Remember

“Remember” is an expression of a Petrarchan sonnet. An autodidact in the literatures of Antiquity and the High Renaissance and a member of a family that was extraordinary in its devotion to the arts and to literature, Rossetti, just in her teens, understood the mechanics of a Petrarchan sonnet. The 14 lines, standard in a sonnet, are divided into two sections: the first eight lines, termed the octave, set the basic situation and raise a critical question, which is then answered in the sonnet’s closing six lines, termed the sestet.

In Rossetti’s Petrarchan sonnet, the octave introduces the basic premise: how will the speaker’s lover adjust to her death? The poet offers her response. The octave reveals the speaker’s expectations: remember me. Over the octave, the speaker reiterates her request through amplifying her relationship with her lover, pointing out their intimate conversations, holding hands, and their poignant, bittersweet goodbyes whenever they have had to part. These things, the speaker demands, never forget. Hence the octave sets the problem: the speaker does not recognize, much less admit either the desperation of her plea or the selfishness of her expectations.

The repetition of the phrase “Remember be” in quick succession (Lines 1, 5, 7), a poetic device known as

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