The World is My Graveyard

Readers of the great, new comic novel The Virgin Missile Crisis (thank you, thank you…this blog is for you) will note that John Keats’s most famous poem Ode on a Grecian Urn figures pretty prominently in the story. But it was mere coincidence rather than pilgrimage that brought me earlier this month to Rome’s Campo Crestio, known to Italians as il Cimitero Acattolico (the cemetery for non-Catholics) or il Cimitero Straniero (the cemetery for foreigners). There Keats rests under a gravestone that contains the epitaph:

"This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"

The humble name writ in water part was Keats’s contribution—that’s all he wanted, not even his name. But his loyal friends added the rest to strike back at Keats’s critics. That’s what I call having your friend’s back! Later, Keats’ admirers (or those who would be belittled today as fanboys) added another monument a few yards away from the grave with the words:

K-eats! If thy cherished name be ‘writ in water’

E-ach drop has fallen from some mourner’s cheek;

A-sacred tribute: such as heroes seek,

T-hough oft in vain - for dazzling deeds of slaughter

S-leep on! Not honoured less for Epitaph so meek!”.

The scene in The Virgin Missile Crisis was inspired by the first serious essay assignment I can recall from high school when our English teacher tasked us to write about Keats’s most provocative lines:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Talk about pearls before swine. What do 17-year old boys know about beauty and truth? At that point in my life beauty was the latest Bond girl (oh, Honey Ryder, oh…oh…oh…) and truth was whatever The President of the United States told me it was. I wrote more than that in my essay of course. And though I don’t remember exactly what it was, I do remember that it was a mind expanding exercise of the non-pharmaceutical kind…which, back then, was the point of education before it got perverted to mean enshrinement of mom and dad’s "values," a.k.a. their ignorance and bias. And that is why, I guess, it sticks with me half a century later.
In a further coincidence, the essence of Keats’s observation had been informing the previous three weeks of my travel through Europe before I even arrived at his graveside. The temples to mythic figures in Greece and Turkey, the houses pouring over rocky cliffs on the Amalfi Coast, the fortresses and cathedrals erected on Tuscan and Umbrian hilltops. Stone by stone--hand carried, hand carved, hand laid by millions of anonymous hands over thousands of centuries. Many of those hands were enslaved, to be sure; many were inspired by gods; some were even employed by actual job creators. But all of them contributed to a world of breathtaking beauty that endures through the ravages of nature, war, and indifference as witness to the immense creativity and energy of our species at its best.
Not to speak ill of the dead, but Keats was wrong about his name merely being writ in water. It was writ in words with the endurance of those stones that exist to tell all of us who follow that there were people here before us who thought it important enough to leave their steppingstones behind.
The Writer’s Code demands that I do these things in threes—so here’s a third coincidence. Goethe, who I wrote about after my last trip to Italy, is also buried at Campo Crestio. Given that company and the sheer beauty of the place is enough to make me have second thoughts about having my ashes scattered on the high seas. Campo Crestio would be like checking into the penthouse suite at The Four Seasons for eternity. Unfortunately, the Italians have put a No Vacancy sign up outside the cemetery--though they did make a recent exception for luxury jeweler Bulgari (Money is truth; truth is money?). But, hey, who knows? I’m a writer and I work in the jewelry business, so maybe there’ll be a place for me after all.