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Farewell

Honoré de Balzac

Book Overview: 

In his startling and tragic novella Farewell, 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 traumatize 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…

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .able a being could be called a woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow's neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels; for her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red. There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven, but white as a dog's.

"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.

She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with a contorted smile painful to see.

"Where are we? What is the . . . Read More

Community Reviews

La Beresina dans les yeux de Balzac. Un chef d’œuvre

nevezano za knjigu ali do you get deja vu when she's with you majmune glupi

One of the most beautifully heartbreaking stories I've ever read.

Publicado em 1830, faz parte dos Estudos Filosóficos dentro da Comédia Humana.
Trata-se de um conto cuja ação se passa em 1812 e narra a derrota dos franceses pelos russos devido ao gelado inverno; descreve a evacuação de Beresina onde milhares de soldados morreram de frio e fome.
Uma dama francesa e

Αυτό το έργο είναι κάτι περισσότερο από αυτό που αρχικά φαίνεται.

Δημοσιεύτηκε στο περιοδικό La Mode, σε συνέχειες, τον Μάιο - Ιούνιο του 1830, με τίτλο “Στρατιωτικά ενθυμήματα, Αντίο” (Souvenirs soldatesques, Adieu). Το υλικό για την ιστορία του, ο συγγραφέας, το άντλησε πρωτίστως από δύο φίλους το

Lost love can so damage the mind that the physical person becomes barely recognizable. This story is a great example of how some people change after lost love while other become stuck at the mental point of abandonment. When the abandonment is resolved, the shock is so great, the physical shell whic

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