How do the poems Piano by D.H. Lawrence, Poem at Thirty-Nine by Alice Walker and Remember by Christina Rossetti, explore the impact of nostalgia?

(With reference to Far from Home by Earlie Doriman, A mother in a Refugee Camp by Chinua Achebe and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and often creeps up on people. This can be pleasing or upsetting as it is about ones perspective on the past. Nostalgia makes that past seem more rosy and attractive that it may have been so it makes an impact on you in the present. Poets convey the impact of nostalgia in imagery, diction and tone and the impact of the nostalgia is often realized by how powerfully the poets bring the past memories alive in their work.

The poem, Piano by D.H. Lawrence conveys the sudden impact of a rush of nostalgia flooding in, when the speaker, presumably Lawrence himself, experiences it when listening to a woman singing a song in the present. The music and singing trigger a powerful and emotional memory of how he used to sit under the piano at home, when he young, listening to his mother playing. He longs for that time again, when he was a little boy, sheltered by her strong love.

This nostalgic experience is suggested in the perspective of him at her feet under the piano itself. The nostalgia becomes so strong that he sobs and feels totally unmanned by the music, which betrayed me back. The alliteration and use of betrayed, emphasizes how the nostalgia upsets him in the present.

Another way Lawrence creates the power of nostalgia is by contrasting his mood before and after the memory fully hits him. In the first stanza, he uses the adverb softly in the image of softly in the dusk, to create a gentle calm mood as he sits listening to a woman singing. This soft dusk suggests he was relaxed but the mood is ripe for a soft remembrance. He recalls the music taking me back down the vista of years. The use of the noun vista signifies that they were pleasurable years which he misses as a vista has pleasant associations in a view of the past.

However the reminiscence of his being a child sitting under the piano, strengthens with the insidious mastery of the music, the adjective revealing shows how it is snaking into him. This suggests his emotions are catching him out, turning a gentle memory into powerful nostalgia. The nostalgia is evident in how it betrays him until his heart weeps to belong to the past again. He remembers the parlour where the piano and his mother where cosy, an adjective that conveys nostalgia and it presents that past as very warm, safe and rosy. He is dwelling on the past and what he now experience as emotional memories of his mother.

Lawrences work reveals a probable Oedipus complex and the nostalgia of the memory he revives so powerfully in Piano, supports that longing for a time he was at his mothers feet, under her eye and her control. He remembers how she smiles as she sings. The present tense brings the past into the present. That is the power of nostalgia and it is strengthened by the soft alliteration.

In line the third stanza, the reference to his childish days being upon him, creates the power of his nostalgia again but he clearly struggles with these emotions considering them feminine and therefore weak. He admits that this flood of remembrance has cast down his manhood. In 1916, just out of the Victorian period, when Lawrence wrote Piano, men had to be seen as strong and masculine. They would have never been expected to cry or show any signs of sympathy or emotion. The verb cast explains how the nostalgia attacked his attempts to remain manly. The metaphor of the flood of emotion indicates how the nostalgia proved too strong for that attempt to keep his emotions away. His feelings drowned his masculinity as his nostalgic childhood memories overtake him. The power of the last half line, I weep like a child for the past is a simple but very strong expression of the power of nostalgia.

Lawrence wrote Piano when he was far away from home, In Italy. Similarly, Far From Home by Earlie Doriman, conveys nostalgia when away from home. His speaker misses her family. Nostalgia is conveyed in the repetition of I miss my home, I miss the pristine, the family so loving and endless embracing. The images are more physical than in Piano with the family so loving and endlessly embracing. The strength of so and endlessly and the alliteration of endlessly embracing suggest the exaggeration of nostalgia. He is, however, less upset by the nostalgia feelings.

In Poem at Thirty-Nine, Alice Walker also explores nostalgia. The speaker, as a grown up woman, remembers the lessons learned from her father when she was younger. She realizes she did not know him properly then and only started to realize how much he meant to her after he died. Her nostalgia takes the form of realizing they were much more alike than she ever imagined and she then feels gentler nostalgia that Lawrences for those days with her father.

