Reviews

Lourdes by Émile Zola

burritapal_1's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

" The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement! What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such umploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!"

Published in 1894, Zola first visited Lourdes in September of 1891. He was impressed with all the pilgrims and people with different illnesses who were imploeing the Mary statue to cure them. 
He returned in August of 1892 which is the month of the national pilgrimage. He spent time interviewing People who were ill and tourists and pilgrims, taking notes and making observations. 
In the preface, the author notes 
" 'Lourdes, the Grotto, the cures, the miracles, are, indeed, the creation of that need of the Lie, that necessity for credulity, which is a characteristic of human nature. At first, when little Bernadette came with her strange story of what she had witnessed, everybody was against her. The Prefect of the Department, the Bishop, the clergy, objected to her story. But Lourdes grew up in spite of all opposition, just as the Christian religion did, because suffering humanity in its despair must cling to something, must have some hope: and, On the other hand, because humanity thirsts after illusions. In a word, it is the story of the foundation of all religions.' "
Taking place over 5 days, this is a long work. Each day takes over a 100 pages. The 1st day and the last day are the train ride to and from. It's a 21 hour ride from Paris to Lourdes. 
Indeed, during the train ride, the reader is introduced to a car full characters, many of them suffering horrific illness. One man, so gravely ill, is watched over by one of the sisters assigned to the car, Sister Hyacinthe, and a hospitaller, Madame de Jonquierre,  Both of whom are selfless, self denying Women who gived of themselves generously to the ill.
" 'I will rub his temples,' resumed Sister Hyacinthe. 'help me, do!' 
but, at a more violent jolt of the train, the man suddenly fell from the seat, face downward.
'Ah! Mon dieu, help me, pick him up!'
they picked him up, and found him dead. And they had to seat him in his corner again, with his back resting against the woodwork. He remained there, his torso stiffened, and his head wagging slightly at each successive jolt. Thus the train continued carrying him along, with the same thundering noise of wheels, while the engine, well pleased, no doubt, To be reaching its destination, again whistling shrilly, giving vent to quite a flourish of delirious joy as it sped through the calm night."
(How this man can write!)
the main characters are the priest Pierre Froment, and his childhood sweetheart Marie de Guersaint, who at the age of 13 was thrown from a horse, and Refused to get up after that, supposedly paralyzed. Since she refused to let any doctor examine her, and they didn't have any women doctors at that time, no one could really say what was wrong with her, but at least one doctor thought physically there was nothing wrong with her. 
"... In fact this big, nervous child, whose mind had been so grievously impressed by her accident, was unable to forget it; her attention remained fixed on the part where she suffered and she could not divert it, so that, even after cure, her sufferings had continued - a neuropathic state, a consecutive nervous exhaustion, doubtless aggravated by accidents due to faulty nutrition as yet imperfectly understood. And further, Beauclair [a young doctor friend of Pierre] easily explained the contrary and erroneous diagnosis of the numerous doctors who had attended her, and who, as she would not submit to examination, had groped in the dark, some believing in a tumour, and others, the more numerous, convinced of some lesion of the marrow. He alone, after inquiring into the girl's parentage, had just begun to suspect a simple state of auto-suggestion, in which she had absolutely remained, ever since the first violent shock of pain;..."

