Belshazzar's Feast by Rembrandt, c. 1635

Belshazzar (6th century BC), son of the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, Nabonidus, has inspired many works of art and cultural allusions, often with a religious motif. While a historical figure, depictions and portrayals of him are most often based on his appearance in the biblical story of Belshazzar's feast in the Book of Daniel. This story is the origin of the idiomatic expression "the writing is on the wall".

The writing is on the wall

Look up writing on the wall in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In chapter 5 in the Book of Daniel, a hand writes Hebrew letters on a wall, which Daniel interprets as "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin". These words mean that Belshazzar is doomed. The phrase "The writing is on the wall", or "The writing on the wall", has become a idiomatic expression referring to the foreshadowing of any impending doom, misfortune, or end. If "the writing is on the wall" something bad is about to happen. A person who does not or refuses to see "the writing on the wall" is being described as ignorant to the signs of a cataclysmic event that will likely occur in the near future.[1][2]

One of the earliest known uses of the phrase in English is in the writings of a Captain L. Brinckmair in 1638, during the Thirty Years' War. Brinckmair writes: "Remarkable Prodigies..are in themselves like the writing on the Wall in Beshazzars Palace, which Sooth-sayers, Astrologians, and Chaldeans could neither understand nor reade’."[3]

Music

George Frideric Handel wrote the oratorio Belshazzar in 1744

Theatre and literature

Belshazzar had a letter—
He never had but one—
Belshazzar's Correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal Copy
The Conscience of us all
Can read without its Glasses
On revelation's wall—
—Emily Dickinson, 1879

  • The fourteenth-century poem Cleanness by the Pearl Poet recounts the feast and subsequent events as a warning against spiritual impurity.[17]
  • In William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (written between 1596 and 1599), Portia disguises herself as a lawyer's apprentice and calls herself Balthazar (in Act IV, scene i), alluding to the Biblical Belshazzar.[18]
  • Belshazzar's Feast (La cena del rey Baltasar, 17th century), an auto sacramental by Pedro Calderon de la Barca.[19]
  • In 1720[20] Jonathan Swift wrote "'Tis like the writing on the wall" in the poem "The Run Upon the Bankers", using the idiom.[21]
  • Lord Byron's poem "Vision of Belshazzar" from Hebrew Melodies (1815) includes both the feast and Daniel's pronunciation.[22]
  • The poem Belsazar by Heinrich Heine is based on the feast. It appears in the collection Buch der Lieder ("Book of Songs", 1827).[23]
  • "Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" and Belshazzar is mentioned in Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) in connection with Gérard de Villefort having one of his long past crimes come to light.[24]
  • In chapter 99 of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851), the first mate Starbuck murmur to himself "The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing" as he spies Captain Ahab speaking to the doubloon he had nailed to the mast of the Pequod.[25]
  • Emily Dickinson's poem "Belshazzar had a letter" from The Poems of Emily Dickinson is about Belshazzar's divine correspondence. Her poem was written in 1879.[26][27]
  • In the novel Sister Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser entitles a chapter "The Feast of Belshazar – A Seer to Translate" in which the gluttony of turn-of-the-century New York City is highlighted.[28]
  • Belshazzar’s Feast (Belsazars gästabud), a play from 1906 by the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Hjalmar Procopé, based on the feast.[10][29]
  • Belshazzar is a 1930 novel by H. Rider Haggard. In it, the Egyptian Ramose's sister is sent as a gift to Belshazzar, and the feast is part of the plot.[30]
  • In H. P. Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth (written 1931, published 1936), the character Zadok Allen says "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin", a reference to the Book of Daniel.[31]
  • Robert Frost's poem "The Bearer of Evil Tidings" (1936), is about a messenger headed to Belshazzar's court to deliver the news of the king's imminent overthrow. Remembering that evil tidings were a "dangerous thing to bear," the messenger flees to the Himalayas rather than facing the monarch's wrath.[32]
  • In Wallace Stevens' poem "Country Words" (1937) the poet sings a canto to Belshazzar and wants him "reading right".[33]
  • In Fazil Iskander's novel Sandro of Chegem (1983), one of the chapters depicting a dinner involving an Abkhazian dance ensemble and Joseph Stalin is titled "Belshazzar's Feast".[34] The story was filmed in 1989.[35]

Visual arts

The Royal Feast of Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings (1884)

Film

Alfred Paget as Belshazzar.

