SONG: WHEN I AM DEAD, MY DEAREST
Written 1848, published 1862.
QUOTE / CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS:
- The speaker doesn’t anticipate a lingering attachment to this world. Instead, the
speaker imagines death as ‘dreaming through [a] twilight / That doth not rise nor set’
- a kind of eternal sleep which she’ll be unaware of what’s happening on earth. This
links to Rossetti’s Anglo-Catholic beliefs of the afterlife, and the concept of soul
sleep, in which the soul is neither dead nor alive, neither in heaven or hell, but is
‘sleeping’ while awaiting judgement.
- This displays an uncertainty regarding the theory of an afterlife, and she rejects the
glib message of Christianity which reassures us that there will be an afterlife to go to.
- The continuous negatives - ‘no’, ‘not’ - may suggest that it doesn’t matter whether the
speaker is remembered on earth, which echoes Rossetti’s belief in the afterlife. Like
many of her poems, this one declares that mortal life is worthwhile only insofar as it
symbolises divinity, warning that nature’s temporal cycles will be replaced by the
eternal reality of heaven. Also, she gives rope to a moribund or stunned or dead
woman, permitting her to speak only from a liminal place between earth and heaven.
Poems like Song create not a direct path to paradisal bliss, but an in-between time
and spice, which is a memorial realm central to Rossett’s poetics.
- Rossetti, through the speaker, completely defies the traditional way of mourning or
grieving by insisting on neither putting flowers on her grave, nor singing sad songs.
Even though there is no mourning of tears in the poem, rather the speaker prefers
nature and says that nature is here to shed tears on her grave.
- As the speaker wants no sad songs sung for her (‘Sing no sad songs for me’ /
‘nightingale / Sing(ing) on, as if in pain’), this makes reference to the nightingale with
a mythological background. From this point of view, it comes to know that this
nightingale story relates to the Greek myth of Philomela, who, on being pitied by
God, turned into a nightingale after being raped by her brother-in-law - this is
therefore supposed why the nightingale bird sings ‘as if in pain’.
- Also, the word play of ‘haply’ as meaning either ‘perhaps’ or ‘happily’ creates an
ambiguous image that works to perhaps destroy the feminine ideal as portrayed by
the Pre-Raphaelites, by indication that the woman perhaps realises contentment,
peace and freedom while being away from her beloved during her deteriorating state.
This vagueness may also suggest that while Rossetti wants her soul to be forgotten,
she doesn't want her works to be forgotten.
CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS:
Landow suggests that “And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget” is not to ask her
beloved to stop mourning her death in an attempt to embody “the Victorian view of female
selflessness”. It instead evokes strong feelings of growing indifference towards her partner,
and could actually be read as carelessness or selfishness.
, REMEMBER
Written 1849, published 1862.
QUOTE / CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS:
- This sonnet is a partner to Song in many ways. Both explore memory and the
afterlife, and the responsibilities for grief from those left behind. This poem describes
the afterlife as a “silent land” which 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 repetition of “gone away” / “gone far away” emphasises the boundary of life and
death, symbolised elsewhere in the collection by a door or wall.
- “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,
however, can be seen as quite demanding when they instruct “Only remember me”.
CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS:
Rossetti fell in love twice in her life; first with James Collinson and then with Charles Cayley.
None of her poems to Collinson reflect joy or hope. In contrast, at the height of her love for
him, she wrote some of her most poignant lines on the imminence and the pathos of death.
FROM THE ANTIQUE
Written 1854, published 1896.
QUOTE / CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS:
- Rossetti’s use of third person in the first line of the poem indicated that she is
attempting to distance herself from the speaker. ‘It’s a weary life, it is, she said’. This
relates to the idea of depression being a taboo subject in the 19th century and
misleads the reader to believe that Rossetti is not struggling with this problem
herself.
- ‘Blossoms bloom as in days of old, cherries ripen and wild bees hum’: Rossetti
chooses to focus on spring and summer instead of autumn and winter, which
juxtaposes the depression of the speaker with the vitality of the Earth. As the
seasons occur in a cycle, the speaker outlines and accentuates the fact that if she
were to die, the world would continue as it always has, and it would not mourn her
death (meaning she would have no significant impact on the world).
- ‘I wish and I wish I were a man: or, better than any being, were not’: Rossetti’s ideas
of gender roles were closely linked to her religious views. She believed that men and
women could not be equal and that they were created for different purposes. The
speaker’s despair is so great that dying as a woman is more fulfilling and appealing
than living as one.
- ‘Not so much as a grain of dust’: biblical language, reflects the Anglo-Catholic burial
prayer, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. This may be Rossetti’s way of criticising the
Church and their old-fashioned beliefs.
