For once, it should have rained. After all, what trip to a cemetery is perfect without grey skies and weeping clouds? These were the thoughts running through my mind while on the train towards Rome, where, along with my classmates, we would be visiting two literary landmarks: the Keats-Shelley House and their tombs at the Protestant Cemetery. It was unusually warm and, after days of constant rain, we were happy to get out of the classroom, no matter what the goal of the journey was. Although I felt excited to explore, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my expectations for the visit would be satisfied.

 I’m a reader, and someone who craves contact with what I read, the stories I’m being told, and the words printed on paper aren’t enough. I knew of the complex lives of the Romantic poets even before tackling them in class, and though I’m good at separating the picture we have of celebrities from the truth, I can’t lie. Yes, when thinking about John Keats as a person, I imagine him lying on his deathbed, frantically penning his last words before passing away. The same goes for Shelley, whose heart, I’m sure, was kept by his lover, Mary Shelley, after death. It’s difficult to picture these men as something less than a legend after my favourite poets, namely W. B. Yeats and his contemporaries, worshipped Romanticism and strengthened the cult around its legend. This is to say that that trip would be my chance to bring some relief, both to my imagination and to my need to be part of the stories I consume.

The idea of walking into John Keats’ bedroom or standing before Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave was enticing, but I asked myself as the train came to a halt, would I actually feel them or the mark they left on these places?

Well, the noise filling Piazza di Spagna didn’t let me come to any conclusion, so, as we had enough time to roam and breakfast before the visit, I looked around. In Rome, I believe you can distinguish locals from tourists by how attentive they are to their surroundings. Tourists tend to take pictures of everything: graffiti on walls, ‘nasoni’, plaques, whatever feels new and surprising to them. On the other hand, locals don’t look twice at the unique monuments found around the streets, as they live amongst them.

As I walked onto the Spanish Steps, I saw families taking pictures and others smelling the flowers scattered around the marble stairs. With each step, the masses at the feet of the stairs turned into colourful splotches, who looked around with reverence, as if trying to comprehend, just as I was trying to do, how many people had passed those streets before us. Had Keats sat on those same stairs where a woman and her child were having a sandwich? That I can only imagine, yet I found great joy in seeing that there will always be someone appreciative of what others take for granted.

The Keats-Shelley House

The staircase to the apartment was impossibly tight, to the point where my classmates and I barely managed to fit together. On the walls, we could see various portraits of young men and women whom we’d meet later on. Following a short wait, a spacious living room greeted us, with a long row of chairs standing. Though its size wasn’t impressive, the seemingly endless bookshelves that adorned the room welcomed us as we sat, giving the impression that it held knowledge we could never strive for. The ceiling was painted with flowers, and all around were objects connected to the main Romantic poets, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.

As much as I yearned to study each artifact found in the room, my curiosity had to wait. A young woman, our guide, joined us, knowing that a bit of background information was needed to fully understand what we were experiencing. John Keats, as we learned, came from a poor family, which soon fell into misfortune after his mother died from consumption, as tuberculosis was then called. Perhaps as a subconscious response to seeing his friends and family’s ill living, once Keats turned fifteen, he began studying surgery and apothecary. However, he couldn’t get rid of his passion for poetry, which meant giving up his medical apprenticeship. The lack of recognition given to his poems didn’t discourage Keats, as in one of his letters, he stated that he would eventually be remembered as one of literature’s greatest poets. We know that his intuition was proven right, but Keats wouldn’t live to see it happen as he died of tuberculosis at twenty-five years of age. ‘Legend says,’ the guide continued, ‘that after surviving a turbulent storm while riding a carriage, the young poet went back home and knew, as soon as blood smeared his handkerchief, that his death contract was signed.’ After months of a steady health decline, Keats’ doctor recommended that he spend some time in Italy, where the weather was milder, in the hopes that his condition would improve. Here, he moved into the apartment he shared with John Severn, a close friend, before dying soon after. We were also given short biographies of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, all travellers and friends to Keats, which enforced the idea that the apartment was turned into a museum commemorating Romantic poetry as a whole.

Then, once the guide told us a few more facts about the place, we were free to explore, and so we did. Everywhere you turned, there was memorabilia from the poets’ lives: I saw various editions of their poetry, paintings, one of Lord Byron’s carnival masks, and an outstanding number of letters. Some came from Keats’ family regarding mundane things like receipts and recollections, yet the most outstanding one was a letter written by Mary Shelley and her son, Percy Florence.

We were all astonished at the thought that, before our eyes, there was a piece of paper over which the same hand that penned ‘Frankenstein’ wrote. I suppose that the main attraction of the museum was John Keats’ bedroom, which resembled an attic rather than a chamber. The chimney served as a kitchen, and apart from a bed and some belongings added after death, there wasn’t anything personal about the room. At the entrance, there was a sign saying that every object in the room was burned following Keats’ passing to prevent the spreading of consumption, which meant that what we were presented was a reproduction.

It depressed me, imagining a young man, not much older than me, dying miserably in such a retreat.