References

  1. ↑ Oliver, Harry (5 October 2010). Bees Knees and Barmy Armies – Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day. John Blake Publishing. ISBN 9781857829440. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  2. ↑ Lennox, Doug (1 November 2010). Now You Know The Bible. Dundurn. ISBN 9781554888276. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  3. ↑ "Where does 'the writing is on the wall' come from?". OxfordWords blog. 20 January 2017. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  4. ↑ Tommasini, Anthony (2014-12-28). "A Feast and a Lions' Den, Conveyed in Multiple Ways". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  5. ↑ Burrows, Donald (15 June 2012). Handel. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 9780199737369. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  6. ↑ Tommasini, Anthony (2012-07-08). "'Ciro in Babilonia' by Rossini, in Bel Canto at Caramoor". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  7. ↑ Finson, Jon W.; Finson, Associate Professor of Music Jon W. (10 September 2018). Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674026292. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ Root, George F. (1 January 1984). The Haymakers. A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 9780895791924. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  9. ↑ Griffel, Margaret Ross (21 December 2012). Operas in English: A Dictionary. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810883253. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  10. 1 2 Jackson, Timothy L.; Murtomäki, Veijo [in Finnish] (11 January 2001). Sibelius Studies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 82–83. ISBN 9780521624169. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  11. ↑ Ward, David (15 July 2002). "The six greatest works of William Walton". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-02-20.
  12. ↑ Zimmers, Tighe E. (30 October 2013). Lyrical Satirical Harold Rome: A Biography of the Broadway Composer-Lyricist. McFarland. ISBN 9780786470266. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  13. ↑ Mordden, Ethan (7 April 2015). Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930s. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9781466893474. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  14. ↑ Chilton, Martin (17 March 2011). "Johnny Cash: Bootleg Volume 2, From Memphis To Hollywood, CD Review". Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  15. ↑ Banister, C. Eric (1 August 2014). Johnny Cash FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Man in Black. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 9781617136085. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  16. ↑ "Wormwood – The Residents – Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  17. ↑ Spyra, Piotr (17 February 2016). The Epistemological Perspective of the Pearl-Poet. Routledge. ISBN 9781317033905. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  18. ↑ The Merchant of Venice: Choice, Hazard and Consequence. Macmillan International Higher Education. 8 February 1995. ISBN 9781349238460. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  19. ↑ MacCarthy, Denis Florence (7 September 1870). "Three Dramas of Calderón, from the Spanish: Love the Greatest Enchantment, The Sorceries of Sin, and The Devotion of the Cross". W.B. Kelly. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  20. ↑ Swift, Jonathan (10 September 2018). "The Run Upon the Bankers". Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  21. ↑ Dawn, Maggi (23 June 2011). The Writing on the Wall: High Art, Popular Culture and the Bible. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 9781444722079. Retrieved 10 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  22. ↑ Lemon, Rebecca; Mason, Emma; Roberts, Jonathan; Rowland, Christopher (28 February 2012). The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118241158. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  23. ↑ Mühlemann, Marianne (2017-12-21). "Was soll das bedeuten?". Der Bund. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  24. ↑ Dumas, Alexandre (27 March 2003). The Count of Monte Cristo. Penguin UK. ISBN 9780141901251. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  25. ↑ Phan, Hoang Gia (26 April 2013). Bonds of Citizenship: Law and the Labors of Emancipation. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814738474. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  26. ↑ Ph.D, Wendy Martin (27 January 2014). All Things Dickinson: An Encyclopedia of Emily Dickinson's World [2 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of Emily Dickinson's World. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781440803321. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  27. ↑ Doriani, Beth Maclay (7 September 1996). Emily Dickinson: Daughter of Prophecy. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-0870239991. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  28. ↑ "American Literary Realism, 1870-1910". University of Texas at Arlington, Department of English. 7 September 1984. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  29. ↑ Ashley, Tim (17 July 2015). "Proms First Night review: off to a flying start". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  30. ↑ "Rider Haggard's Last Story, "Belshazzar"". The Sydney Morning Herald. National Library of Australia. 7 November 1930. p. 7. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  31. ↑ Lovecraft, H. P. (9 May 2013). The Classic Horror Stories. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191640889. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  32. ↑ Fagan, Deirdre J. (7 September 2018). Critical Companion to Robert Frost: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438108544. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  33. ↑ Cook, Eleanor (9 March 2009). A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400827640. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  34. ↑ Ryan, Karen L. (24 November 2009). Stalin in Russian Satire, 1917–1991. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299234430. Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  35. ↑ "Piry Valtasara, ili noch so Stalinym". Retrieved 7 September 2018 – via www.imdb.com.
  36. ↑ London, The National Gallery. "Rembrandt - Belshazzar's Feast - NG6350 - National Gallery, London". www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  37. ↑ Maj, Yale Center for British Art, Lec. "Belshazzar's Feast". collections.britishart.yale.edu. Retrieved 3 September 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  38. ↑ "The Hand-Writing upon the Wall". British Museum. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  39. ↑ Bjelajac, David Voss (3 September 1984). "Washington Allston's Unfinished Masterpiece Belshazzar's Feast (1817-1843): Millennial Desire and Social Conservatism in the New American Israel". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 3 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  40. ↑ Harris, Jessica B.; Wilson, Bee; Wineapple, Brenda (2017-10-26). "The Dinners That Shaped History". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  41. ↑ "In the Studio with Susan Hiller". Independent.co.uk. 2015-12-11. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  42. ↑ Magazine, Wallpaper* (16 November 2015). "Artist as archaeologist: Susan Hiller's first solo exhibition at London's Lisson Gallery". Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  43. ↑ Morcillo, Marta Garcia; Hanesworth, Pauline; Marchena, Óscar Lapeña (11 February 2015). Imagining Ancient Cities in Film: From Babylon to Cinecittà. Routledge. ISBN 9781135013172. Retrieved 3 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  44. ↑ Aaker, Everett (25 May 2017). Television Western Players, 1960-1975: A Biographical Dictionary. McFarland. ISBN 9781476662503. Retrieved 3 September 2018 – via Google Books.
  45. ↑ "Slaves of Babylon". Retrieved 3 September 2018 – via www.imdb.com.
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