references this is more like a fable told in Ramuz’s lyrical prose. He manages to keep the ‘what if it’s true?’ sense of alarm throughout. It’s less of a warning to mankind, rather a meditation on mortality.
May 21, 2025
Ramuz is a fascinating early 20th C. Swiss writer whose subtly thought-provoking work is ripe for rediscovery. Case in point: Into The Sun's eerily prescient story revealing the beauty and pain of ordinary people reacting to the sudden revolt of the natural world: elegantly unsettling. 9/10
August 18, 2025
oh wow, this is a unique book.
Faced with the guaranteed end of the world by being engulfed by the sun, what does humanity mean? with nothing to fight for, nothing to work for, nothing to live for, is humanity ultimately about survival of the fittest? living traditionally and ignoring the inevitable? sharing what is left with each other?
Of course, there is no answer. in the end, we are alone, yet we are together.
As Tom Lehrer said, we will all go together when we go".
Contextually, an interesting read to understand the mindset of French people and culture following the seemingly world-ending Great War. people's reaction to tragedies cannot be predicted- but perhaps the fact that we have different reactions in the face of tragedy is what makes up humanity.
I'll have to reread this again to actually make sense of this. it's very cyclical, by which I mean that the end is the beginning, and the beginning the end.
Faced with the guaranteed end of the world by being engulfed by the sun, what does humanity mean? with nothing to fight for, nothing to work for, nothing to live for, is humanity ultimately about survival of the fittest? living traditionally and ignoring the inevitable? sharing what is left with each other?
Of course, there is no answer. in the end, we are alone, yet we are together.
As Tom Lehrer said, we will all go together when we go".
Contextually, an interesting read to understand the mindset of French people and culture following the seemingly world-ending Great War. people's reaction to tragedies cannot be predicted- but perhaps the fact that we have different reactions in the face of tragedy is what makes up humanity.
I'll have to reread this again to actually make sense of this. it's very cyclical, by which I mean that the end is the beginning, and the beginning the end.
August 26, 2025
The whole premise of this novel was too exciting to be put down. Here we have a climate disaster novel that depicts the terminal days of the planet when the Earth starts slowly plunging into the sun owing to an "accident in the gravitational system". It started out well enough, but as I advanced further into the novel, I was pretty much stumped by the way the narrative petered out. The writer has a tough, indirect style that speaks out to you on several fronts. It's eminently a third-person narrative, and it is as if the writer is narrating the events in his nonchalant manner, and at the same time, he is trying to reflect the different viewpoints that might exist for each event in reckoning. Probably the writer was trying his best to work in a style reminiscent of some of the master navigators of the human psyche that we had in the past, and it is worth noting that the person in question was a prolific Swiss-French novelist of the early part of the twentieth century. So it is without doubt that he was being influenced by such a dense and cerebral style which seemed, to me at least, to be too involved for a novel that has as its thematic semblance steeped in climate disaster. Nevertheless, it is a wonderfully prescient and careening account of a dreadful reality that humanity will face in the distant future.
The translators, in their afterword, has to say a lot about Ramuz's style:
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, one of the great Swiss writers of the twentieth century, wrote in French, but sought to capture something beyond “le bon français” in his writing. Rather than the “langue morte” of the French he learned in school, he composed a living language, something that could utter life itself. He wanted to express the texture of his native Swiss countryside, how Vaudois French is tossed around the mouth, how his countrymen walk up a mountain or down a country lane.......In his manifesto Raison d’être, Ramuz proclaims: “O, accent, you are in our words, but you are not yet in our art. You are in the gestures, you are in the bearing, and even in the shuffling step of the person who returns from harvesting or pruning his vineyard: consider this gait and the fact that our sentences don’t have it.”........
.........Ramuz’s quest to communicate how life is truly lived went beyond punctuation and rhythm to include abrupt shifts in tense to show that everything is always happening simultaneously, that nothing is separate from anything else, that there is no such thing as a tidy chronology when we are talking about the substance of life. The havoc of nature is happening, and already happened. You are frightened because it is happening, and because you can do nothing to prevent it since it has already happened.........With the present tense in parenthesis, the all-seeing Ramuz is commenting in real time about the past actions he’s recounting. In the land of Ramuz, this present is always inextricably linked with the past, with the future.
