Elegy is one of the most popular genres of poetry. It is verse dedicated to an individual or group of people who have died. An elegy often serves as an act of memorial. Like the engraving on a tombstone, an elegy attempts to capture the essence of whoever it is dedicated to. There are numerous famous examples ranging from the deeply confessional to the more general and removed. Brontë's "Remembrance" fits into this category but puts a unique turn on the form. In order to better appreciate what she is doing in the poem, it is helpful to take a closer look at some other works in the genre.
One of the most well-known elegies is Walt Whitman's poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" Written in the aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the poem wrestles with the grief of the nation:
O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Whitman makes the poem personal by calling Lincoln "My Captain," implying he especially admired him. Using the extended metaphor of a ship, he is able to describe how Lincoln "weathered" the storm of the Civil War, leading the North to victory and putting the country back together. But then, in the latter half, he notes that their sense of relief was premature, as the captain has died. Whitman's exclamations further raise the emotional tenor of this scene. Whitman's version of the elegy, though elevated in tone, still maintains a strong level of emotional intimacy.
In the poem "For the Union Dead," Robert Lowell offers a more generalized version of the elegy:
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyard of the Grand Army of the Republic.
In this stanza, he is describing a graveyard filled with dead Union soldiers. He portrays it as quiet and still, "frayed flags quilt[ing]" the graveyard. In Lowell's vision, the deaths of these soldiers are not loud, dramatic events. Instead, they are highlighted by the absence and emptiness in "a thousand small town New England greens." It is evocative, but less overtly emotional than the Whitman poem.
"Remembrance" fits with these poems in that it is trying to show the grieving process and the aftermath of loss. Its uniqueness lies in its pondering of the act of grief itself. "Remembrance" is the rare elegiac poem that questions its own mission. The speaker seems torn about the act of remembrance itself, as it causes her more pain to remember and reflect on her past. Where elegies all align is in their attempt to understand the absence and silence that loss leaves behind.
