Last week on the books blog, posters discussed a possible feature on forgotten bestselling novels. The idea converts well to poetry, because, while even excellent works of fiction tend to disappear if they haven't quite made the grade as "classics", once-popular poems stay around, evergreen in the traditional anthologies that still sit, fat and dusty, on most people's bookshelves.
We've sometimes pulled out poems or poets from the Poem of the week bookshelf that are undeservedly neglected. Some were neglected even in their own time. This week, I'm asking you to train your jeweller's spy-glass on an old favourite, "Casabianca", perhaps the most loved and widely-anthologised poem of the 19th century.
The best-selling Liverpudlian poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans was an ambitious, prolific writer, who produced larger-scale works than "Casabianca" (1826). She has deserved some recent efforts at reappraisal, but my question is not about her overall reputation. It's whether this poem deserves the 21st century's attention. Is it diamond or paste?
"Casabianca" was soon taken up by the parodists. As we've recently discussed on this forum, a good parody demands such close reading it might almost be thought an ironical act of love. But most of the anonymous parodists of "Casabianca" didn't get beyond the first verse. "The boy stood on the burning deck./ His feet were covered in blisters./ He'd burnt the socks right off his feet/ And had to wear his sister's" was the version I heard as a child. There is a slightly more risqué one the adults didn't repeat, at least in my hearing.
It's not hard to understand the magnetic attraction to irreverence. No one, least of all the young, likes poetic ernestness, especially when it advertises extreme filial duty. Besides, the opening narrative has a touch of absurdity: a boy can't really be standing on a deck that's burning underneath him, can he? It's the point of the poem, that the boy does stand his ground and perish in the flames, but perhaps Hemans introduces the theme prematurely, or without sufficient precision.
The poem has its moments of triumph. Verses eight and nine are particularly vivid. By the end, I feel almost moved, in the AE Housman sense: a tingle on the skin, a glisten in the eyes. Almost, but not quite. The poet's praise of "mast, and helm, and pennon fair" seems a misjudged distraction. Why even begin to compare them with the boy's "faithful heart"?
As a whole, I'm afraid "Casabianca" punches at the weight of melodrama rather than tragedy. And, too often, the technique fails the sentiment. That first verse, again, is a culprit, with the casual, rhyme-led syntax of "Shone round him o'er the dead." This overloaded last line is truly awful.
When it comes to dialogue, the boy's elegant phrasing may be intended to convey noble stoicism, but it sounds more as if he's enunciating a part in a rather bad play. Hemans tries to register his growing desperation, but that final plea seems marred by the possessive pronoun. Surely, no child would shout out "My father" instead of "Father" or "Papa" at such a terrifying moment? The word is present for the sake of an un-stressed syllable. It's not demanded by the energy of the voice, it's demanded by the iambic metre. "My father," though, certainly beats the alternative "Oh, father …"
Perhaps the best thing, poetically, about "Casabianca" is that it inspired a later, greater poet, Elizabeth Bishop. In a brilliant double-twist to the original, Bishop's "Casabianca" turns melodrama into allegory: "Love's the boy stood on the burning deck,/ trying to recite "the boy stood on the/ burning deck". Somehow the figure in Bishop's poem, "stammering elocution" while the burning ship goes down, has more human pathos than the real child in the Hemans poem. Bishop reminds us of another reason for "Casabianca's" popularity: it was ideal recitation material. As all performance poets know, you can get away with a bit of dead wood if you deliver it with style.
But modern readers shouldn't forget that Hemans sourced her tale in a historical event. Whether or not the young Giocante Casabianca actually sacrificed himself as the poem claims (there seems to be no evidence), it's certain that both the boy and his father, Commodore Casabianca, were killed on the French flagship, l'Orient. The ship had caught fire, and, when the flames reached the powder kegs, it exploded. Hemans did not, then, write a jingoistic set of verses about British heroism during the Napoleonic wars, but chose to describe a French tragedy, in a poem running counter to nationalist stereotype, and appealing to universal human emotions. Its heart is in the right place, if, not always, its technique. And perhaps that's why few parodists get beyond the first verse. The comedy would become too dark, too callous, and simply not funny any more.
So, is "Casabianca" still worth reading? Is it good verse but bad poetry, or not even good verse? Over to you.
Casabianca
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.
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.
He called aloud: – 'say, Father, say
If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder-sound –
The boy – oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!–
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.