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The Lamentations Project: Biblical Mourning through Modern Montage

Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

This study reacts against the reductive simplicity of form-critical and other diachronically focused methodologies, which attempt to systematize the book of Lamentations according to a sequence of ready-made forms. The laments’ thematic fragmentation can be more fruitfully understood as a form of montage, an ancient analogue to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Employing the modern experience of ruination, as it is formulated in Benjamin’s oeuvre, the analysis illuminates the biblical author’s literary method through the visual metaphor of the photomontage. The graphic images of Jerusalem’s destruction are considered as photographs, which Benjamin elsewhere defines as modes of bereavement. The ‘aesthetics of mourning’in both biblical and post-War mediums are thus defined by relentless dislocation and yet subtly constructive means to recovery. Finally, particular pieces of juxtaposed ‘evidence’ in Lamentations are shown to heighten the apparent sense of abandonment and chaos. The interdisciplinary approach defends the book’s artistic integrity while demonstrating that biblical criticism might profitably be informed by research from other disciplines.

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