Love and Death in Christina Georgina Rossetti’s Selected Poems

Abstract

This research aims to analyze love and death in Rossetti's three selected poems, Remember, After Death, and Let Me Go. Those poems deal with the same issues, love and death. Therefore, Semiotics of Poetry by Riffattere is a theory used to reveal the issues of love and death by discovering the significance of love and death and the poet’s philosophy of each selected poem. This research uses a qualitative research method in which two types of data are used, primary and secondary data. Primary data are taken from the selected poems, Remember, After Death, and Let Me Go, through the words, phrases, sentences, and even the whole poem. While secondary data are taken from books, journal articles, theses, internet sites, and other references related to the study’s object. By using the theory of Semiotics of Poetry by Riffaterre, two processes have been passed in order to find the significance of love and death, namely heuristic and hermeneutic reading. The heuristic reading process becomes the first step to interpret the poem textually in which then matrix, model, and variants are found. The next stage is the hermeneutic reading process, where contextual background are involved and correlated with the hypogram of each selected poem. In the end, the significance of love and death in three selected poems are found. The results show that in the poems Remember and Let Me Go, the significance of love is quite similar. Both talk about love in the form of concern. Whereas in the poem After Death, the significance of love is regret for the feeling of love. On the other hand, the three poems have different significances related to death. In the first poem, Remember, death can be summed up as the loss of someone (death) that cannot be easily forgotten. Whereas in the second poem, After Death, the significance of death is the death of someone in vain. In the last poem, Let Me Go, a great hope for death becomes its significance. The poet's philosophy of the three poems was found by looking at the results of the previous analysis about the significance of love and death in each selected poem. The three selected poems written by Rossetti also have different philosophies regarding love and death. The philosophy of the poem Remember, says that death is indeed something that cannot be avoided. However, the most important thing about the poem is related to someone whom we love will be left behind. While After Death says that one's death cannot be predicted because only God knows, but the point that stands out in the poem is about affection. The last poem entitled Let Me Go says that death is a fate which leads to sadness, but many things can be remembered for those who have left us.