Each stanza in the poem recalls different things Walkers father taught her. For example, in the third stanza, the speaker recalls, he taught me, the telling the truth did not always mean a beating. The alliteration makes the memory stronger. The nostalgia intensifies in the exclamation, How I miss my father.

After looking back, she realizes Now I look and cook just like him. The use of mid rhyme of look and cook expresses happiness from the nostalgia, unlike Lawrences weeping. The use of now shows that only at this moment in the present, has Walker finally fulfilled her fathers teachings but he is not there to see her. Therefore in the last stanza Walker writes, He would have grown to admire the woman I have become. There is regret that he did not see this and regret is part of nostalgia because she wishes that her father had not died and was alive to see what she had become. The regret is stronger because she has looked back nostalgically and seen things she did not see at the time.

Walker once saw her past with her father as something not to be remembered so happily, shown in the line I learned to see bits of paper as a way to escape. The verb escape suggests she tried to escape his methodical behavior when he taught her about accountancy and checks and balances, but as the impact of nostalgia creeps in, she remembers him as actually much more fun and creative and the imagery becomes rosier. In the second stanza, Walker makes assumptions of what her father must have said indicating how memory plays tricks on you as you can remember them correctly and this is an aspect of nostalgia too. It makes memories seem more emotional and more perfect.

A Mother in a Refugee Camp reveals a more anguished and immediate nostalgia as a mother is holding a dying child in her arms in a refugee camp. He is starving to death. She is already remembering him lovingly while grieving in anticipation. The mothers pride, despite his wasted appearance, reveals her remembering all that she loves about him when he was alert and running about well and wealthy. The rust coloured hair left on his skull evokes the thicker head of hair he once had. The use of rust coloured hints of the decay that has set in as he lies dying and does actually occur in severely malnutritioned children. Her humming eyes and combing his hair are like she used to do and bring a lot of pathos to the imagery. The impact of her remembering how she mothered him in better times is the strongest aspect of this moving poem.

Death is also linked to nostalgia in Remember by Christina Rossetti where the speaker is creating the nostalgia by exploring how she will be remembered when she had died. Nostalgia is mainly represented in the last half of the poem, but in a very strong way. The poem starts with Remember me when I am gone away which looks forward in time to when she has passed away, rather euphemistically expressed as if she hash gone on a journey away from her lover. The imperative to remember her is both loving yet sad request. The repetition of Remember almost orders the person who this poem addresses, to reminiscence on her which is nostalgic but asking for it before she has died creates a strong impact.

In the sonnet, Rossetti seems to be obsessed with her imminent death, shown in the line when you can no more hold me by the hand so she stresses what will be missed and no more is what will be felt in the future when holding hands becomes a nostalgic memory. Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay is a significantly hard line to understand. The way I interpret it, is that Rossetti is as reluctant to go as she is to stay, but in suggesting how the memories will linger, she seems to want to leave a legacy of memories behind, in his mind, and the readers minds.

Near the end of the sonnet Rossetti writes Better by far you should forget and Smile. This shifts tone and changes from urging remembrance to suggesting that if the impact of those memories proves too depressing, then it would be better to forget her. Nostalgia can make too deep an impact.

In contrast, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas expresses much more anger and frustration over dying, urging his father to fight against giving into death. Thomas is also writing to someone, giving him advice, in this case not to go gentle into that good night. It contrasts with Rossettis poem because the speaker is not the one dying and his anger shows he cannot bear the thought of his fathers death. The speaker has no time for nostalgia as the reality of death is too painful. Old age should burn and rage at the close of the day. Thomas would see nostalgia as giving into death and enjoying memories but he finds that too gentle a feeling for something s absolute as death.

Nostalgia was, in contrast, gentle for Doriman and Walker, but horribly painful for Lawrence and Achebes mother in the poem but the poets all conveyed the impact of nostalgia memorably.

Score:

27A*