Ursula
Honoré de Balzac
Read by Bruce Pirie
“Ursula,” first published in French in 1841 as “Ursule Mirouët,” is part of Balzac’s great suite of novels, collectively titled “The Human Comedy.”
A wealthy, elderly doctor has raised as his goddaughter a child who is the daughter of his deceased brother-in-law — a man who was himself illegitimate by birth. The doctor retires to a provincial town that is filled with his relatives by birth and inter-marriage. By French inheritance laws of the time, these relatives have a right to expect at least a share of the doctor’s wealth upon his death. In contrast, the beloved goddaughter — who is legally not “related” to him — has no automatic claim to inheritance. This sets up a situation in which the crass and materialistic relatives frantically try to lay hands on the whole of the doctor’s inheritance.
There is also in the novel a strand of occult spiritualism. Balzac was fascinated by paranormal and mystical experience. Here we see evidence of his interest in Franz Mesmer’s theories (“mesmerism” prefiguring the later science of hypnotism) and the ideas of the Swedish mystical theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Modern readers — who may think of Balzac as one of the founders of realism in fiction — probably scoff at and discount the brief episodes of seances and occultism. In truth, however, Balzac’s interest in these fields was shared by many European intellectuals and artists of his time. However improbable these elements may seem to us today, for Balzac, the spiritual and the material worlds were not contradictory exclusions, but realities that reach into each other’s realms.
Balzac himself considered this novel to be the very best that he had written up to this point in his career. - Summary by Bruce Pirie (10 hr 52 min)
Chapters
The frightened heirs | 36:23 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The rich uncle | 33:57 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The doctor's friends | 33:28 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Zélie | 29:18 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Ursula | 30:11 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
A treatise on mesmerism | 42:00 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
A two-fold conversion | 21:27 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The conference | 24:34 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
A first confidence | 30:10 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The family of Portenduère | 29:45 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Savinien saved | 39:00 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Obstacles to young love | 24:46 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Betrothal of hearts | 40:46 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Ursula again orphaned | 22:31 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The doctor's will | 38:35 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The two adversaries | 21:28 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
The malignity of provincial minds | 36:08 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
A two-fold vengeance | 31:55 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Apparitions | 40:28 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Remorse | 19:04 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Showing how difficult it is to steal that which seems very easily stolen | 27:01 | Read by Bruce Pirie |
Reviews
D I elightfully French!
Michele Fry
Bruce Pirie is the perfect reader for this material. Charming from first word to last.
EAC
Greatest of H. de Balzac by one of the greatest reader in Librivox ! Highly recommend this book.
Compelling story, well read by Bruce Piere
Cathy Murray