Examining the Title of 'By the Waters of Babylon'. The title of Stephen Vincent Benet's 'By the Waters of Babylon' is an allusion, or indirect reference, to Psalm 137:1. This verse says, 'By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.' In this verse, the Israelites in exile lament the loss of the promised land.
'By the Waters of Babylon' is a post-apocalypticshort story by American writer Stephen Vincent Benét, first published July 31, 1937, in The Saturday Evening Post as 'The Place of the Gods'.[1] It was republished in 1943 in The Pocket Book of Science Fiction,[2] and was adapted in 1971 into a one-act play by Brainerd Duffield.[3]
Set in a future following the destruction of industrial civilization, the story is narrated by a young man[4] who is the son of a priest. The priests of John's people (the hill people) are inquisitive people associated with the divine. They are the only ones who can handle metal collected from the homes (called the 'Dead Places') of long-dead people whom they believe to be gods. The plot follows John’s self-assigned mission to get to the Place of the Gods. His father allows him to go on a spiritual journey, not realizing John is going to this forbidden place.
John journeys through the forest for eight days and crosses the river Ou-dis-sun. Once John gets to the Place of the Gods, he feels the energy and magic there. He sees a statue of a 'god'—in point of fact, a human—that says 'ASHING' on its base. He also sees a building marked 'UBTREAS'. After being chased by dogs and climbing the stairs of a large building, John sees a dead god. Upon viewing the visage, he has an epiphany that the gods were humans whose power overwhelmed their good judgment. After John returns to his tribe, he tells his father of 'the place New York.' His father warns him against recounting his experiences to others in the tribe, for sometimes too much truth is a bad thing, that it must be told little by little. The story ends with John stating his conviction that, once he becomes the head priest, 'We must build again.'
Benét wrote the story in response to the April 25, 1937 bombing of Guernica, in which Fascist military forces destroyed the majority of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.[5] This story took place before the public knowledge of nuclear weapons, but Benét's description of 'The Great Burning' is similar to later descriptions of the effects of the atomic bombings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. His 'deadly mist' and 'fire falling from the sky' seem eerily prescient of the descriptions of the aftermath of nuclear blasts. However, the 'deadly mist' may also be a reference to chemical weapons in World War I, particularly mustard gas, a feared weapon of war that Benét's generation was very familiar with. The story was written in 1937, two years before the Manhattan Project started, and eight years before there was widespread public knowledge of the project.
Ayn Rand's 1937 novella Anthem is widely believed to have been inspired by this story.[citation needed]
In 1955 Edgar Pangborn wrote 'The Music Master of Babylon',[6] a post-apocalyptic story told from the point of view of a pianist living alone in a ruined New York City, and after decades of total isolation encountering two youths from a new culture which had arisen in the world, who come exploring the ruined city. Pangborn depicted a different world than that of Benét, but referred to Benét's story in the title and in many of the story's details. Pangborn returned to that devastated world in his later writings, including the novel Davy.
Elements of the plot and themes of By the Waters of Babylon appear in the 1970 feature film Beneath the Planet of the Apes.[citation needed]
The hill people also seems to be an influence of the Nora in the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.[citation needed]
Psalm 137 | |
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'By the rivers of Babylon' | |
Other name |
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Language | Hebrew (original) |
Psalm 137 is the 137th psalm of the Book of Psalms, and as such it is included in the Hebrew Bible.[1] In English it is generally known as 'By the rivers of Babylon', which is how its first words are translated in the King James Version. It is Psalm 136 in the slightly different numbering system of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate versions of the Bible. Its Latin title is 'Super flumina Babylonis'.[2]
The psalm is a communal lament about being in exile after the Babylonian captivity, and yearning for Jerusalem. The psalm is a regular part of Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant liturgies. It has been set to music often, and was paraphrased in hymns.
After Nebuchadnezzar II's successful siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC, and subsequent campaigns, inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah were deported to Babylonia, where they were held captive until some time after the Fall of Babylon (539 BC). The rivers of Babylon are the Euphrates river, its tributaries, and the Tigris river.
Psalm 137 is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people during their Babylonian exile. In its whole form of nine verses, the psalm reflects the yearning for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City's enemies with sometimes violent imagery.
Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah,[3] and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: 'For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity.'[4]
The early lines of the psalm describe the sadness of the Israelites in exile, weeping and hanging their harps on trees. Asked to 'sing the Lord's song in a strange land', they refuse.
001. | By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. |
002. | We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. |
003. | For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. |
004. | How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? |
In vv. 5–6 the speaker turns into self-exhortation to remember Jerusalem:
005. | If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. |
006. | If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. |
The psalm ends with prophetic predictions of violent revenge.
007. | Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. |
008. | O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. |
009. | Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. |
The psalm is customarily recited on Tisha B'Av and by some during the nine days preceding Tisha B'Av, commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem.[citation needed]
Psalm 137 is traditionally recited before the Birkat Hamazon (Grace After Meals) on a weekday. However, on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and at the celebratory meal accompanying a Jewish wedding, brit milah, or pidyon haben, Psalm 126 is recited before the Birkat Hamazon instead.[5]
Verses 5 and 6 are customarily said by the groom at Jewish wedding ceremony shortly before breaking a glass as a symbolic act of mourning over the destruction of the Temple.[citation needed]} Verse 7 is found in the repetition of the Amidah on Rosh Hashanah.[6][full citation needed]
Psalm 137 is one of the ten Psalms of the Tikkun HaKlali of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.[7][8]
In the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches that use the Byzantine Rite, Psalm 137 (known by its Septuagint numbering as Psalm 136) is a part of the Nineteenth Kathisma (division of the Psalter) and is read at Matins on Friday mornings throughout the year, except during Bright Week (the week following Easter Sunday) when no psalms at all are read.[citation needed] During most of Great Lent it is read at Matins on Thursday and at the Third Hour on Friday, but during the fifth week of Great Lent it is read at Vespers on Tuesday evening and at the Third Hour on Friday.[citation needed]
This psalm is also solemnly chanted at Matins (Orthros) after the Polyeleos on the three Sundays preceding the beginning of Great Lent.[citation needed]
Following the rule of St. Benedict (530 AD), the Roman Breviary adopted the 'Super flumina Babylonis' psalm for Vespers on Wednesdays.[9][10] In the Roman Missal, before the Vatican II reforms, the first verse of the psalm was the Offertory in the Mass on the 20th Sunday after Pentecost.[11]
In Lutheranism, a well-known hymn based on the psalm has been associated with a Gospel reading in which Jesus foretells and mourns the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–48).[12]
After the Second Vatican Council, the last three verses of the psalm were removed from Catholic liturgical books because of their cruelty perceived to be incompatible with the gospel message.[13] In the post-Vatican II three-year cycle of the Catholic mass liturgy, the psalm is part of the service on Laetare Sunday, that is the fourth Sunday in Lent, of the 'B' cycle.[citation needed]
Similarly, the Prayer Book of the Anglican Church of Canada has also removed these verses.[14]
The psalm has been set to music by many composers. Many settings omit the last verse. The hymnwriter John L. Bell comments alongside his own setting of this Psalm: 'The final verse is omitted in this metricization, because its seemingly outrageous curse is better dealt with in preaching or group conversation. It should not be forgotten, especially by those who have never known exile, dispossession or the rape of people and land.'[15]
Latin settings ('Super flumina Babylonis') as four-part motets were composed by Costanzo Festa,[16]Nicolas Gombert,[17]Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina[18] and Orlando Lassus.[19]Philippe de Monte[20] and Tomas Luis de Victoria set the text for eight parts.[21] French Baroque settings were written by Marc-Antoine Charpentier[22] and Michel-Richard Delalande.[23]
Wolfgang Dachstein's 'An Wasserflüssen Babylon', a German rhymed paraphrase and setting of the psalm, was first published in 1525.[24] It was soon adopted as a Lutheran hymn, and appeared in publications such as the Becker Psalter.[25][26]Four-part chorale settings of this hymn were realised by, among others, Johann Hermann Schein[27][28] and Heinrich Schütz.[26][29] Schütz also set Luther's prose translation of Psalm 137 ('An den Wassern zu Babel', SWV 37, included in the Psalmen Davids, Op. 2, 1619).[30][31] Organ compositions based on Dachstein's hymn include Johann Adam Reincken's An Wasserflüssen Babylon, and one of Johann Sebastian Bach's Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes.[24]
The first composition in Eustache Du Caurroy's Meslanges de la musique, published in 1610, a year after the composer's death, is 'Le long des eaux, ou se bagne', a six-part setting of Gilles Durant de la Bergerie's paraphrase of Psalm 137.[32][33][34]Salamone Rossi (1570–1630) set the psalm in Hebrew (עַל נַהֲרוֹת בָּבֶל, Al naharot Bavel) for four parts.[35] The psalm's first two verses were used for a musical setting in a round by English composer Philip Hayes.[36]William Billings adapted the text to describe the British occupation of Boston in his anthem 'Lamentation over Boston'.[37][38]
Lord Byron's 'We sat down and wept by the waters', a versified paraphrase of Psalm 137, was published in his Hebrew Melodies in 1815. The poetry was set by, among others, Isaac Nathan (1815) and Samuel Sebastian Wesley (c. 1834). The poem was translated in French by Alexis Paulin Paris, and in German by Adolf Böttger. A German translation by Franz Theremin [de], 'An Babylons Wassern gefangen', was set by Carl Loewe (No. 2 of his Hebräische Gesänge, Op. 4, 1823). Another German translation was set by Ferruccio Busoni ('An Babylons Wassern wir weinten' in Zwei hebräische Melodien von Lord Byron, BV 202, 1884).[39][40]
Psalm 137 was the inspiration for the famous slave chorus 'Va, pensiero' from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842).[41]Charles-Valentin Alkan's piano piece Super flumina Babylonis: Paraphrase, Op. 52 (1859), is in the printed score preceded by a French translation of Psalm 137.[42][43]Charles Gounod set 'Près du fleuve étranger', a French paraphrase of the psalm, in 1861.[44][45] In 1866 this setting was published with Henry Farnie's text version, as 'By Babylon's wave: Psalm CXXXVII'.[46][47]
Peter Cornelius based the music of his paraphrase of Psalm 137, 'An Babels Wasserflüssen', Op. 13 No. 2 (1872), on the 'Sarabande' of Bach's third English Suite.[48][49] Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) set verses 1-5 to music as No. 7 of his Biblical Songs (1894).[50][51] A song titled 'I'll Hang My Harp on a Willow Tree' dates to the 1840s.[52] The line 'I'll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree' appears in the song 'There Is a Tavern in the Town,'[53] (circa 1880) sung by a wife who pines for her true love's affections that now are given to another woman.
20th and 21st-century settings based on, or referring to, Psalm 137 include:
Phrases from the psalm have been referenced in numerous works, including:
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