O Captain! My captain!
O Captain! My captain! is a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from 1865, which is dedicated to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln . It was first included in Whitman's Sequel to Drum-Taps collection , which includes 18 poems about the American Civil War . Among them was an elegy concerning Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd . Both poems found in 1867 included in the fourth edition of Whitman's extensive collection of poems Leaves of Grass ( grass ). O Captain! My captain! is the only poem Whitmanpublishedin an anthology during his lifetime.
text
O Captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fall cold and dead.
O Captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fall cold and dead.
Historical background and interpretation
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865 inspired Walt Whitman to write the three-verse poem, first published in November 1865. The victorious end of the American Civil War was foreseeable at the time of Lincoln's death, the victory of the northern states was bought with great destruction and a large number of victims, the American nation was torn and lay on the ground. In this situation, the president's death came as a shock.
The poem describes the return of a ship after a victorious battle. The captain, who fell in battle, lies on the planks of the upper deck. The situation described is ambivalent; on the one hand the war is won; on the banks of the river people stand tightly packed to greet the victorious ship and its captain. The promising perspective is expressed with “But O heart! heart! heart! … ”Contrasts in the second half of the first stanza and changes from the celebration of victory to the mourning for the dead. In the rest of the text, the victory that unites all and all over the suffering and pain of loss recedes almost completely.
The war won - “… our fearful trip is done” - refers to the Union's victory over the Confederates; the ship stands for the northern states and in a broader sense for the US-American nation, which lost its prophetic leader with the death of the captain, the president Abraham Lincoln. Even during Lincoln's lifetime he was referred to as "Mose" or "Father Abraham", especially by the Afro-American population. With the metaphor of the ship returning home, carrying its dead captain, Whitman ties in with the biblical theme of the book Exodus , in which Moses leads the oppressed people of Israel from Egyptian captivity to the promised land. As in the biblical template, the leader works for the achievement of goals with patience, skill, emphasis and willpower; he sacrifices himself. He is destined to see the promised land, in Whitman's poem the united and peaceful nation; but still not achievable. At the same time, Whitman takes up a passage from the Gettysburg Address of the President of November 19, 1863 - "We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live" . In addition to the suffering and grief of the fellow combatant for the dead captain - "But I, with mournful / tread, / ..." - remains with "Exult, O shores / and ring, O bells!" The vision of a peaceful democratic community.
reception
In the 1989 feature film The Dead Poets Club by Peter Weir, the poem is referred to several times, in which it is the respectful address of the club's students for the popular English teacher John Keating ( Robin Williams ). After Robin Williams' death on August 11, 2014, the poem's title line, along with the stand-on-the-table scene from the film, became a worldwide symbol of the respect and grief for the popular actor.
Also in Words & Pictures - In love and in art everything is permitted by Fred Schepisi (2013) this form of address is used for the unconventional English teacher Jack Marcus ( Clive Owen ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ O Captain! My Captain !, Historical Period: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877 . Library of Congress
- ↑ Justin Kaplan: Walt Whitman: A Life . Simon and Schuster, New York 1979, ISBN 0-671-22542-1 , p. 309.
- ↑ Alexander Göbel : Oh Captain, my Captain . From the log cabin to the White House. Info page of Deutsche Welle about Abraham Lincoln (with German translation of the poem), dw.de
- ↑ O Captain, my Captain! YouTube, accessed July 15, 2019 .
- ↑ #MyCaptain: Standing on tables: So the network says goodbye to Robin Williams - FOCUS Online. Retrieved July 15, 2019 .
