SOURCE: Jackson, David H. “Textual Questions Raised by Crane's ‘Soldier of the Legion’.” American Literature 55, no. 1 (March 1983): 77-80.

In the following essay, Jackson offers insight into Crane's use of Caroline Norton's poem “Bingen on the Rhine” in his story “The Open Boat.”

Although the passage in “The Open Boat” in which four lines of verse “mysteriously” enter the correspondent's head is widely considered to have central thematic importance,¹ the textual questions raised by these misquoted lines from Caroline Norton's “Bingen on the Rhine” have never received adequate answers. Three significant textual questions present themselves: Why do the authoritative texts truncate the first stanza of Norton's ballad? Why do they differ, in substantives and accidentals, from each other? And what form of these lines should a critical edition of Crane's story include? My research has suggested a hypothetical answer to the first question, from which follow new and more...