SOURCE: "The Snow of Twenty-Nine: 'Babylon Revisited' as Ubi Sunt Lament," in College Literature, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter, 1980, pp. 47-52.

In the following essay, Gervais contends that "Babylon Revisited" falls within the tradition of dirges for the past and compares it to François Villon's "Ballade of Dead Ladies."

One of the enduring themes of literature is the transitory nature of man's life, of love and beauty, of happiness. In works of this sort, an important part is sometimes played by the ubi sunt device, which takes its name from the first two words of the Latin sentence, Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? ("Where are they who were before us?"), that began numerous medieval poems. In asking the question, the writer evokes for a moment the splendor of life, symbolized by famous persons of the past, and then, by his inevitably grim answer, condemns it to death. The...