Part of his voluminous correspondence has also appeared. The
most interesting volumes are the following: Correspondance de F. de
Lamennais, edited by E. D. Forgues (2 vols., 1855–1858); Œuvres
inédites de F. Lamennais, edited by Ange Blaize (2 vols., 1866);
Correspondance inédite entre Lamennais et le baron de Vitrolles, edited
by E. D. Forgues (1819–1853); Confidences de Lamennais, lettres
inédites de 1821 à 1848, edited by A. du Bois de la Villerabel (1886);
Lamennais d’après des documents inédits, by Alfred Roussel (Rennes,
2 vols., 1892); Lamennais intime, d’après une correspondance inédite,
by A. Roussel (Rennes, 1897); Un Lamennais inconnu, edited by A.
Laveille (1898); Lettres de Lamennais à Montalembert, edited by
E. D. Forgues (1898); and many other letters published in the
Revue bleue, Revue britannique, &c.
A list of lives or studies on Lamennais would fill several columns. The following may be mentioned. A Blaize, Essai biographique sur M. de Lamennais (1858); E. D. Forgues, Notes et souvenirs (1859); F. Brunetière, Nouveaux essais sur la littérature contemporaine (1893); E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes, ii. (1898); P. Janet, La Philosophie de Lamennais (1890); P. Mercier, S.J., Lamennais d’après sa correspondance et les travaux les plus récents (1893); A. Mollien et F. Duine, Lamennais, sa vie et ses idées; Pages choisies (Lyons, 1898); The Hon. W. Gibson, The Abbé de Lammenais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in France (London, 1896); E. Renan Essais de morale et de critique (1857); E. Schérer, Mélanges de critique religieuse (1859); G. E. Spuller, Lamennais, étude d’histoire et de politique religieuse (1892); Mgr. Ricard, L’école menaisienne (1882), and Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, tome i. (1832), and Nouveaux Lundis, tome i. p. 22; tome xi. p. 347.
LAMENTATIONS (Lamentations of Jeremiah), a book of the
Old Testament. In Hebrew MSS. and editions this little collection
of liturgical poems is entitled איכה Ah how!, the first
word of ch. i. (and chs. ii., iv.); cf. the books of the Pentateuch,
and the Babylonian Epic of Creation (a far older example).
In the Septuagint it is called Θρῆνοι, “Funeral-songs” or
“Dirges,” the usual rendering of Heb. קינות (Am. v. 1; Jer.
vii. 29; 2 Sam. i. 17), which is, in fact, the name in the Talmud
(Baba Bathra 15a) and other Jewish writings; and it was known
as such to the Fathers (Jerome, Cinoth). The Septuagint (B)
introduces the book thus: “And it came to pass, after Israel
was taken captive and Jerusalem laid waste, Jeremiah sat
weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem,
and said . . .,” a notice which may have related originally
to the first poem only. Some Septuagint MSS., and the Syriac
and other versions, have the fuller title Lamentations of Jeremiah.
In the Hebrew Bible Lamentations is placed among the Cetubim
or Hagiographa, usually as the middle book of the five Megilloth
or Ferial Rolls (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes,
Esther) according to the order of the days on which they are
read in the Synagogue, Lamentations being read on the 9th of
Ab (6th of August), when the destruction of the Temple is
commemorated (Mass. Sopherim 18). But the Septuagint
appends the book to Jeremiah (Baruch intervening), just as
it adds Ruth to Judges; thus making the number of the books
of the Hebrew Canon the same as that of the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, viz. twenty-two (so Jos. c. Ap. i. 8), instead of the
Synagogal twenty-four (see Baba Bathra 14b).
