Edgar Allen Poe “The Raven”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

Alfred Lord Tennyson “Enoch Arden”

AFB staff member:

The American Foundation for the Blind presents “Enoch Arden” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. With the music composed especially for this poem by Richard Strauss. Narrated by Paul Leysac with Ibner King at the piano. Recorded on two records solely for the use of the blind.

Instrumental music.

Paul Leysac, narrator:

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.

Instrumental music

Oscar Wilde “The Birthday of the Infanta”

Narrator (Alexander Scourby) introduces Eva Le Gallienne:

The American Foundation for the Blind has the honor to present the distinguished American actress Eva Le Gallienne who has graciously consented to visit our studios and read for the talking books. But perhaps Miss Le Gallienne would like to tell us herself what she is going to read. Miss Le Gallienne…

Eva Le Gallienne, narrator:

It’s always a great joy to share with others the things one particularly loves. And I happen to love this story of Oscar Wilde The Birthday of the Infanta. And so it gives me great pleasure to read it to you.

The Birthday of the Infanta, by Oscar Wilde.

It was the birthday of the Infanta. She was just twelve years of age, and the sun was shining brightly in the gardens of the palace.

Although she was a real Princess and the Infanta of Spain, she had only one birthday every year, just like the children of quite poor people, so it was naturally a matter of great importance to the whole country that she should have a really fine day for the occasion. And a really fine day it certainly was. The tall striped tulips stood straight up upon their stalks, like long rows of soldiers, and looked defiantly across the grass at the roses, and said: 'We are quite as splendid as you are now.' The purple butterflies fluttered about with gold dust on their wings, visiting each flower in turn; the little lizards crept out of the crevices of the wall, and lay basking in the white glare; and the pomegranates split and cracked with the heat, and showed their bleeding red hearts. Even the pale yellow lemons, that hung in such profusion from the mouldering trellis and along the dim arcades, seemed to have caught a richer color from the wonderful sunlight, and the magnolia trees opened their great globe-like blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy perfume.

The little Princess herself walked up and down the terrace with her companions, and played at hide and seek round the stone vases and the old moss-grown statues. On ordinary days she was only allowed to play with children of her own rank, so she had always to play alone, but her birthday was an exception, and the King had given orders that she was to invite any of her young friends whom she liked to come and amuse themselves with her.

Henrik Ibsen “Hedda Gabler”

Instrumental music.

Narrator (likely Alexander Scourby): The American Foundation for the Blind presents [? Christian] in Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. Translated by Mary Cass Canfield and Ethel Borden. Copyright 1939 by Mary Cass Canfield and Ethel Borden. Recorded solely for the use of the blind with the kind permission of the copyright owners and their agent Leah Salisbury. It was not my desire said Ibsen to deal in this play with so-called problems. What I wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions and human destinies upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day.

The scene is a drawing room in a suburban house in the west end of Christiania, the year 1890. It’s morning, bright sunlight is streaming through the glass veranda door making the tiles of the great Portland stove glisten although it is unlighted on this fine day. The room is full of flowers, they stand in vases on the tables, bunches of them are lying loose on top of the square piano, bouquets and glasses occupy each typical whatnot that flank the doorway to the adjoining room. Through the portieres of this doorway, one catches a glimpse of a sofa against the opposite wall, hanging over it, the large oil portrait of a handsome elderly man in a general’s uniform. The door from the hall is open…

Voice 1 (Miss Tessman?): [Giggling] I do believe they’re still asleep, that strike me, the boat come in so late last night, and then when they got here, just the young mistress had to have unpacked before she’d settle down, you wouldn’t believe...
Voice 2 (Berta?): Really, let the madam a good rest [indecipherable]
Voice 1 (Miss Tessman?): Oh, but for heaven’s sake, let’s open the veranda door and have a little fresh air in here…

Thomas Mann “Buddenbrooks” (preface)

Alexander Scourby: Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, by Thomas Mann, translated from the German by H. T. Low Porter, complete on 44 records, copyright by Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated. Recorded solely for the use of the blind in the talking book studios of American Foundation for the Blind Incorporated, with the kind permission of the copyright owner and publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Read by Alexander Scourby.

