Soul's Journey

THE PURE IN HEART--Franz Werfel-- Simon & Schuster ($3). Ferdinand was ship's doctor on a Mediterranean liner. He kept himself to him- self, and his assistant's curiosity, already well tickled, was further titillated when he saw Ferdinand one night drop something overboard. What Ferdinand dropped and how he came to have it, form the motif of this carefully written, 610-page novel, which the Book League has nominated as its May choice. Ferdinand, son of an Austrian colonel, was orphaned young, and his old nurse Barbara became practically his foster-mother. A defenseless but not stupid boy, his youth was unhappy, and he would have taken the course of least resistance into the Church had not a stronger-minded friend rescued him. Then came the War, and once or twice it looked as though that would settle Ferdinand's hash. But he came through, with wounds, decorations and a reputation among radicals because he had refused to execute three soldiers. In the turmoil that rocked Vienna after the War Ferdinand moved as a kind of passive Bohemian, passive revolutionary. A monastic soul, he lived among orgiasts and was never shaken; love failed to touch him. His best and only friend, a Jew, became a religious maniac and graduated to an asylum. When Ferdinand went to see Nurse Barbara for the last time he was horrified that she should be so old. He ran away from her, went to seek the only society he was fitted for: his own.

The Author. Manhattan audiences know Franz Werfel as a playwright, author of Goat Song, Schweiger, Juarez und Maximilian. But he started up Parnassus as a poet. A Jew, a native of Prague, Werfel wears his hair a la Beethoven, is highly thought of in Europe. Other books: Verdi, The Man Who Conquered Death, Class Reunion.

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