The 'Protestant' Cemetery

Today Allison and I went on a tour of Rome's 'Protestant' Cemetery. Our guide pointed out that this is actually a misnomer: the cemetery is for foreign non-(Roman) Catholics of all stripes--Protestant, Jew, atheist, Eastern Orthodox. Americans make up the single largest people-group in the cemetery. In addition to painters, sculptors, musicians, and academics of one sort or another, there are also several writers buried here. The first two shots are of the grave of John Keats. His epitaph, 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water', was all that he wanted on his stone (though that wish was undone by those who had the stone made), and is a poignant reminder of the pathos caused by young death (Keats lived from 1795-1821). According to the story, when Oscar Wilde visited this grave he prostrated himself before it for several minutes.



These next two are of Shelley's grave. Shelley died by drowning, and according to this story, when his body washed up on shore a little while later to be burnt immediately, his friend snatched Shelley's heart out of the fire, and it is buried here along with his ashes. Our guide checked on the likelihood of this with a forensic scientist, and he said one wouldn't be able to distinguish the heart after the amount of time Shelley's body had spent in the water. But it is fairly certain that Shelley's friend grabbed something out of the fire, and that is what is buried here. Shelley's son is also supposedly buried in this cemetery--but the grave has since been exhumed, and whatever is in there are not the bones of a child Shelley's son's age. So they put it back in the ground and left the stone over it--but even to this day the grave of the father and that of the 'son' are in two separate places of the cemetery.



Finally, here is a shot of the gravestone of Beat poet Gregory Corso, who just died in 2001. According to our guide, there was another grave in this same spot up to that time, which was moved to make room for Corso. Corso's grave is right in front of Shelley's, and one possible reason for this is that Corso wrote a poem in tribute to Shelley called 'I Held a Shelley Manuscript', which I reproduce below his stone.

My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!

O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-inks's fragile page!

Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams--
yet what triumph is there in private credence?

Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples
and torched-skin mushrooms,
my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age
and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk,
pour secrecy upon the dying page.

UPDATE: I've posted a few more pictures from the cemetery here.