I have the honor to present the author of this great novel, Thomas Mann, who will read an introduction which he has been so good as to write especially for the talking book. Dr. Mann

Thomas Mann: My dear hearers, books have their own destinies, says the Latin proverb. I may well apply the saying to this novel of Buddenbrooks. When I wrote it, I was very young and solitary, an unknown beginner in the art of words. I was 23 when I first planned it, or rather when I began to write it, for the word “planned” sounds as though I had worked it out just as it finally stood [technically?] a picture of what I was undertaking. Books have words of their own, often by no means coinciding with the will of the author, they are often considerably ahead of him and in fact the creative process actually consists of a profound and scrupulous attention to what the book really wants and then a faithful carrying out through the author of this objective will, in other words, a feat of significance which almost outstrips the uncertain powers of the youthful author of Buddenbrooks. In short, the destiny of the book was in the first instance internal, it was the destiny inherent in its origins. My idea had been a novel of average size, a story of a merchant family on the Scandinavian model. My enterprise was not overweeningly ambitious, but I repeat the book had ideas of its own. As I wrote my novel about the Hanseatic bourgeoisie took on an epic character, epic proportions, epic spirit. Many and heterogenous elements of my cultural development, French nationalism and impressionism, the gigantic moralism of Tolstoy, the music and motifs of Wagner’s low German and English humor, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, knowledge through pain, the skepticism and symbolism of Ibsen’s dramas all these [dreamed in?] on my book during the two years I worked at it and the result was a psychological narrative of German bourgeois life which had appealed not only to the bourgeois society of Germany but to that of all Europe as well. This fact determines the outward destiny of the book which like its inner one was full of surprises, for me it has long since lost the charm of its first inception and I’ve got tired of its provincial feel. I finished it with very vain hopes of any considerable success. A modest amount of recognition from literary circles was all I expected and at first it seemed as though I was correct for the earliest reactions from the critics were more provoking than pleasurable. The length of the book made difficulties, readers took umbrage at its epic pace, there was said to be a lack of any compelling substance, people compared it to a heavy wagon driving along the side. But it must have had powers of persuasion in it, for the resistance was overcome, slowly at first, then faster and faster the editions followed each other, the fifty, then the hundred came along. In short, the inward destiny of the book, its unanticipated growth repeated itself with outwards. Not only did it swell to millions of copies and become a household classic in Germany, but it reached out into the wide world as well. Its translation into almost all European and some non-European languages proves that a work of art can be very national, can be even regional and local and yet touch the nerve of common human experience. In the forty years of its life, my youthful work has had many astonishing honors paid it, but none has touched me more than this that has been designed for here in America that is to be recorded and so speak to those to whom fate has denied the eyesight to read it, that is very fine and good, for an epic is for the ear more than for the eye. In early times it was said and sung, it was listened to, and as a matter of fact this book too was listened to before it was looked at, when the young author read it aloud as he wrote it to relatives and friends. The epic is closer to music than any other form of literature. It is music. The music of life to which we listen without looking, letting it reach the inward eye through the medium of the ear. May my story, told to those living in darkness, bring them a little inward light, a little joy of the mind.

Tour of the Talking Book Factory, 1959

AFB staff narrator: The record pressing plant is located in the basement because of the heavy weight and vibration of equipment [another man’s voice briefly heard here]. In this area you will see a number of automatic record presses operating almost unattended. Hot vinyl is fed automatically between the dyes of the press where the stampers representing both sides of a given disc are mounted. The press closes with heat and tons of pressure. In a few seconds it opens and ejects a flat 10” disc already labelled and ready to play. Down the short flight of stairs from the third-floor studios and the disc cutting room is a large open area that contains the cassette duplicating plant. It is here that the four-track 1 ½” wide running master tapes are run in high-speed master duplicator bins.

