Alexandre Dumas — The Nutcracker, Part 2

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Alexandre Dumas — The Nutcracker, Part 2 The story continues. Marie lies in bed with her arm cut by the glass of the toy cupboard, and no one in the house — not her mother, not the medical counsellor — will believe a word of her story of the midnight battle. Then Godfather Drosselmayer comes to sit by her bed, mending the Nutcracker's jaw as if nothing had happened, and to make his peace with her he tells the tale within the tale: the story of the hard nut Krakatuk and of Princess Pirlipate. A queen's lard is eaten by Dame Souriconne and her seven sons; a curse is laid upon the most beautiful baby in the world; the king's mechanician and his astrologer journey fourteen years through the four parts of the world in search of the hardest nut ever grown — and of the young man, born to crack it, who must never have shaved and never have worn boots. The part ends where Dumas ends it: "It is a hard nut to crack." Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 0:35 — Introduction 1:54 — Chapter Six — The Sickness 11:13 — The Story of the Nut Krakatuk and of Princess Pirlipate — How Princess Pirlipate Was Born 36:16 — How Dame Souriconne Fulfilled Her Threat Against Princess Pirlipate 58:07 — How the Mechanician and the Astrologer Journeyed Through the Four Parts of the World 1:14:18 — How, Having Found the Nut Krakatuk, They Found the Young Man Who Was to Crack It KacheliTV tells Dumas's Nutcracker whole, in four parts, in a translation made fresh from his French for this season. This second part is told whole as Dumas printed it — Chapter Six complete, and the whole history of the nut Krakatuk, nothing cut. One honest note for the listener: the tale within the tale keeps its fairy-tale peril in the old register — Dame Souriconne's seven sons and a great company of her mouse kindred fall to the royal mousetraps in brief summary, and Dame Souriconne herself dies under a careless heel, with a long, comic, rhyming dying speech that ends in a squeak. It is all menace, curse and slapstick at a storyteller's distance; no human being is harmed. Part Three continues with the Nutcracker's own story — the uncle and the nephew, the journey to the capital, and the kingdom of the dolls. Music: opening and closing themes and story separators from "Gangster Piano Symphony"; the quiet background bed under the reading is "Golden Hour Raga 2". Source: Alexandre Dumas, Histoire d'un casse-noisette (1844), French text from Project Gutenberg eBook #5104 — public domain; English translation made fresh in-house for KacheliTV. The Alexandre Dumas season is an ongoing KacheliTV season of Dumas's works, told in parts; no completeness is claimed for the season. Retold aloud by KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.