The Song of Bernadette is a fictionalized account of Bernadette Soubirous's encounters with a woman who claims to be the Immaculate Conception (i.e. the Virgin Mary). Eventually, Bernadette-mania spreads across France and even the world, but she really wishes she could be left alone. Lourdes is now a major pilgrimage site, and the humble grotto where she had her encounters is now the site of a massive basilica, and Bernadette, who died young from tuberculosis, is now a saint.

The story behind the book, about the Jewish author and his wife hiding in Lourdes from the Nazis while trying to escape to the United States is almost more compelling than the actual result. But those interested in Bernadette's story, as well as those who liked the movie based on the book will find much to enjoy here. ( )

122. The Song of Bernadette, by Franz Werfel (read 1943) I was totally inspired by this book and still, more than 70 years later, remember some of the account--though I suppose my memory has been aided by the movie, which I saw after I read the book. ( )

Pleasantly surprised and inspired by this book. It is a reminder of the close connection between the beautiful and the good. By his art, the author very effectively evokes Bernadette's experience of the beautiful lady who appeared to her at Lourdes, and the powerful effect it had on her. This in turn heightened my experience of the rest of the tale -- the story of the forces of family, state and even Church that questioned, doubted, and dismissed Bernadette's experience. And it certainly sweetened for me the lady's eventual triumph over all these forces!

Well worth reading!

Great read, highly recommend. Story of a yound girl who sees visions of a lady in a grotto by the river and the desruption it causes the government and church and the intellectuals. ( )

This is the famous and highly acclaimed classic work that tells the true story surrounding the miraculous visions of St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France in 1858. Werfel, a highly respected literary writer who was an outspoken anti-Nazi from Vienna, became a Jewish refugee who barely escaped death from the Nazis in 1940, and wrote this moving story to fulfill a promise he made to God. Thus the story of how this book about a miracle came to be written is in itself something of a miracle.

As he and his wife were hiding out in the little village of Loudres while trying to escape to freedom in the USA during WWII, Werfel felt the Nazi noose tightening around them and realizing that they might well be caught and executed, he made a promise to God to write about the "song of Bernadette" that he had been deeply inspired by during their clandestine stay in Lourdes.

An amazing aspect of this powerful portrayal of a Catholic saint and an essentially Catholic story is that Werfel was a rather secular Jew, and yet he was so deeply impressed by both Bernadette and the happenings at Lourdes, that his writing has a profound sense of Catholicism's sacramental imagination about the world. ( )