The American Iron and Steel Institute

Male narrator: The Voices of Steel, produced by the American Iron and Steel Institute, complete on one record. Rerecorded for the use of the blind in the Talking Books Studios in American Foundation for the Blind, incorporated.

heavy clanging noises

The making of steel is a big job, and has to be done in a big way. One reason for the bigness is our tremendous appetite for steel, and another one, as we just said, is the way it must be made. To turn out just one ton of pig iron—that's the way steel begins—it takes about seven and a half tons of raw material and the know-how of many men.

But nobody makes just one ton of pig iron in the steel business. Hundreds of tons must be turned out at a time, day and night, if our appetite for steel is to be satisfied. That's the way it is all through the steel business.

Now let's get started. Let's find out how steel is made. Let's hear how steel is made. Incidentally, every sound you'll hear is authentic. Recordings were made on the spot, by the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Well, here we are at a mill, ready to go. We've gotten the raw materials all together. Now comes the first job, getting a batch of pig iron.

To do it, we're going to need a blast furnace, to get the iron out of the ore. The one we're at right now is tall—about a hundred and twenty feet high. It's fairly narrow at the top, and pretty wide down below, sort of like an old-fashioned pitcher, painted black.

Now let's get that iron started. To make this one ton, we're going to load the furnace with two tons of ore, [clattering noises], one ton of coke, [more clattering], one half ton of limestone, [a lower murmuring rumble that builds in intensity], and about four tons of air [rumbling continues].

Bird Songs

AFB narrator: Birds of the north woods. A continuation of wild birds and their songs by Albert R. Brand and Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. Sounds recorded directly from nature. Thanks are expressed to Thomas Nelson and Sons for the right to use certain bird songs. Read by Alvin Barr

Alvin Barr: On the record Wild Birds and Their Songs we heard the songs and calls of a number of our commoner birds. We visited suburban gardens and farm surroundings and found a surprising variety of feathered inhabitants. Let us now turn to a slightly different environment. I invite you to join me at my Adirondack camp in the heart of the north woods. Nesting here are many birds we found elsewhere, robins, song sparrows, phoebes and chipping sparrows which are widespread are almost as common here as in more settled territory. But in addition several species nest here that are not found in the lowlands at this season, and we may find certain birds that you know only as winter guests further south. Let’s assume that you and I are sitting on the porch of my little bungalow looking out on the placid mountain lake. The bungalow is perched on a promontory of solid rock, nevertheless on the scanty soil and in the crevices, forest evergreens have been able to find sustenance, and we see the lake through a frame of pines, edelweiss, and hemlock. The mountains in the distance are blue in the hazy twilight of early summer and the thrushes are in full song. Their songs are among the finest of American birds and they rival and perhaps surpass those of the old world songsters whose names are familiar to us because their glories have been sung by poets in time immemorial. Our new world birds have no thousand years of literature behind them, yet their loveliness is unexcelled. The Veery is singing on the wooded point of our little bed. Let’s cease our chat for a minute and listen to his ringing, cathedral-like song [bird song].

Phantom Power podcast

[Transcript provided]

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

[Tinkling sounds]
Female voice (Snow White): Oh, it’s adorable.
[Tinkling sounds]

Female voice (Snow White): Just like a doll’s house.

Male narrator and simultaneous music: There standing in the clearing was a tiny cottage. Snow White and the animals crossed the little bridge over a stream and approached the house.

Female voice (Snow White): I like it here.

[Music]

Male narrator and simultaneous music: There wasn’t a soul in sight, so they peeped in the window. But the window was so dirty they could hardly see a thing.

Female voice (Snow White) and simultaneous music: Ooh! It’s dark inside.

Helen Keller reading 23rd Psalm

Helen Keller:
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.