Pierre the priest has lost his faith, and because Marie and he are so close, Marie knows his anguish over his lost faith. She has total optimism that she will be cured, and Pierre will regain his faith by the blessing of the statue Mary.
Though Abbé Pierre has lost his faith, he decides, after many days of anguish and struggle, where his thirst for happiness was warring with his Resolution to remain a priest, He ends by 
"calming himself, still upright, still bearing his head erect, with the desolute grandeur of the priest who himself no longer believes, but continues watching over the faith of others. And he certainly was not alone; he felt that he had many brothers, priests with ravaged minds, who had sunk into incredulity, and who yet, like soldiers without a fatherland, remained at the altar, and despite everything, found the courage to make the divine illusion shine forth above the kneeling crowd."
The ill people and the pilgrims believe that being dumped in the pool made from the Spring that supposedly sprang from the image of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette, Will cure them. They believe this so much, that the man who died on the train on the way from Paris, has his dead body dumped in the water.  The priests only changed this water twice A-day, fearing that otherwise the water will run out. Naturally, this water is then horribly polluted, because of peoples' pus-filled sores and dirt from their bodies sloughing off into the water. 
Monsieur Sabathier, whose legs are paralyzed, Is taken to the pool. He's terrified of the water, but is determined to try a for a cure. The water is kept icy cold, which keeps people from being further contaminated by illness from the germs of others.
 "... And then too, as he put it, the water was scarcely inviting; for through fear lest the output of the source should not suffice, the Fathers of the Grotto only allowed the water of the baths to be changed twice A day. And nearly a 100 patients being dipped in the same water, it can be imagined what a terrible soup the latter at last became. All manner of things were found in it, so that it was like a frightful consommé of all ailments, a field of cultivation for every kind of poisonous germ, quintessence of the most dreaded contagious diseases; the miraculous feature of it all being that men should emerge alive from their immersion in such filth."
While Marie visits the Grotto, a kind of cave, to supplicate to the statue for her cure, Pierre visits the Verification Office, where a  Team of doctors Work to establish true miracles out of the multitude of so-called miracles. He also visits some of the souvenir shops where all sorts of tacky religious items are on offer. And he and Marie's father also visit some eating establishments, one which is run by nuns, and also the dining room of the hotel they're staying at.
Madame Vincent, one of the characters from the car in which Pierre and Marie are transported to Lourdes, is a poor woman who comes with her small daughter Rose in her arms, never letting her down. Rose has been ill since she was small, and Madame Vincent is seen carrying the little white-faced child to the Grotto. She kneels there, holding her daughter outstretched
" 'O Virgin, Mother of our Redeemer, heal her! O Virgin, All-powerful Mother, heal her!' 
but the poor woman felt her child become even lighter in her extended arms. And now she became afraid at no longer hearing her moan, at seeing her so white, with staring eyes and open mouth, without a sign of life. How was it that she did not smile if she were cured? Suddenly a loud heart-rending cry rang out, the cry of the mother, surpassing even the din of the thunder in the storm, whose violence was increasing. Her child was dead. And she rose up erect, turning her back on that deaf Virgin who let little children die, and started off like a mad woman beneath the lashing downpour, going straight before her without knowing whither, and still and ever carrying and nursing that poor little body which she had held in her arms during so many days and nights. A thunderbolt fell, shivering one of the neighboring trees, as though with the stroke of a giant axe, amidst a great crash of twisted and broken branches."
Marie is "cured" while at a night visit to the Grotto, on the last day of the pilgrimage.
On the way back, on the train, Pierre continues his story of the life of Bernadette. Marie had brought along a little book of Bernadette's life, one of those kind that Catholic shops sell, but he embellished it with his own learnings after years of investigating the Story of Bernadette. 
She left Lourdes on the 8th of July 1866. And went to become a nun at Nevers, France, in the convent of Saint Gildard.
 "..  She could no longer remain there [at Lourdes], owing to the continuous persecution of public curiosity, The Visits, the homage, and the adoration paid to her, from which, on account of her delicate health, she suffered cruelly."
There was actually a time when I could possibly have believed in this "miracle." this is because I come from a family who was formerly Catholic. I went to Catholic school from the grades of 1st through 5th, and those nuns and those Fathers, do a monstrous job of brainwashing children. It took me so many years, until I was in my Late 50s, to cure myself of this brain washing. Humans are so pathetic.
Bravo to Emile Zola for taking on the Catholic Church, and this ridiculous commercialization of the hallucination of a child.

michaelhold's review against another edition

4.0

Novel and in good taste, like the water from Lourdes, that is place visited by Abbé Pierre Froment and his childhood sweetheart Marie de Guersaint, who has been paralysed since the age of thirteen when she fell from a horse.

Lourdes water is water which flows from a spring in the Grotto of Massabielle in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, France. The location of the spring was described to Bernadette Soubirous by an apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes on 25 February 1858.

Taking place over five-day period starting on Friday 19th Augus.

And with account of relieve and cured medical cases so common for 19th century medicine that was existed back then with substances that are nowadays narcotics. That people back then believed to be ultimate healing tool.

I like reading it.

carosbcher's review against another edition

4.0

We accompany a priest and a sick young girl on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, five days on 649 pages. So that already might tell you that it's not a fast paced read, but we get to know so many details of what's happening to the people hoping for being healed by drinking the water from Lourdes, what's happening to the believers and to those who don't believe in religion anymore, what's happening to Lourdes and its citizens. Zola's picture of the society he analyzes in this book is a pessimistic, sad and dark one and can get an apocalyptic touch when you imagine thousands of sick people wandering through the city. Religion gets its share of beating, too.

It's not an optimistic book, at all, it's soaked with unhappiness, but it's beautiful in its own way, too, and definitely worth reading if you like works of critical realism in a historic atmosphere.