Casabianca (poem)

"Casabianca" is a poem by the English poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans, first published in The Monthly Magazine, Vol 2, August 1826.[1]

The poem starts:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but him 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. It is about the true story of a boy who was obedient enough to wait for his father's orders, not knowing that his father is no more alive.

History

The poem commemorates an actual incident that occurred in 1798 during the Battle of the Nile aboard the French ship Orient. Giocante, the young son (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 ship's 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 facts, writes:

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud though child-like 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'" at which point his voice is drowned out by "booming shots" until he "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. It is today remembered mostly as a tag line and as a topic of parodies.[2] Perhaps to justify its embedding in English-speaking culture, modern editors[3][4] often claim French poets also celebrated the event - notably André Chenier and Ecouchard Lebrun - apparently without noticing that the former was executed four years before the Battle of the Nile, so could not have written about these events. These claims for literary pedigree appear spurious.

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).

The mis-attribution of the poem serves as both a key plot device, and a running gag, in P.G. Wodehouse's The Luck of the Bodkins (1935).

The first line of the poem serves as the title and the inspiration for the short story "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" 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.[5]

Parody

Generations of schoolchildren created parodies based on the poem. 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:[6]

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled -

Twit!

Eric Morecambe created another 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.

References

1. Not The New Monthly Magazine as sometimes reported. It was also reproduced in The Kaleidoscope; or Literary and Scientific Mirror, Liverpool, August 26th 1826, page 60, The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, Philadelphia, October 1826, page 343 and Whitaker's Monthly and European Magazine, 1826.
2. "Why We Should Memorize". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
3. ""Victorian Literature: an Anthology" (ed. Shea & Whitla)". Retrieved 2015-11-04.
4. ""Victorian Parlour Poetry" Michael Turner". Retrieved 2015-11-04.
5. C. S. Forester, "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck", from The Man in the Yellow Raft. Short Stories (1969), reprinted in The Oxford Book of Sea Stories, ed. Tony Tanner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
6. "Simply Spike — Michael Palin remembers Spike Milligan". The Guardian. London. 2002-02-28. Retrieved 2008-02-23.

External links

• Full text of the poem at UPenn's Celebration of Women Writers
• Original text of the poem: 'Casabianca' by Felicia Hemans.