Jeremias, höret die Stimme

by Franz Werfel

Dies ist die Geschichte Jirmijahs aus Anathot, des Propheten Jeremias also, aber es ist zugleich ein Meneteckel, ein Mahnwort gegen alle unverantwortlich herrschende Gewalt. Franz Werfel hat den Roman vom Leben und Leiden des großen Propheten eingebettet in eine Rahmenhandlung aus der Zeit der Entstehung des Romans, 1936, und ihn damit weit über das religiöse Thema hinausgehoben; er hat – der als Imperativ wirkende Titel verdeutlicht das – in einer Zeit totalitärer Herrschaft in Deutschland einen verschlüsselten Aufruf verfaßt, Widerstand zu leisten, aufzubegehren gegen die Staatsgewalt, gegen Selbstsicherheit und Selbstzufriedenheit der Mächtigen.

So gesehen wird der Nebukadnezar des Romans leicht mit Adolf Hitler vergleichbar, werden die Leiden Jeremias’ als die der Juden Deutschlands verstanden, wird die Zerstörung Jerusalems und des Tempels 586 v. Chr. als apokalyptisches Bild für die Zukunft Europas zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus erkennbar. Werfel reagierte mit diesem Bekenntnis aber auch zugleich auf Vorwürfe gegenüber seiner, des Juden, offen geäußerter Sympathie für das katholische Christentum wie gegenüber der Tatsache, daß er zu den Aktivitäten der neuen Machthaber in Deutschland lange geschwiegen hatte.

555 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Czech-born poet, playwright, and novelist, whose central themes were religious faith, heroism, and human brotherhood. Franz Werfel's best-known works include The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a classic historical novel that portrays Armenian resistance to the Turks, and The Song of Bernadette (1941). The latter book had its start when Werfel, a Jew escaping the Nazis, found solace in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where St. Bernadette had had visions of the Virgin. Werfel made a promise to "sing the song" of the saint if he ever reached the United States. He died in California in 1945.

Reviews

[David Dunlap · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amazing novel traces story of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, from the time (as a young man) when he comes to the attention of King Josiah of Judah, until the final defeat of the Judeans and destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians in 587/86 B.C. All of the broad strokes that novelist Werfel fills in with great detail are to be found in the Old Testament; very few of the elements have been altered -- they have been merely elaborated. And what elaboration! The characters practically leap off the page in the vividness of their depiction: the rather mercurial Josiah (burning to be faithful to his God and His Holy Law but ambitious for his nation to play a role on the world stage), his wife, the gentle Hamutal, and the deeply convicted Zedekiah (an especially realistic fleshing-out of what little we know from Chronicles and Kings). Werfel inserts an extrabiblical character, Zenua, an orphaned Egyptian girl, brought to the court-in-exile as a companion to Hamutal, with whom Jeremiah falls in love, flouting the clear command of God to him that he should never marry. Zenua serves to flesh out a gentler, more loving side to the jagged character of the prophet; the romance is a bittersweet -- but greatly appealing -- interlude. -- The puzzling thing to me about this novel is the framing device Werfel uses: as the book opens, we are introduced (in the present time [the 1930s]) to a group of five English travelers in the Holy Land, among them a recently-widowed writer and a female socialite. The Jeremiah portion of the book (by far the lion's share of the text) would seem to be a flash of insight given to the writer when he escorts the socialite to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, fearful that he is about to have an epileptic fit. There is a brief epilogue in which we return to these travelers, which supplies a certain symmetry to the design, I suppose, but leaves this reader, at least, the puzzle as to why Werfel creates them in the first place. Is he trying to suggest the writer -- ANY serious writer -- as a modern-day prophet? Let the reader be wary of -- but not put off by -- this strange bookending. This is quite a dramatic and enjoyable novel.

[Beth Kadar · Rating 5 out of 5]

'You can never be certain of anything, not even of uncertainty.' It is something along these lines that the propher advises to a king at war, a war in which everything is at stake and to a king to whom Jeremiah has developed a bond since teaching him as a child. That humans simply don't own their certainty is indeed one of the main messages of the book, but it is far from any nihilism and anxiety: on the contrary. The protagonist - very humane, lonely and himself personally developing over the course of the book - prophet Jeremiah is beyond any doubt certain of his vocation. Fighting against it or following it, he eventually serves the one and only God of the Jews in Egypt, Babylon, and most painfully, his homeland, Israel.

Alongside a psychological drama of Jeremiah's relationship with a non-transparent, uncontrollable God, we witness the precarious geopolitics of three consecutive kings; including their families and ranks as well as the false prophets. The 1937 novel is a masterpiece documenting how an insightful description can traverse to become the explanation; while being stuffed with stories of suffering from the destruction of the prophet's closest relationships to the wreckage of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, Werfel's work still does not come off as pessimistic, rather as a testimony of God's unforeseen, intangible and ungraspable wisdom and human weakness and resilience at the same time.

[Peter Jakobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jehuda at the final stage of its kingdom phase. Wisdom of David and Salomon is long gone and the late kings behave like any others. This is the time when God selected Jeremiah to bring Jehuda back on track - but all his good intentions finally failed. As punishment for not following God’s rules, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by the Babylonian army and most of its population were sent to the Babylonian exile. Jeremiah was the only one for whom Nebukadnezar had and showed respect.
Published in 1938, another state was meant as well, obviously.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes the prophet Jeremiah come alive, as it is told in chronological order where as the Bible book itself is a collection of Baruch's history, Jeremiah's history, but mainly his Oracles from Yahweh.
Excellent aid to understanding the Biblical texts

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Declan Huerta · Rating 4 out of 5]

En español se titula "Escuchad la Voz", y está al menos en ediciones Encuentro. Narra de forma novelada la vida del profeta Jeremías, y toda la trama política de Israel subsistiendo entre Egipto y Asiria. No es una hagiografía, es una novela. Se permite licencias muy interesantes en relación a sus experiencias místicas. Pero sobre todo destaca el hombre, Jeremías, de una forma verdaderamente magistral.

[Sealion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muž, který říkal věci, které nikdo nechtěl slyšet. Muž, který trpěl za pravdu. A nádherný román, který věrně zpracovává prostředí starozákonního Izraele a život proroka Jeremiáše. Velmi silná a krásná kniha, vybízející minimálně k zamyšlení...

[Michal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vtahující.