[1000] Casabianca
Guest poem submitted by Gregory Marton, <gremio@>:
Yesterday's poem, "Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop written in 1946, is
somewhat out of place without its predecessor below, written in 1829:
The boy stod 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.
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.
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 that perished there
Was that young, faithful heart.
-- Felicia Hemans
|
This was better known as "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck", and is the
poem Bishop's boy recites in Poem #999.
From http://mason-west.com/ElizabethBishop/casabianca.shtml :
Hemans's poem commemorates the death of Young Casabianca, a boy
about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the "Orient", who
remained at his post in the Battle of the Nile after the ship had
taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in
the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the
powder. The Battle of the Nile, in which Nelson captured and
destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, took place on August
1, 1798.
Hemans's "Casabianca" came to me through one of the most inspiring pieces
of text I've ever read. Alan Turing, in his famous 1950 paper "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence", describes the famous Turing Test. He asserts
that machines will someday "think" in the sense of that word that we use
for ourselves, and was the first to describe, by his imitation game, a means
to tell whether a machine was doing so.
In the paper Turing also describes constructing an intelligent machine by
constructing first a child machine, then training it as one would a child.
In describing why Skinnerian operant conditioning, a series of rewards for
good behavior and punishments for bad, would not be the best training
approach, Turing says:
Roughly speaking, if the teacher has no other means of
communicating to the pupil, the amount of information which can
reach him does not exceed the total number of rewards and
punishments applied. By the time a child has learnt to repeat
"Casabianca" he would probably feel very sore indeed, if the text
could only be discovered by a "Twenty Questions" technique, every
"NO" taking the form of a blow.
At first I thought Turing had mistyped "Casablanca" but looked and found
otherwise! Indeed the metaphor is most apt, especially in light of Bishop's
version (1946): the child machine, the only sort of boy designed not to run
or fight back, reciting in "stammering elocution" the poem until by blows he
gets it right. The machine, the most obstinate of little boys -- it's this
boy that I as an AI grad student love, even if he'll not for some time yet
pass Turing's test or run from burning flames. We'll get there. :-)
Gremio.
From: <foshea@>
Thank you Greg for the background to this poem. The connection to the tragic
Turing is fascinating. Keep up the work on AI (I like the cynic's definition
as "whatever hasn't been done yet.")
Frank
From: "Lilyan Johnson" <lilyan1922@>
For most of my 80 years, Casabianca has been my favorite piece of work.
We learned it in grammar school. At that time it was called, The Boy
Stood On the Burning Deck. I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE ONE WRITTEN,
SUPPOSEDLY, IN 1946. To this day, Casabianca can make me cry.
Sincerely, Lilyan Johnson
lilyan1922@
From: "rajesh arora" <rajeshneerja@>
The poem I learnt in the late fifties, had an additional stanza, as
below (best as I can remember). It came before the final two stanzas
shown on your site ie just before 'There came a burst ..
'They wrapped the ship in splendor wild
And caught the flag on high
They streamed above the gallant child
Like banners in the sky'
From: Lewis <lewis100@>
You're right Rajesh. I found another site at
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/works/hf-burning.html with
that additional stanza in place. I came looking for the poem after finding
reference to it in an article on Nelson in the autumn issue of Sea History.
After finding it I recognized it of course, but I had always thought it was
in reference to an American ship so it was nice to have its origins
clarified.
Richard
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You’re right Rajesh. I found another site at <a
href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/works/hf-burning.html">http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/works/hf-burning.html</a>
with that additional stanza in place. I came looking for the poem after finding
reference to it in an article on Nelson in the autumn issue of Sea History. After
finding it I recognized it of course, but I had always thought it was in
reference to an American ship so it was nice to have its origins clarified.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Richard<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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From: "kate miller" <jnkmiller@>
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I have only just now read Casabianca, the picture in my mind as I sought
the meaning of this poem's words was so terrible yet beautiful at the
same. If ever anyone could right as touching and heart-felt poem as
this, I would have to read it myself before I would believe it existed.
Reading this poem as helped me understand more about life, and taught me
to question and wonder over things we would usually take for granted.
Selai
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<DIV><FONT face"Arial size"2>I have only just now read Casabianca,
the picture
in my mind as I sought the meaning of this poem's words was so terrible
yet
beautiful at the same. If ever anyone could right as touching and
heart-felt
poem as this, I would have to read it myself before I would believe it
existed.
Reading this poem as helped me understand more about life, and taught me
to
question and wonder over things we would usually take for
granted.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face"Arial size"2>Selai</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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