Remembrance

Essay on Piano and Remembrance This essay will portray the nostalgia in the poems Piano by DH Lawrence and Remembrance by Emily Bronte. Specific references will be made to each poem, identifying the Nostalgia. Nostalgia describes a longing for the past in which it is often idealized. The word is a formation of Greek compounds, meaning “returning home” or a Homeric word meaning “pain” or “ache”. Nostalgia can also be interpreted as a longing for home or familiar surroundings, for instant homesickness. Lastly Nostalgia can be referring to a bittersweet yearning for the things of the past. In Piano the poet seems to be proud to be a full-grown man, yet he loves recalling his blissful youth, and this nostalgic attitude causes him to feel guilty as if he has betrayed his current state of mortality, though other readers see the poem differently as they say the poem is about a man who misses his mother. Piano is a poem about the poet’s longing for his mother, while Remembrance elucidates the memory of a beloved someone. In both poems the poets long for someone or something from the past. This can be seen in Piano, where the poet writes “taking me back down the vista of years”(line 2), this shows us that the poet is going back in years of his memory. In Remembrance the poet uses different diction to tell the readers they are moving into the past now, “Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!” (line 2). This tells us the poet is moving backwards into the past, “grave” also tells us that the beloved person she is talking about is long gone and dead. We can also see in Remembrance that the poet is telling us about a loved one in line 3, “Have I forgot, my Love”, meaning that the poet have forgotten her loved one, as so many years has passed, “fifteen wild Decembers” (line 9). Here we can begin to see how she idealises this beloved person and also that she misses this person dearly. Another example of Nostalgia can be seen in line 6-8 in Piano “Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong/ To old Sundays evenings at home, with winter outside/ and hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide”. The poet uses the diction in the poem to tell the reader he is going back in memory lane where he longed for his beloved mother. “Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine,”. In this line in Remembrance we can immediately see that the poet is missing this person, which are already “Cold in the earth” (line 9). The poet even cried “tears of useless passion” for this beloved person, showing us that she still cries and still misses this person from her past, even when the tears means nothing to her anymore, she still cries out of love for this person. We can see that the poet is already a man in Piano, but still longs for his mother from the past in the last line 11-12 “my manhood is cast/ Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past”. Here it is evident that he longs for his beloved, but he is already a grown man. In this extract we can also see the diction that the poet uses to show us that he is going back in memory lane remembering his beloved mother, weeping and crying like a child for the past to be in the past again. He idealizes his mother in line 4 telling us she is “small” with “poised feet”, a mother who “smiles” when she sings while playing the piano. He sits under the piano listening to her. Now in his cast of manhood he is longing for those painful memories of love. In Remembrance the poet asks in the last line “how could I seek the empty world again'”. This can mean so many things for a person who are longing for someone. But for me this question is asked to let the reader think further than just the poet’s feelings. How can you as a person go on feeling empty and hollow inside, knowing the world can’t bring you any hope' The poet’s answer is in the poem, “All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.” This means she will feel empty forever, or until she can be eternally with her loved one in the cold earth. Both poems shows us that both poets misses their beloved ones dearly, the poets describes the past perfectly and idealises these beloved person as if no one else can fill their place.