Analysis of Rossetti's Remember

1. Remember
Christina Rossetti

2. Christina Rossetti
With an Italian ex-patriot-turned-professor for a father (Gabriele
Rossetti), a well-read mother, two siblings who became writers, and
another (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) who became an influential painter
and poet, the Rossetti household was a hot bed of intellectual and
cultural discussions of all kinds (a steady stream of intellectuals
frequently passed through the Rossetti home). The wide variety of
available books in the house (Italian works, English novels and poetry,
fairy tales, etc.) in particular bred in the young Christina Rossetti a
love for literature, and a deep familiarity with the sonnet, a form she
would utilise with tremendous success.

3. Themes
• Dying
• Love
• Forgetfulness

4. Remember
Remember 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.
Remember 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
And 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.
Structure:
A Petrarchan sonnet in iambic
pentameter, consisting of an ABBA
ABBA octave and a CDDECE sestet.
2 quatrains to the Octave
Change of point-of-view at the VOLTA
Then the sestet

5. Quatrain 1
Remember 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.
The focus of the
poem is the opening
word. We will
explore the idea of
memory.
Repeated but
strengthened
suggesting the
finality of death
Euphemism for death
1st person
focus
2nd character
introduced
couples can no longer share
their dreams of the future
with one another; place
where darkness reigns
Alliteration – ‘h’
Soft Hs make the section seem
less sharp and demanding.
Sets
imperative
tone

6. Quatrain 2
Remember 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.
Reinforces the
subject under
discussion
2nd
character
seems to be
controlling
– not
necessarily
a bad thingNot asking
much – no
need to
memorialise
Consider : why are these
words set in opposition?
What is suggested?
Romantic
imagery

7. Remember 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.
Remember 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.
The tone of the octave is contemplative and
reconciliatory on the topic of death. The
narrator can finally be at peace because she
has renounced her desire for earthly pleasures,
such as the physical presence of her beloved.
She is even accepting of death, content to exist
only in her beloved's memory. However, she
has not yet made peace with the possibility
that her lover will forget her; this form of
death would be more painful than her physical
expiration.
The octave as a whole

8. The sestet
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And 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.
Highlights a
new
direction of
thought
1st part of
conditional
sentence Imperative:
strength
Conditional is completed. The poem has
totally changed direction.
‘had' and ‘sad'
structurally highlights
difference between
remembering and
forgetting.

9. The sestet
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And 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.
The narrator’s tone changes with the volta.
The narrator even renounces the need to be
remembered, which is ironic because the
poem is titled “Remember.” She wishes for
her beloved to be happy, even if that means
forgetting her. The narrator sacrifices her
personal desire in an expression of true love.

10. Remember
"Remember" ultimately deals with the struggle
between physical existence and the afterlife. Rossetti
grapples with the idea of a physical body, which is
subject to decay and death, and how it relates to an
eternal soul.