External features and poetical structure.—These poems exhibit a peculiar metre, the so-called “limping verse,” of which Am. v. 2 is a good instance:
“She is fállen, to ríse no móre— |
A longer line, with three accented syllables, is followed by a shorter with two. Chs. i.-iii. consist of stanzas of three such couplets each; chs. iv. and v. of two like Am. v. 2. This metre came in time to be distinctive of elegy. The text of Lamentations, however, so often deviates from it, that we can only affirm the tendency of the poet to cast his couplets into this type (Driver). Some anomalies, both of metre and of sense, may be removed by judicious emendation; and many lines become smooth enough, if we assume a crasis of open vowels of the same class, or a diphthongal pronunciation of others, or contraction or silence of certain suffixes as in Syriac. The oldest elegiac utterances are not couched in this metre; e.g. David’s (2 Sam. iii. 33 f. Abner; ib. i. 19-27 Saul and Jonathan). Yet the refrain of the latter, ’Eik náf ’lu gíbborím, “Ah how are heroes fallen!” agrees with our longer line. The remote ancestor of this Hebrew metre may be recognized in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, written at least a thousand years earlier:—
Ea-báni íbri kuṭáni | Nímru sha çéri |
and again:—
Kíki lúskut | Kíki luqúl-ma |
Like a few of the Psalms, Lamentations i.-iv. are alphabetical acrostics. Each poem contains twenty-two stanzas, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and each stanza begins with its proper letter. (In ch. iii. each of the three couplets in a stanza begins with the same letter, so that the alphabet is repeated thrice: cf. Psalm cxix. for an eight-fold repetition.) The alphabet of Lamentations ii. iii. iv. varies from the usual order of the letters by placing Pe before Ain. The same was doubtless the case in ch. i. also until some scribe altered it. He went no further, because the sense forbade it in the other instances. The variation may have been one of local use, either in Judea or in Babylonia; or the author may have had some fanciful reason for the transposition, such as, for example, that Pe following Samech (ספ) might suggest the word ספדו, “Wail ye!” (2 Sam. iii. 31). Although the oldest Hebrew elegies are not alphabetic acrostics, it is a curious fact that the word ִּהַידֲך, “Was he a coward?” (Sc. ֹלבּו; Is. vii. 4), is formed by the initial letters of the four lines on Abner (om. ו, line 3); and the initials of the verses of David’s great elegy are הא המשכ אצא, which may be read as a sentence meaning, perhaps, “Lo, I the Avenger” (cf. Deut. xxxii. 41, 43) “will go forth!”; or the first two letters (′ה′א) may stand for הוי אחי, “Alas, my brother!” (Jer. xxii. 18; cf. xxxiv. 5). In cryptic fashion the poet thus registers a vow of vengeance on the Philistines. Both kinds of acrostic occur side by side in the Psalms. Psalm cx., an acrostic of the same kind as David’s elegy, is followed by Psalms cxi. cxii., which are alphabetical acrostics, like the Lamentations. Such artifices are not in themselves greater clogs on poetic expression than the excessive alliteration of old Saxon verse or the strict rhymes of modern lyrics. (Alliteration, both initial and internal, is common in Lamentations.)
As the final piece, ch. v. may have suffered more in transmission than those which precede it—even to the extent of losing the acrostic form (like some of the Psalms and Nahum i.), besides half of its stanzas. If we divide the chapter into quatrains, like ch. iv., we notice several vestiges of an acrostic. The Aleph stanza (verses 7, 8) still precedes the Beth (verses 9, 10), and the Ain is still quite clear (verses 17, 18; cf. i. 16). Transposing verses 5, 6, and correcting their text, we see that the Jod stanza (verses 3, 4) precedes the Lamed (verses 6, 5), Caph having disappeared between them. With this clue, we may rearrange the other quatrains in alphabetical sequence, each according to its initial letter. We thus get a broken series of eleven stanzas, beginning with the letters א (verses 7, 8), ב (9, 10), ה (21, 22), ו (19, cf. Psalm cii. 13; and 20), ן (1, 2), ח (13, חורים; 14), י (3, 4), ל (6, לצרים; 5, הכבידו . . . עֹל), נ (11, 12), ע (17, 18), and ש (15, 16), successively. An internal connexion will now be apparent in all the stanzas.
General subject and outline of contents.—The theme of Lamentations is the final siege and fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.), and the attendant and subsequent miseries of the Jewish people.
In ch. i. we have a vivid picture of the distress of Zion, after all is over. The poet does not describe the events of the siege, nor the horrors of the capture, but the painful experience of subjection and tyranny which followed. Neither this nor ch. ii. is strictly a “dirge.” Zion is not dead. She is personified as a widowed princess, bereaved and desolate, sitting amid the ruins of her former joys, and brooding over her calamities. From verse 11c to the end (except verse 17) she herself is the speaker:—
“O come, ye travellers all! |
