![]() ![]() Besides the cruelty inherent in this statement, the irony was palpable too. Keats’ medical training, no matter how practical it may have been, could do nothing to stop what was then an almost incurable disease, tuberculosis. Not long after his brother died, it became clear that John Keats had contracted the illness too. Knowing that he would not survive the English winter, his friends gathered whatever money they could in order to send him to a gentler climate, a last ditch attempt to save his life. John Keats sailed to Rome with his friend Joseph Severn in the autumn of 1820. The climate, however, proved not gentle enough, and the disease too strong. Within a few short months, Keats was dead, believing himself to be a failure. He asked to be buried in a grave bearing neither his name nor date of death, only the words “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.” Those very words adorn his grave today, though his friends, in their belief that he should be recognized as a great poet, added some of their own. Despite the critics, Keats’ close personal friends were not the only ones to defend him. He also had an advocate in the very man who now lies buried some twenty metres away. When Keats died, Percy Shelley wrote “I weep for Adonais – he is dead!”, the opening to his poem, Adonais, which was written as an elegy to Keats, and considered by some to be his best work. Shelley had met Keats through a mutual friend on a visit to Hampstead, admired his talents, and considered him to not only be a rival, but one who would surpass him. Not long after Keats’ death, Shelley went to visit his grave in the Cimitero Acottolico. Of the visit Shelley said “the cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.” When I visited it myself, there in the broody mist, somber and romantic, I couldn’t help but agree with Shelley’s words. Shelley was buried in the same cemetery a mere year later, the victim of a violent Mediterranean storm that drowned him while sailing off the coast of northern Italy. A book of John Keats’ poetry was found in his pocket. Shelley’s cremated remains (all but his heart, which was kept by Mary Shelley and eventually buried in England) can be found under a small flat tombstone a short walk from Keats’, bearing the Latin “Cor Cordium” (heart of hearts), and a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change is to something rich and strange.” Visiting the Cimitero Acattolico is easy, though few Italians can tell you how to get there. Almost none I asked even knew it existed. It is free to enter, though donations are requested. There is a tiny visitors centre that sells books and postcards at the entrance, manned by staff who speak English, usually ex-pats themselves. Through the gate, Keats’s grave can be found by walking directly to the left, until you reach the first corner. A plaque written by his friends (complete with an acrostic based on his name) adorns the wall above it. A small bench lies in front, should you choose to sit and contemplate the great poet who believed his life’s work would make fewer impressions than ripples in a pond.
If You Go: ♦The Cimitero Acattolico can be easily reached from the Piramide metro station. It’s a few short blocks away, and can be accessed on Via Caio Cestio.
*originally published in Travel Thru History Magazine. A link to the published piece can be found in the “Writing” section of my website. |