Swiss Review 2/2021

Swiss Review / April 2021 / No.2 17 Literature comes to rest next to her hand: “Pitschna indiana / cul bindè cotschen / Dasper teis man brün” (“Little Amerin- dian / with the red ribbon / next to your brown skin”). The effortless quality of Famos’s vernacular poetry is as- tonishing both here and in the context of the Engadine Alps. Famos also addressed the theme of death relatively early in her life – and most movingly in the 1972 poem “L’Ala de la mort” (The wing of death), written after her return to Switzerland, which ends as fol- lows: “Davo ais gnüda la not / Sainza gnir s-chür / Stailas han cumanzà lur gir / E Tü o Dieu / Am d’eirast sten dastrusch” (“Then night fell / without warn- ing / Stars began their nocturnal dance / And you, my God / were next to me.”). These are the fare- well verses of a poet eternally re- membered as a beautiful young woman. Before they appeared in “Inscunters” (Encounters), Famos had lost her battle to cancer on 28 June 1974, aged 43. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Luisa Famos’s poems (in the original Romansh with German translations) are available in “Unterwegs / In viadi”; Limmat-Verlag, Zurich. CHARLES L INSMAYER IS A L I TERARY SCHOL AR AND JOURNAL IST IN ZÜRICH CHARLES L INSMAYER “Trais randulinas / Battan lur alas / Vi dal tschêl d’instà // Minchatant tremblan / Trais sumbrivas /Sülla fatschad’ alba / Da ma chà.” This is a Romansch poem called “Lügl a Ramosch” (July in Ramosch), which reads like this in English: “Three swallows / open their wings / into the summer sky // Three shadows / quiver sometimes / on the white facade / of my house.” It was inRamosch, a village in deepest Engadine, that the poem’s author Luisa Famos was born in 1930. Famos chose themost attractive career path for girls of that era: gaining her qualifications inChur to become a teacher in Sertig (near Davos) and in Guarda (near Scuol). Yet her childhoodmemories of Ramosch remainedwith her for- ever. Once she began to put pen to paper in 1959 while studying literature in Paris, she soon realised that the fields, pines, flowers and swallows of Engadine onlymade sense to her in her native language, Romansch. Famos had a genuine talent forwords.With an innate sense of piety and a longing for love and endearment, she lent brilliant, long-lasting intensity to these memories – the fluffy clouds of summer, the sound of church bells, stars twinkling in the night sky – without ever descend- ing into kitsch. In 1960, she published the widely ac- claimed “Mumaints” (Moments) – a collection of poems – following her literary debut in the “Chalender Ladin” al- manac. (Famos had returned to Switzerland by then and was teaching at a school in the canton of Zurich.) But Famos had no wish to become Engadine’s resi- dent poet. Instead, she chose to work in television from 1962, where she presented the first-ever Romansch pro- gramme “Il balcun tort”. However, Famosmoved to Hon- duras in 1969with engineer Jürg Pünter, withwhomshe was nowmarried, and her two children. She went on to Venezuela in 1971. During a three-year sojourn, Famos showed that her poetic range was by no means limited to Grisons, but that her Romansh lyrics were also very well suited to describing the landscapes and people of Latin America – and, indeed, breaking away from the en- vironment of white colonial privilege to bring the plight of indigenous populations into heart-rending focus. Her memorable poem “Pitschna indiana” (Little Am- erindian), which tells of an indigenous Amerindian girl who is run over by a truck, is like a plaintive cry for help. At the end of the poem, the red ribbon in the girl’s hair Honduras and Venezuela in Romansh Luisa Famos’s poignant, inspiring works evoke memories of her Engadine homeland as well as her encounters in Latin America D’ingionder ch’eu vegn Where I am coming from Ingio ch’eu giarà Where I am going Chi’m sa dir Who can tell me Sch’eu sun Whether I am Sch’eu sun stat Whether I was Sch’eu sarà Whether I will be Chi’m sa dir Who can tell me Porta’m vent Carry me wind Sün ti’ ala On your wing Bütta’m flüm Throw me river A la riva On to the bank