Remember - Christina Rossetti analysis (2)

REMEMBER

¹Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

⁵Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

¹⁰And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

CONTEXT 

Victorians had strict rules and interpretations of grief. There were specific social conventions for what colours and fabrics to wear, and for how long, to honour the dead, depending on the closeness of your relationship with them. Because death was such a common part of life, including high infant mortality and frequent deaths from illnesses we’d now be able to treat relatively easily, Victorians became quite superstitious about death and grieving. After the invention of the camera, photographs of the dead were taken, for example, and were - often the only photograph that person would have. 

-          Religious beliefs in the afterlife 

-          Rossetti’s romantic experiences

INTERPRETATION / ANALYSIS

This sonnet is a partner to Song (When I am Dead) in many ways. Both explore memory and the afterlife, and the responsibilities for grief from those left behind. Despite Rossetti’s Christian belief in the afterlife, there is still a conflict to be resolved between that faith and the natural grief occurring when losing a loved one,  This poem is from the perspective of the dying, rather than the one left behind. Rossetti’s speaker begins the sonnet with an imperative to “remember”, and the description of the afterlife as a “silent land” which isn’t a very optimistic viewpoint, but is similar to that in Song when she describes the silent dream. “Silent” and the lack of communication later in the poem might also be a reference to Rossetti’s belief in soul sleep, the silent dreamless state souls enter after death and before the end of the world. 

The instruction to “remember” is repeated through the poem, but becomes more of a discussion of the value of memory instead; is it something the lover should strive to do if it makes them unhappy? The direct address “you” throughout indicates the personal, intimate nature of this poem. Repeating “gone away” / “gone far away” emphasizes the boundary of life and death, symbolized elsewhere in the collection by a door or wall; here it is characterized as a different country. 

The second couplet “When you can...yet turning stay” holds echoes of the Greek myth of Orpheus, who tried to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld but turned around as they were leaving to see her, breaking the spell and dooming her to final death. The speaker here can’t communicate, can’t hold hands or contemplate a future with their lover. The speaker, however, can be seen as quite demanding (especially by modern standards) when they instruct “Only remember me”, the “only” at the beginning of the line emphasizing the futility of trying to do anything else. The caesura after this phrase allows the listener time to remember, before she gently reminds them it’s too late to “counsel of pray” – neither will have any effect now. This is a darker version of the afterlife again, one which doesn’t admit the ability of those on earth to pray, or intercede for the dead. Once dead, they must await judgement and the afterlife they have earned. 

At the volta (line 9) the speaker relents and changes idea, granting forgiveness to the listener for moving on and forgetting her: “do not grieve.” Again, the afterlife is portrayed as damaging, with “darkness and corruption” removing even the final thoughts of her. 

The final couple, with its parallels “forget and smile” / ”remember and be sad”, are a benediction, a wish for her lover’s future happiness even at the expense of her own memory. 

STRUCTURE AND FORM 

•       Sonnet form Rossetti uses a Petrarchan sonnet, with its connotations of a love poem, and she adheres strictly to the rhyme scheme and the overall structure. She uses an octave (eight lines) then has the volta (change of idea) – “Yet if you should forget me” when she begins to give permission to the lover to move on. 

•       Change in idea as well as the volta’s change, giving permission for the lover to forget, the tone becomes more tentative throughout the poem as Rossetti shifts from the imperative

“remember” to the conditional “yet if you should forget”

•       Rhyme – Rossetti uses the Petrarchan convention (abba, abba, cddece) but the disruption of the sestet (last six lines) suggests the emotion of the speaker

•       Iambic pentameter – as well as being a convention of the sonnet, the iambic rhythm highlights important words; however, there’s a slight disruption at line 7 where the tendency reading aloud

is to invert the first two syllables “only” which highlights the volta, and the hesitation of the speaker as she’s giving her lover permission to forget her.  

CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS 

Christina Rossetti fell in love twice in her life. The first time with James Collinson. then later with Charles Cayley. The paradoxical character of Christina's genius when she was in love can be seen from the poems which she then wrote. None of her poems to Collinson reflects joy or hope. On the contrary, at the height of her love for him she wrote some of her most poignant lines on the imminence and the pathos of death. In her the idea of love turned inexorably to the idea of death, and in this association we can surely see her instinctive shrinking from the surrender which love demands. Two of her most famous poems come from this time, and in each Christina is obsessed by thoughts of death. In "Remember" she asks her beloved to remember her when she is dead, because that is all that he will be able to do for her. Then, with characteristic humility, she assures him that even this is not necessary and that all she asks is that he himself should not be unhappy. 

Yet if you should forget me for awhile

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave 

A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

In the wonderful "Song" which is a kind of counterpart to this sonnet, Christina foresees what death will mean to her and wonders if perhaps she also will forget the past:

I shall not see the shadows, 

I shall not feel the rain; 

I shall not hear the nightingale 

Sing on as if in pain; 

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,  Haply I may remember,  And haply I may forget. 

In Christina love released a melancholy desire for death, and for a kind of death not closely connected with her usual ideas of an afterworld. It is an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking, a half-conscious state in which memories are dim and even the strongest affections fade into shadows. Moreover, she felt that the claims of love were not for her, that her way of life was unsuited to it, and that she must go back to her old denials and refusals.

Rigorous though Christina's denial of love was, it was not strong enough to curb all her womanly and human instincts. She fought against them and kept them in iron control, but, left alone with her genius, she could not from time to time prevent them from bursting into almost heart-rending poetry, which is all the more powerful because it rises from not controlled thoughts but from longings which force themselves on her despite all her efforts to check them. It is not surprising that, being the victim of such a struggle, she sometimes felt it was too much for her and she could not bear it endure longer. At such times she would long for release and find no magic even in the spring;  I wish I were dead, my foe, 

My friend, I wish I were dead,  With a stone at my tired feet With a stone at my head. 

In the pleasant April days 

Half the world will stir and sing,  But half the world will slug and rot For all the sap of Spring. 

In these words there is more than a passing mood: there is a deep basis of experience, of misery in a defeat which has been hard for Christina to endure.

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CONNECTIONS

Death and the afterlife: Song; From the Antique; Twice; Echo; Birthday; Uphill 

Love and memory: Song; Echo; Shut-Out