Song of Exile and Refusal of Song, Mystical Silence and Lyricism in Adaptations of the Super flumina Babylonis Aubigné, Garnier, Jean de la Croix

The Super flumina Babylonis is a song of Israel’s exile and a rejection of song. Aubigné takes the cruellest revenge from it. Garnier, at a crucial moment in Les Juifves, sets two consecutive psalms against each other to express the impossibility of song and the necessity of hope in God. Jean de La Croix delivers the most original version: psalm is a lament of a soul exiled from its heavenly homeland, and a mystical poetry that shifts the focus from collective history to a spirituality of absence and desire for God.