Complete audio book (in French) posted here.
Pere Goriot, Chapter 1 -excerpts
Also, the opening pages of Chapter 1 (as a downloadable Word document, above).
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Diana Brown (a voracious and perspicacious reader), host of the site
Thoughts on Papyrus: Exploration of Literature, Cultures and Knowledge
has a new post
“Review: Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac”
at
https://ideasonpapyrus.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/review-le-pere-goriot-by-honore-de-balzac/
Her post got me to thinking about Le Père Goriot, one of my all-time favorite books. I read it first in French, in Mr. Walter Albert French 3 class in my freshman year at Brandeis University. Mr. Albert was an outstanding teacher.
I decided to post the complete audiobook, read in the original French.
I will leave the commentary on Le Père Goriot to Ms. Brown. But I recall that my college best friend John Ferris also read the novel in French class, and that it was one of his favorites. John was a sociology major and a polymath. (He encouraged me to go with him to audit a lecture on James Joyce’s story “Araby” by the revered professor and poet Allen Grossman which I never forgot). John made the point to me that Mme. Vauquer’s boarding house in the novel (Le Père Goriot) is a microcosm of society, with the different floors representing different levels of social standing. The unappreciated and neglected (by his social climber daughters) Père Goriot lives in a garret on the top floor.
I have read Le Père Goriot several times in both the original French and English translation.
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email, Roger Smith to Diana Brown
July 26, 2020
Loved your brilliant post on “Père Goriot,” Diana. It’s one of my all-time favorite novels and probably Balzac’s best. I first read it in college in French. I had a very good professor for third year French.
I’ve read “Père Goriot” several times in both French and English. It and Balzac’s unique genius can be enjoyed and appreciated on many levels. Mme. Vauquer’s boarding house is indeed a microcosm of society; and she, and the others, is a character only a Balzac or a Charles Dickens could create.
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addendum:
For reference, I have posted the text of the first few pages of Chapter 1, in English translation (by A. J. Krailsheimer), here. The brilliance of the novel is apparent from the first few lines. I have sometimes thought of Balzac as a sort of French Theodore Dreiser (or the reverse); Dreiser in his formative years was greatly influenced by Balzac’s novels. But, without intending disrespect to Dreiser, I would say that Balzac is unquestionably the greater writer. Both Dreiser and Balzac wrote hastily, without fussing over niceties of style. Both had a capacity to create great stories and unforgettable characters.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
August 2020