Journal des Goncourt (Deuxième série, premier volume) Mémoires de la vie littéraire

A candid, day‑by‑day account opens the volume, letting listeners hear the intimate voice of a writer who feels compelled to record the raw truth of his time. He moves from quiet moments in his family home to the unsettling memories of loss, describing the small domestic details that linger in his mind. The diary immediately places us in the turbulent summer of 1870, as the siege of Paris and the fledgling Commune loom on the horizon.

Interwoven with personal grief are striking anecdotes that capture the absurdity and horror of war—a cannon’s wheel greased with a fallen soldier’s brain, a curé’s modest parish house, and the ever‑present chatter of a faithful dog. The narrator’s yearning to preserve these fragments “until twenty years after his death” gives the journal a poignant urgency, while his reflections on love, faith, and everyday hardship create a vivid portrait of life on the brink of upheaval. Listeners will feel the tension between private sorrow and public turmoil, all narrated in a voice that is both tender and unflinching.