He eventually submitted it to The Spectator magazine, but it was rejected. The origins of McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” are uncertain, in terms of when and where he first composed it, but he became convinced of its merit and spent months working it into shape. Being a man of literary talents, the poppies and his dead friend began to stir a poetic vision that would move generations to come.
McCrae conducted the burial service himself, but during this time he also noticed the red poppies growing obstinately throughout the Flanders landscape. McCrae also suffered personal loss – his friend and former student Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed in action. Another of its common names is the Flanders Poppy.
It grows in the most ravaged and inhospitable of land (indeed it thrives best in soil that has been disturbed), hence it managed to add a haunting dash of colour to the shell-thrashed landscape of Flanders. The last name is revealing, for although this member of the poppy family produces a beautiful vivid red flower, it is nonetheless classified as a weed. Papaver rhoeas is known by many other common names – corn poppy, corn rose, field poppy, red poppy and red weed. Yet as many soldiers noticed, in Flanders and in other regions of the blasted frontline, nature had still not given up on the land. Between 19, Flanders became one of the most devastated regions of the entire battlefield. Belgian Flanders represented the northernmost point of the Western Front during the First World War, once the trenchlines had been inscribed in the earth by the end of 1914. To trace the history of the Remembrance Poppy, we have to journey back to a time and place stripped of almost all beauty and compassion.
0 kommentar(er)
