This is a beautiful poem 'Remember' by Christina
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This poem addresses need of every
human being – that of being ‘Remembered’ even after dead and gone. Here the
writer writes in first person and so for ease of understanding let’s do it as
‘her journey with her emotions’. Remember is used many times in this poem. At
the start it is the ‘stress’ to remember her inspite of her gone away to the
land of dead. Her lover will not have her around physically to remind him of
her and yet she demands that he remembers her. The line ‘Nor I half turn to go
yet turning stay’ is so beautiful as it capsules a powerful act of a lover.
When a lover goes say on a errand, work or leaves he looks back to have ‘one
last glimpse’ of his love
before going away. His mind pulls his body to leave to attend to his work or a
reality but his heart wants to stay back and hence doesn’t go away inspite of
the ‘body’ having gone. This beautiful clash of duty and love is beautifully
summed in this line.
But after death even this can’t be
done by the poet and hence feels at lose in holding her lover’s attention. But
slowly she comes in touch with reality of death and realises that even if he
cries and misses her, she’ll not see, hear or know about that in that land of
dead and gone. And hence releases her lover from the ‘need’ to remember her and
moves on to ‘detachment’ over her mortal self and it’s need to be remembered
and finally says “it’s ok even if you don’t remember me. If you do, that’s
fine, even if you don’t, don’t feel bad that you’ve forgotten me. I would
rather you smile having forgotten me rather than remember me and be sad about
it” with this final release of ‘need to be remembered’ she crosses the
threshold of ‘her selfishness to be remembered to ‘her selflessness where as a
lover she grows in stature to overcome her need over her lover’s happiness. Ultimately,
if her lover is happy then that is it! It doesn’t bother her that she is even
forgotten. This is the climax of love.
In this short and simple poem, the
poet has essayed beautifully the journey of an individual’s growth in the path
of lover – that of being in love for selfish reason to the level where only the
lovers’ happiness matters even at the cost of her non-existence!
Beautiful, bravo, excellent!
1 comment:
Beautiful explanation.
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