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In Flanders Fields

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This is about the poem. There is also a museum by that name in Ypres (Belgium).
File:Flanders Fields Stamp (Canadian).jpg
A small portion of In Flanders Fields appeared alongside McCrae's portrait on a Canadian stamp of 1968, issued to commemorate a half-century since his death.
Wreaths of artificial poppies used as a symbol of remembrance
Roll of Honour of Clan McRae's dead of World War I at Eilean Donan castle. In Flanders Fields features prominently.

"In Flanders Fields" is one of the most famous poems about World War I, and has been called "The most popular poem" produced by the war.[1] It is written in the form of a French rondeau. It was written by Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae on May 3, 1915, after he witnessed the gruesome death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before. The poem was first published on December 7, that year in Punch magazine.

The poppies referred to in the poem grew in profusion in Flanders (Belgium) where war casualties had been buried and thus became a symbol of Remembrance Day. The poem is part of Remembrance Day solemnities in Allied countries which contributed troops to WWI, particularly in countries of the British Empire which did so.

An official adaptation into French, used by the Canadian government in Remembrance Day ceremonies, was written by Jean Pariseau and is entitled Au champ d'honneur.

The poem has achieved near-mythical status in contemporary Canada and is one of the nation's most prominent symbols. Most Remembrance Day ceremonies will feature a reading of the poem in some form, and many Canadian schoolchildren memorize the verse.

A portion of the poem is now printed on Canadian $10 notes, where it spawned a false rumour that the poem had been misprinted, resulting from popular confusion between the first line's "blow" and the penultimate line's "grow". The lines "To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high" have been adopted as the motto of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.

Critic Paul Fussell, in The Great War and Modern Memory, points out the sharp distinction between the pastoral, sacrificial tone of the poem's first nine lines and the "recruiting-poster rhetoric" of the poem's third stanza; he argues that, appearing in 1915, the poem would serve to denigrate any negotiated peace that would end the war, and calls these lines "a propaganda argument," saying "words like vicious and stupid would not seem to go too far."[2]


Response poems

The poem has also inspired several "response" poems, written from the point of view of the still-living to whom the torch is thrown, in reply to the challenge that McCrae puts forth in his final stanza. Some more notable poems include:

See also

  • The song "We Are the Lost" by the group Libera paraphrases this poem along with For the Fallen, sung as a choral hymn.
  • Jacques Brel, the Belgian composer, uses lines from the poem in his song "Marieke".
  • The Guess Who - Friends Of Mine uses the lyric:
In Flanders Fields the poppies grow
between the crosses row on row
to mark the dead
To Flanders Fields the hippies go
to smoke the poppies there below
and feed their heads
  • In the episode "What Have We learned, Charlie Brown?" of "The Peanuts", Linus recites the poem while standing in front of the remains of WWI.
  • In the film Mr. Holland's Opus, Jay Thomas, playing a high school football coach, reads the poem at the funeral of one of his former players, who was killed in action in Vietnam.

References

  1. ^ Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 248.
  2. ^ Fussell, pp. 249-250.
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