Farewell: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Farewell, credited to Honoré de Balzac, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Farewell, by Honoré de Balzac. Read by Martin Geeson. In his startling and tragic novella Farewell (‘Adieu’), Balzac adds to the 19th century’s literature of the hysterical woman: sequestered, confined in her madness; mute, or eerily chanting in her moated grange. The first Mrs Rochester lurks in the wings; the Lady of Shalott waits for the shadowy reflection of the world outside to shatter her illusion. Freud’s earliest patients will soon enter the waiting-room in their turn. Whilst out hunting two friends come across a strange waif-like woman shut up in a decaying chateau which one of them dubs “the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty”. Soon we are dragged back to the terrible masculine reality of the 1812 retreat of Napoleon’s army from Moscow and the grotesque massacre that was to traumatise the heroine, parting her from her lover. Their reunion is more desperate still, as the earlier event is recreated in a bizarre and vain attempt to root out madness and compel the return of happiness… (Summary by Martin Geeson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Farewell
• Author credits: Honoré de Balzac
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 2:28:34

Catalogue topics

• French literature
• war stories.

Track guide

1. 1 - Come, Deputy of the Centre — 17:05
2. 2 - It was like some haunted spot — 20:38
3. 3 - The prudent magistrate, recognizing — 20:40
4. 4 - Some thirty stragglers were sitting — 20:29
5. 5 - They set out for the Russian lines — 19:34
6. 6 - An icy shiver ran through — 19:32
7. 7 - The Baron de Sucy spent — 13:37
8. 8 - The colonel left the Minorite convent — 17:00

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.