The Song of Bernadette

That Franz Werfel, a Jewish intellectual fleeing the Nazis at the beginning of WWII, came to write the definitive story of a Catholic saint is amazing on its own. That the story he wrote became a national best-seller within months, then an Acadamy-award winning movie in another year, is more so. But the success of the book and movie is not so difficult to believe when you start to read. Werfel has skillfully painted the characters, recreating them so beautifully (he wrote some 80 years after the events) that you feel like you are there. His own declaration is that although he wrote this as a novel, he stayed as close as he could to a straight history. It is a beautiful and gripping novel on its own, well worth reading since the characters and events recounted are in many ways, timeless. Perhaps it is appropriate that now, another 70 years after publication, this is the work that Werfel is best remembered for.

This book is a true classic for anyone other than perhaps atheists. It will probably be most interesting for Catholics.It doesn't say a lot about what exactly happened during the apparitions and what Mary said. Perhaps Bernadette kept a lot of that secret. Sometimes Mary and Bernadette just said the rosary together so maybe not a lot was said during those strange experiences.Mary told Bernadette secret information. Whether Bernadette ever told anyone those secrets I don't know.This secrecy is just one aspect of what author Franz Werfel presents as a very intimate bond and connection between these two souls. One gets the sense that there were very deep reasons why Mary started appearing to Bernadette. In fact that is correct.Bernadette herself never said she was seeing the Virgin Mary. She always referred to this goddess as 'the lady'. But then the lady told Bernadette she is the Immaculate Conception.When somebody comes into the presence of a goddess or other supernatural being this causes changes in the human body. During some of these apparitions Bernadette went into a deep trance. Her face took on a very strange aura which Werfel describes as a death mask and 'a new and dreadful beauty'.During one apparition Bernadette's fingers came into contact with the open flame of a candle. A doctor prevented people from moving Bernadette's hand so that her fingers were exposed to this flame for a long time. Her fingers remained unaffected until she came out of the trance at which point she asked the doctor why he was trying to burn her fingers.This doctor was one of many professionals and members of the clergy who began to be convinced that Bernadette's visions were real.Bernadette grew up dirt poor and it seems she sort of always remained that simple teenager dressed in the shabby shawl and wooden shoes. Nor was Bernadette a particularly bright student in school. This was another factor that began to convince people that Bernadette wasn't sophisticated enough to manufacture some sort of elaborate hoax of this magnitude.The events at Lourdes caused a lot of friction and consternation with both the Church and government officials going all the way up to the emperor of France. Conflicts broke out between the local authorities and the common people who wanted the government to stop interfering with everything.One guy pretending to be a millionaire was sent by the government to trick Bernadette's family into accepting money in exchange for Bernadette's spiritual favors. A group of guys beat the crap out of this guy.Then the government sent a psychiatrist who came close to putting Bernadette into an asylum. When that happened Bernadette wisely ran away. A member of the clergy with the title of dean protected Bernadette and said if the soldiers wanted to arrest her it would be over his dead body. Then he sent Bernadette to a secret location. This psychiatrist was lucky he wasn't killed.I don't believe in all of the alleged Marian apparitions such as at La Salette or Medjugorje. The only apparitions of Mary that I believe in and which I'm familiar with are Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima.For me personally this is one of the top 10 if not top 5 greatest books I have ever read.I thought the following comments by George Weigel in the forward are so true:"Pious sentimentality ? Or the truth of the world ? Franz Werfel throughout it was the latter. He was right. At a moment when cynical and mendacious rubbish like The Da Vinci Code can dominate the bestseller lists, it is good to be reminded of that."Hesiod's Theogony (Focus Classical Library)The IliadEdgar Cayce's Story of Jesus FIRST AMERICAN EDITION 1969Edgar Cayce on the Reincarnation of Biblical CharactersInitiation in the Great Pyramid (Astara's library of mystical classics)Fatima in Lucia's Own WordsAugustine of Hippo: A BiographyThe Song of Bernadette (BLU RAY)The Miracle of Our Lady of FatimaLife of Leonardo Da Vinci