He uses repetition to the same dizzying end, amplifying the ricochets around us until we have lost our sense of time and place, swept up in the inevitable victory of the natural world.....
Evidently, there is a lot to look forward to with this writer, recently rediscovered by New Directions, and I aim to explore his style further.
The translators, in their afterword, has to say a lot about Ramuz's style:
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, one of the great Swiss writers of the twentieth century, wrote in French, but sought to capture something beyond “le bon français” in his writing. Rather than the “langue morte” of the French he learned in school, he composed a living language, something that could utter life itself. He wanted to express the texture of his native Swiss countryside, how Vaudois French is tossed around the mouth, how his countrymen walk up a mountain or down a country lane.......In his manifesto Raison d’être, Ramuz proclaims: “O, accent, you are in our words, but you are not yet in our art. You are in the gestures, you are in the bearing, and even in the shuffling step of the person who returns from harvesting or pruning his vineyard: consider this gait and the fact that our sentences don’t have it.”........
.........Ramuz’s quest to communicate how life is truly lived went beyond punctuation and rhythm to include abrupt shifts in tense to show that everything is always happening simultaneously, that nothing is separate from anything else, that there is no such thing as a tidy chronology when we are talking about the substance of life. The havoc of nature is happening, and already happened. You are frightened because it is happening, and because you can do nothing to prevent it since it has already happened.........With the present tense in parenthesis, the all-seeing Ramuz is commenting in real time about the past actions he’s recounting. In the land of Ramuz, this present is always inextricably linked with the past, with the future.
He uses repetition to the same dizzying end, amplifying the ricochets around us until we have lost our sense of time and place, swept up in the inevitable victory of the natural world.....
Evidently, there is a lot to look forward to with this writer, recently rediscovered by New Directions, and I aim to explore his style further.
November 25, 2025
Loved it! Beautiful lyrical writing
September 23, 2025
Into the Sun is a eulogy, a dirge, and a requiem for The Earth, who is dying faster than the people upon it. In the rich and poetic history weaving among the dying and death of the people and their Earth, the reader sees that once the people loved the earth and loved each other until the powers of war created bondage. More wars were fought internally and externally ostensibly for freedom. Hah! Wars for the illusion of freedom. Because throughout it all, the people stopped loving. Stopped loving themselves, each other, and especially the Earth as it began to tip towards the sun.
Ramuz's deeply poetic telling of the people writhingly dying, still killing each other, and the Earth is visceral. How is it - it being history and current events - different than 100 years ago? Sadly and writhingly so, it is not different, only more progressed.
Ramuz is an exquisite writer. I am reminded of D.H.Lawrence, and the ability to express conflict, love, hatred, power in a ceaseless and emotional frenzy. Proceed at your own risk.
Next time I read it, I will have Henri Gorecki Symphony No 3 playing.
Ramuz's deeply poetic telling of the people writhingly dying, still killing each other, and the Earth is visceral. How is it - it being history and current events - different than 100 years ago? Sadly and writhingly so, it is not different, only more progressed.
Ramuz is an exquisite writer. I am reminded of D.H.Lawrence, and the ability to express conflict, love, hatred, power in a ceaseless and emotional frenzy. Proceed at your own risk.
Next time I read it, I will have Henri Gorecki Symphony No 3 playing.
September 18, 2025
Poetic, dreamlike end-of-the-world tale, originally published in 1922 in France. It can be a little hard to follow but just stick with it, it's got some really lyrical passages, giving your brain lots of knotty imagery to chew on (it's also very short, I read it within a day).
October 13, 2025
An early twentieth-century, polyphonic, apocalyptic novel in the vein of Wells and Bradbury; a precursor to THE STAND, even. Didn't connect as well as I'd hoped, but the prescience, the depiction of societal collapse, the off-handed style, is quite rich.
September 22, 2025
Hard to believe this was written over a century ago. It's an intense fever-dream of societal collapse due to rapid climate change.
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