1942: The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

The Author:

Franz Werfel (1890-1945) was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary, to a family of wealthy Jewish merchants. From a young age, he was immersed in several different religious cultures (most notably Jewish and Catholic), which informed much of his work. He attended a Catholic school and later served in the Austrio-Hungarian Empire’s army in World War One, eventually becoming a member of the Military Press Bureau.

Werfel was a well established member of the Austrian literary world, successful as a poet, novelist, and playwright. After the first world war ended, Werfel began an affair with Alma Mahler, widow of the Austrian composer Gustave Mahler, and was at the time married to the influential German architect, Walter Gropius. She divorced Gropius in 1920, eventually marrying Werfel in 1929.

In 1930, after touring the Near East, Werfel fought to bring the world’s attention to the Armenian genocide.

Werfel’s career continued to grow in Europe, but the rise of anti-Semitism led Werfel and Mahler to flee to France in 1938. In 1940, they snuck into Spain and made their way to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. In 1942, Werfel published The Song of Bernadette. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1945.

The Book:

The Song of Bernadette is about Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a French peasant girl from the town of Lourdes who, in 1858, claimed to witness numerous apparitions of the Virgin Mary. It's the story of her conviction in her faith in the face of doubt, and the events that led to Lourdes becoming a major pilgrimage site.

The story of what led Werfel to write this novel is fascinating and may also have bearing on decisions he made about the story and characters.

"In the last days of June 1940, in flight after the collapse of France...my wife and I, had hoped to elude our mortal enemies in time to cross the Spanish frontier to Portugal...but had to flee back to the interior of France on the very night German troops occupied the frontier town of Hendaye. It was in this manner that Providence brought me to Lourdes... We hid for several weeks in the Pyrenean city. It was a time of great dread...

"It was, I repeat, a time of great dread. But it was also a time of great significance for me, for I became acquainted with the wondrous history of the girl Bernadette Soubirous and also with the wondrous facts concerning the healings of Lourdes. One day in my distress I made a vow. I vowed that if I escaped from this desperate situation and reached the saving shores of America, I would put off all other tasks and sing, as best I could, the song of Bernadette."

I can't help but be underwhelmed with The Song of Bernadette.  Because Werfel wanted to paint an undoubtedly positive image of Bernadette, what we get is a character that is guileless and ingenuous and beyond any negative qualities.  She is, literally, a saint.  Since Bernadette starts out practically perfect (spiritually, at least), and there is no fall from grace, she ends up being a pretty static character.  Unless you already have an emotional involvement in the story of Saint Bernadette, or see this book as an affirmation or your religious philosophies, it comes across as largely uninteresting.

Yet The Song of Bernadette falls between two more very religious novels on my list, 1941's The Keys of the Kingdom and 1943's The Robe. At a time when the U.S. was gearing up for another war and still recovering from a major economic disaster, an attempt to seek out solace and inspiration from religion makes a lot of sense.  It's interesting to note that of the these three novels, one is by a Scot, one by a German, and one by an American.      

Like The Keys of the Kingdom and The Robe, The Song of Bernadette had a major movie adaptation.

Also like the above-mentioned, Bernadette remains notable primarily in the genre of religious fiction, it's mainstream appeal having diminished in the intervening decades.   

If you're interested in the story of Saint Bernadette or in modern religious history, you'd like The Song of Bernadette.

Also published in 1942:

Albert Camus - L'Étranger
C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters   
Edith Hamilton - Mythology

Sources:

Verlag, S. Fischer. Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood. New York: Grove

             Weidenfeld. 1987. Translated from German by Anselm Hollo.

Werfel, Franz. The Song of Bernadette. New York: Viking Press. 1941. Print. Translated by
              Ludwig Lewisohn

    

1929: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Who?
            Erich Paul Remark (1898 – 1970) is better known by the pseudonym Erich Maria Remarque (Maria being his mother’s maiden name).  The son of a poor bookbinder, Erich was born in Osnabrück, Germany.  He was attending school to become a teacher when, in 1916, he was called to fight in World War One.  At the Battle of Flanders, in July 1917, Remarque was wounded by British grenades and taken to a field hospital in Duisberg.  After returning from the war, Remarque worked as a school teacher then an ad-writer.  In 1920, he published his first novel, Die Trambaude (The Dream Room) under his own name.  He later stated in an interview that “I published an early work, a novel, whose title I will not name, even under torture.  For this reason Remark became Remarque.”  From 1927-8, Remarque’s second novel, Station am Horizont (Station at the Horizon) was serialized under his real name. Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) was published serially from November to December 1928, and published in book form in January 1929.  It was an overnight success.  It was also one of the books included in the first Nazi book burnings.  Remarque fled to Switzerland in 1933, at an indefinite point remarrying his ex-wife so she wouldn’t be forcibly repatriated.  He later moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1947.  In 1957, Remarque divorced his wife, and married again a year later.  Remarque passed away in Switzerland in 1970.

So what's this book about?

“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces” (87-8).

            All Quiet on the Western Front tells Paul Bäumer’s experience of World War One.  From the front lines to his hometown, from the hospital back to the front, All Quiet is the story of one man trying to make sense of a world gone to pieces, where the difference between life and death is luck.  It is the story of how war destroys youth. 

            The passages describing the war are awe-inspiring.  Frequently horrific, they somehow retain a strange semblance of beauty and romanticism.  “There is no escape anywhere.  By the light of the shells I try to get a view of the fields.  They are a surging sea, daggers of flame from the explosions leap up like fountains” (66).  While the cover of my copy declares that this is “the greatest war novel of all time,” it is also one of the great anti-war novels.  The war is beautiful in the same way a hurricane or erupting volcano is beautiful.

Why was it so popular?

            There were two other World War One novels on this list, H.G. Wells’s Mr. Britling Sees It Through and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Both were published in 1916 and therefeore don’t cover the end of the war, and only the latter has extensive battle sequences.  Wells’s novel takes a hoepful view of the war, suggesting that people may (or at least could) create a better society out of the wreckage.  Ibáñez doesn’t suggest that war can ever be defeated, but views World War One as a necessary fight against German militarism.  Remarque better reflects the postwar perspective: the war was a tragic waste of human life.

This one sounds a familiar...

            Besides A Farewell to Arms, All Quiet on the Western Front is the only major World War One novel still read and talked about.  It has also aged spectacularly well, and in many ways is as relevant today as it was when it was written:

            “Almost all of us are simple folk.  And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers,
             workmen, or poor clerks.  Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French
             shoemaker want to attack us?  No, it is merely the rulers.  I had never seen a Frenchman
             before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as
             regards us.  They weren’t asked about it any more than we were.”

            “Then what exactly is the war for?” asks Tjaden.

             Kat shrugs his shoulders.  “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”

            “Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden.

            “Not you, nor anybody else here.”

            “Who are they then?” persists Tjade. “It isn’t any use to the Kaiser either.  He has
             everything he can want already.”

            “I’m not so sure about that,” contradicts Kat, “he has not had a war up till now” (205-6).

            In 1930, a film version was released, winning the Academy Award for best picture and best directing.

Should I read it?

            Yes.  It’s a classic for a reason, and that reason is quality.


Also published in 1929:

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Mahtma Gandhi - The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

Sources:

Barker, Christine and Last, R. W. Erich Maria Remarque. London: Oswald Wolff, 1979. Print
Remarque, Erich. All Quiet on the Western Front. 1929. New York: Ballantine, 1982. Print. 
          Trans. Wheen, A. W.