One day in the mid-nineteenth century, Bernadette Soubirous, a girl from a destitute miller's family in Lourdes near the French Pyrenees, saw a beautiful woman in a grungy grotto. Not a ghostly apparition, mind you, but an apparently flesh-and-blood person. Problem was, no one else saw her. The religiously inclined concluded that Bernadette's lady was the Virgin Mary, though the peasant girl herself made no such claims. The modernists of the community and soon of the nation suspected that the girl was either lying or hallucinating. The authorities, fearing crowds and the possibility of insurrection, sought to suppress the event. Bernadette, though ignorant and barely literate, upheld her integrity and stood her ground on the existence of the lady as pressure from family, friends, and Church and State leaders mounted.Church and State, normally at odds with each other in post-Revolutionary, anti-clerical France, became uncomfortable allies in attempting to rid France of this embarrassing situation, but to no avail: Bernadette would not retract her claim. Bernadette, always staying above the fray, continued to see her lady, who eventually revealed herself to be "The Immaculate Conception." (The doctrine of the Virgin Mary's having been born free of Original Sin had been proclaimed by the Pope four years before, but the people around Bernadette maintained that she knew nothing of that.) After miracles started occurring at a spring at the grotto--Bernadette, following the lady's direction, had uncovered the spring--Church and State found it increasingly difficult to suggest that Bernadette was a pretender or an outright fraud.This novelized treatment of the famous story of the woman who would be canonized Saint Marie-Bernarde Soubirous has a story behind it about as interesting as its subject. It was penned by Franz Werfel, a Jew, to keep a promise. Werfel, trying to flee German-occupied France during World War II, had sought refuge in Lourdes while seeking a way out of the country. The people of Lourdes had been very accommodating and generous, and while he sojourned with them, he learned the story of Bernadette Soubirous. He promised that one day, if he and his wife escaped safely, he would "sing the song of Bernadette." It's interesting to note that, though one might think in reading the book that it was written by a Catholic, Werfel remained a Jew his whole life. (THE SONG OF BERNADETTE was later turned into a movie starring Jennifer Jones in her pre-sultry starlet days; Jones won an Academy Award for her performance.)What I found remarkable is that, albeit not entirely free of cinematic-like dramatic devices, the novel is as sober-minded as it is. One can read this account and still think that everything Bernadette experienced stemmed from her imagination, and that the miracles associated with Lourdes may have been borne of the power of suggestion (though some of the miracles would be difficult to explain that way). Indeed, as the novel points out (and Werfel hewed closely to the facts of the matter, taking dramatic license in the interactions and discussions between people), the Catholic Church had been very reluctant to accept both Bernadette's claims and the miracles. Only after thorough testing of Bernadette, witnesses, and medical experts did it finally embrace the entire matter. The mayor of Lourdes had rather early on attempted to exploit the spring's "miraculous" mineral waters by trying to recreate lowly Lourdes as a glitzy spa--unfortunately, tests on the spring waters found nothing remarkable about them. Still, the mayor would triumph as Lourdes became a Catholic Mecca.THE SONG OF BERNADETTE is a lengthy novel, but it is mostly a brisk read. It will appeal to Catholics, of course, but also to anyone interested reading about one of modernity's first confrontations with a mass religious phenomenon. (Readers who might like a similar story set in contemporary times are urged to pick up David Guterson's flawed but nonetheless interesting OUR LADY OF THE FOREST.)

A beautiful book to read but it took me ages cause I didn’t know how to pronounce some of the names

This is so very well written. It tells the amazing story of the impoverished Bernadette and Our Lady with keen observation and subtle yet sympathetic humour. A delicious read! They don`t write them with such skill anymore.

This is the second book on the life of Saint Bernadette that I have read. The author, Franz Werfel, is an exceptionally brilliant writer; he has the gift of taking the reader to the heart of his subject and keeping him/her focused upon the story. I feel like I know Saint Bernadette so much better now. I definitely want to read more books by Franz Werfel.

Decided to buy this book after reading recommendations of it here on amazon, well I am really glad i bought this book as it is a pleasure to read, some parts of it really make you smile, the author does a brilliant job in setting the scene the characters really come to life, you can visualise all the places involved in the apparitions. The book is a joy I couldnt put it down.

This is an uplifting novel of hope and optimism in the most poverty stricken of environments. I find that the audio book is a convenient medium: you can listen whilst doing other things. In this case, if you listen to a CD each day (around an hour and fifteen minutes), you will complete the novel in just over a fortnight (fifteen CDs). As such, excellent value for money.