We couldn’t stay inside the museum for too long, as the space was cramped and other visitors were about to walk in. In the end, what stayed with me after visiting the Keats-Shelley house wasn’t only the beautifully told stories our guide presented, but also the transparency and realism with which we were shown every aspect of these people’s lives.

The Protestant Cemetery

There is a certain thrill in coming face-to-face with death. We accept it as a natural process, something inevitable, yet we fear and refuse to confront it when needed. But what can you do when it’s lying right below your feet? Superstition can’t hide reality in the same way as it shields our minds. I could hear the whispers of my companions as we hopped from station to station, nearing the cemetery. We were told that we couldn’t take many pictures or publish them, just as we weren’t allowed to be loud out of respect for those who rested there. This inevitably caused a general sense of restlessness to grow within us, not because we were afraid of breaking the rules, but due to uncertainty. Perhaps the spirits could sense disrespect or see us photographing their resting place, so it was better to keep a low profile and mourn them.

Yet, I didn’t see it like that. I know that my lack of fear towards the dead stems from growing up and visualising death as natural, those passed as part of our history. I saw the place we were stepping into more of an altar than a cemetery. This idea was supported by the landscape I came across as I passed the gates, as a rising hill filled with gravestones came into view. It looked like something out of a Gothic novel rather than reality, and I could feel myself relaxing. It’s sad that we didn’t get the chance to visit the whole cemetery and weren’t followed by a guide, things which would have made the whole exploration deeper, yet the graves spoke for themselves. Each tombstone was unique, to the point where you could confuse them with art pieces, as they celebrated the person’s life through engravings, quotes from poems, and, as seen in the famous Angel of Grief statue.

The latter was impressive in execution and miserable in nature, as it marked the resting place of Emelyn Story, wife of William Story, an American sculptor who created the angel himself. Many were the stunning gravestones, often recalling the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome, but none came close to the weeping angel blinking over the cemetery.

Of course, the main reason why my class was brought there was to visit the tomb of Percy Shelley, who drowned in 1822 after a sailing accident. He was cremated, and his ashes remained in Italy after the British consulate decided to bury them in the Protestant Cemetery, which served as a refuge for non-catholics who couldn’t be buried in sacred ground. Shelley’s tomb, once we found it, seemed unremarkable compared to the others.

A white piece of marble lay on the grass, marked his resting place, which, besides the poet’s name, quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest ‘Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea change/ Into something rich and strange.’ It is odd, seeing a man whose fame is greater than his works, whose mutability was reminded even post-mortem, being reduced to a pile of ash absorbed by the earth. I couldn’t feel his presence there as much as I did when walking around his apartment, because those rooms captured the idea we all have of Shelly better than his grave did. After all, it’s easier to imagine artists as models in paintings than souls with mortal bodies.

While the first side of the cemetery was crowded with headstones, the left part opened to a large field with a few tombs scattered throughout it. The Pyramid of Cestius watched over them, and the overall mood lightened at the sight of a large orange cat sunbathing on a stone, with a look on his face seemingly saying, ‘Worship me, mortals!’ I spotted John Keats’ resting place, as I knew that by his side there would be a twin memorial, John Severn’s. The two friends were buried under similar tombstones: Keats’ was engraved with a lyre, Severn’s with an artist’s palette. Following Keats’ dying wish, his grave lacked his name, instead calling the man a ‘Young English Poet’ whose name was ‘writ in water’. Fading, temporary, not what the fame Keats achieved after death assured him.

John Severn’s tomb is simpler, and it remembers him as the poet’s dearest friend. There were a few benches in front of them, and as I sat down, I had the impression that the two headstones were embracing each other. I knew all the historical facts regarding Keats, his failed career in medicine, passion for poetry, and premature death to tuberculosis, yet, against all odds, they seemed irrelevant when having him in front of me. The real John Keats, not just a story that you’re taught in class.

 I didn’t linger too long as others wanted to take a peek, so, knowing that the trip was nearing its end, I took my time to study the other graves. All were strangers, people from America, England, and Germany, but many were children. Some managed to reach eighteen years of age, while others passed soon after being born, and their loved ones asked the Lord for salvation on the tombstones. Some belonged to surgeons, others to mothers, and although they weren’t as technically impressive as the Angel of Grief, they told just as unhappy tales.

After grabbing a few souvenirs, a small thrill ran through me as I realized that my goal was accomplished: I touched literature. The boundaries between history, paper, and mind disappeared for a few moments that day, until I could see everything more clearly. Yes, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats were two of the greatest poets to ever set foot on earth, whose verses seeped into T.S. Eliot’s and W.B. Yeats’ own poems until they collectively turned into myth. Remembering that they, too, were people with dreams, vices, and bodies, brings them closer to the reader, reason why these visits were fundamental in understanding Keats and Shelley.

Nevertheless, this connection was reached thanks to death. If it weren’t for them passing and then being remembered through the Keats-Shelley House and the Protestant Cemetery, we would keep seeing them as fiction and not reminders that our fear of death is born from a continuous refusal to face it, to dip our fingers into it until we learn how to live.