Casabianca (poem)

See Casabianca (disambiguation) for other meanings

"Casabianca" is a poem by British poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans, first published in the New Monthly Magazine for August 1826.

The poem starts :

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

It is written in ballad meter, rhyming abab.

History

The poem commemorates an actual incident that occurred in 1798 during the Battle of the Nile aboard the French ship Orient. The young son Giocante (his age is variously given as ten, twelve and thirteen) of commander Louis de Casabianca remained at his post and perished when the flames caused the magazine to explode.

Narrative

In Hemans' and other tellings of the story, young Casabianca refuses to desert his post without orders from his father. (It is sometimes said, rather improbably, that he heroically set fire to the magazine to prevent the ship's capture by the British.) It's said that he was seen by British sailors on ships attacking from both sides but how any other details of the incident are known beyond the bare fact of the boy's death, is not clear. Hemans, not purporting to offer a history, but rather a poem inspired by the bare facts, writes:

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud though childlike form.

The flames rolled on;he would not go

Without his Father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

Hemans has him repeatedly, and heart-rendingly, calling to his father for instructions: "'Say, Father, say/If yet my task is done;'" "'Speak, father!' once again he cried/'If I may yet be gone!;'" and "shouted but once more aloud/ 'My father! must I stay?'" Alas, there is, of course, no response.

She concludes by commending the performances of both ship and boy:

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

That well had borne their part—

But the noblest thing which perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

Cultural impact

This poem was a staple of elementary school readers in the United Kingdom and the United States over a period of about a century spanning, roughly, the 1850s through the 1950s. So often memorized and recited as to lose any shred of meaning or emotion, it is today remembered mostly as a tag line and as a topic of parodies.

McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic Reader (1866) takes this poem as the topic of Lesson LV. After urging the reader to "Utter distinctly each consonant: terrible, thunders, brave, distant, progress, trust, mangled, burning, bright," it introduces and presents the poem, following it with a set of questions: "What is this story about? Who was Casabianca? By whose side did he stand in the midst of battle? What happened to his father? What took fire? What did the sailors begin to do? What did the little boy do? Why did he stand there amid so much danger? What became of him?"

In the 1961 British sci-fi/ black comedy "The Day the Earth Caught Fire", Peter Stenning (Edward Judd) recites the famous opening line as he reports to work on what could well turn out to be doomsday.

A character in Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh draws an unorthodox moral from the poem:

Then he thought of Casabianca. He had been examined in that poem by his father not long before. 'When only would he leave his position? To whom did he call? Did he get an answer? Why? How many times did he call upon his father? What happened to him? What was the noblest life that perished there? Do you think so? Why do you think so?' And all the rest of it. Of course he thought Casabianca's was the noblest life that perished there; there could be no two opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the moral of the poem was that young people cannot begin too soon to exercise discretion in the obedience they pay to their papa and mamma.

A version of the poem by American poet Elizabeth Bishop refers to elements of Hemans's original work as an allegory for love.

In History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984), Kamau Brathwaite alludes to the poem as an example of imperial education and hopes those who have had to recite its lines will be able to express themselves in 'nation language' (Carribean patios) instead of 'imposed' language and poetry.

The first line of the poem serves as the title and the inspiration for the short story of the same name by C. S. Forester. In this version the hero, Ed Jones, remains at his station aboard the fictitious USS Boon during the Battle of Midway. A fire started in the bilge beneath his station in the engine room, but Jones remained at his station slowly roasting while the battle rages. At the conclusion of the battle he is relieved by a damage control party. Burned, he nonetheless survives the war.

The story is referenced in Bram Stoker's Dracula. In chapter VII, in a newspaper account of the great storm, the dead pilot of the ship Demeter is compared to "the young Casabianca." (Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897).

Parody

Generations of disrespectful schoolchildren, perhaps in accord with Butler's way of thinking, created parodies. One, recalled by Martin Gardner, editor of Best Remembered Poems, went:

The boy stood on the burning deck,

The flames 'round him did roar;

He found a bar of Ivory Soap

And washed himself ashore.

Spike Milligan also parodied the opening of the poem:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled -

Twit!

An episode of Gilligan's Island featured The Skipper trying his hand at poetry.

The boy stood on the burning deck,

His feet were full of blisters

Eric Morecambe created perhaps the best known parody:

The boy stood on the burning deck

His lips were all a-quiver

He gave a cough, his leg fell off

And floated down the river.

External links

• Full text of the poem at UPenn's Celebration of Women Writers