Between Heaven and Earth

by Franz Werfel

First published in its English translation during World War II in 1944, the first part of this book is composed of lectures originally delivered (in German) during the pre-war period, whilst the second part of the book represents author Franz Werfel’s present point of view, arriving at the difficult conclusion that “complete human detachment is the first psychological symptom of spirituality…”

“The outstanding contribution of this book is its frank rejection of the materialistic philosophy and an emphasis in favor of the spiritual interpretation of life. There are beautiful passages written with characteristic artistry.”—Kirkus Review

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 1971

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

[Lemar · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Art is the opposite of ‘killing time’, it is the ‘arresting of time’. It is the ‘killing of death’.” Rarely have I underlined more passages book than I did in this profound collection of essays, “Between Heaven and Earth”, written by Franz Werfel published in 1944 in America after fleeing Nazi Germany. Werfel writes specifically about the meaning of life, why were all here, the big questions brought up in the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy among other notable books.
In the preface, as the war raged, he acknowledges that, “Writers are capable of expressing themselves in only two fundamental literary forms - in the form of entertainment and in the form of confession. I trust the reader will forgive me if I offer him the second form in less diluted style than customary.”
Werfel takes in the entirety of human history in his search for meaning to alleviate our modern suffering, reaching way back to find when we lost our connection, “animals not only were but they signified, even beyond their being. Ancient man lived and thought only in metaphors. And in this we differ from him most profoundly. For to us, things only are, but they do not signify.”
By rejecting anything as pie in the sky as spiritual, we live out “the defiant will to insignificance, to meaninglessness.”
His strong convictions are surprising in that he wrote at a time when the battle seemed to be solely about communism versus capitalism. He rejects both, and considers them as being two sides of the same coin. Both the “metaphysics of prosperity” and faith in progress leave him cold. He also rejects the stubborn idea of putting one’s nation first. “Nationalism raises biological membership to a moral value.”
Some of the essays in this book came from lectures that he gave, literally risking his life to speak out in Germany under Hitler. He notes that a danger of consumer society is the reversal of the adage, “Man is the measure of all things.” Now, “things have become the measure of man. That is the key definition of modern technology.”
I’m not a religious man but I am holding out hope for meaning. I read poetry and physics books. This obscure collection of essays contained a lot of wisdom. Werfel makes his case that the path out of a state of agitation and despair can only be found on an artistic and spiritual path.
“In the beginning I was nothing. Then I acquired an ego clamoring for pleasure and sensitive to pain, only to have it taken from me. And in the end, I not only again become nothing, but a poignant nothing, a nothing minus my ego.”
So, a deep and profound book, not really a beach read unless it’s the Sands of Time sort of beach.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending pertains more to Jews, but there is enough common ground here for those with an inclination toward the transcendent.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays by the German poet, mostly musings on thoughts about religion and its relationship to political life. Werfel thinks that religious thought, in particular Christianity, is essential to a nation; without it, the nation risks falling into totalitarianism or fascism. Werfel has a number of insightful thoughts about the banality of modern life, some of which are beautifully and memorably expressed.

[Adam Carnehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franz Werfel (+1945) is the J. G. Hamann of the twentieth century: original, faithful, complex, misinterpreted, and overshadowed by more secular writers: Lessing and Kant in Hamann's case, Kafka and Brecht in Werfel's. This collection of critical essays, "Theologoumena," and aphorisms contains so many ideas that are brilliant beautiful. As I read through Werfel's pieces, most of which deal with poetry, creativity, political philosophy, and most importantly—Christian theology, I continually would say to my wife, "Werfel speaks to my soul." Indeed, he does. Immediately after finishing I bought a second copy to be my "reading copy" that I plan to mark up with marginalia and notes.

I have a feeling that Werfel will finally come into his own in the 21st century, a hundred years after his death; the middle part of the last century did not know what to make of his deeply philosophical fiction and his Jewish-Christian theology. It is easier to classify him as part of the "Prague-Circle" of Jewish intellectuals and place him in the orbit of German expressionist poets and playwrights than to actually deal with his remarkably complex philosophical aesthetics. His style and his ideas were deeply anti-nihilistic, and metaphysically Catholic; yes, he will be rediscovered and finally given his due by a new generation of twenty-first century anti-nihilists who, like Werfel, long for what is real and what is rooted, who reject the politicization of the modern world and despise the ideological games which so many, broken by propaganda, continually play.