'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' - the meaning and origin of this phrase Famous Last Words Browse phrases beginning with: Here lies one whose name was writ in water more like this... Fame, and indeed life, is fleeting. Origin A version of the words originate from Beaumont and Fletcher's play Philaster, 1611: "All your better deeds Shall be in water writ, but this in Marble." In the better known form 'writ in water' they appeared in Keat's Poetic Works, 1821. 'Here lies one...'. The 'here' in question is Rome. Keats travelled to Rome and died there, aged just 25, in February, 1821. He told his friend Joseph Severn that he didn't want his name to appear on his tombstone, but merely this line: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Severn honoured that wish, as the gravestone shows - Keats is commemorated just as 'A young English poet'.

Keats's Grave - New Protestant Cemetery, Rome THIS GRAVE CONTAINS Poets Graves|Poets & Poetry Forum 1795-1821 'Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water' John Keats is buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome, Italy. His grave is in a quiet corner close to the Pyramid. ( Shelley is also buried in this cemetery.) Gravestone of John Keats Grave of Keats and Severn After leaving Clarke's school in Enfield, Keats became apprenticed to Thomas Hammond - an apothecary-surgeon in Edmonton. In 1814 he left Hammond and began studying at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals. It was at this time that he began to write poetry - influenced, in particular, by Spenser and Milton . In 1816 he became licensed to practice as an apothecary but abandoned it to take up poetry full time. Blackwood's Magazine - pejoratively referred to this decision as Keats joining the Cockney School of poetry. At this time Keats met with many of the leading poets and artists of the day including: Leigh Hunt , Shelley, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Benjamin Haydon.

In 1819 he became engaged to Fanny Brawne but by the winter of that year he had started to develop tuberculosis. Keats left England in 1820, on the advise of his doctors, and headed for Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. By now, he was in the final stages of consumption. He arrived at Naples and then proceeded to Rome where he rented a house on the Spanish Steps. He died on the 23 February, 1821 aged only 25. Keats requested that only the phrase: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water be inscribed on his headstone. However, his two close friends Joseph Severn and Charles Brown, who cared for him during his illness, decided to add the following: 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 Brown and Severn felt that Keats had been badly treated by the critics - in particular by harsh reviews of Endymion which appeared in Blackwood's and the Quarterly Review.

However, both men later regretted adding their own words to the headstone. Severn is buried near to Keats and between them lies Severn's son. Shelley wrote a long elegy for Keats entitled Adonais. John Keats Keats' short life was beset with tragedy. His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was fourteen. In 1818, his younger brother Tom also died. Keats' letters were not published until 1848 and 1878 but provided a fascinating insight into his everyday life and his thoughts about poetry. In them he makes reference to various theories including mansion of many apartments and negative capability . Eliot regarded them as 'the most important ever written by any English poet'. See also assonance , romanticism and synaesthesia .

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs; "Here lies one whose name was writ in water..." : Nature News Published online 8 August 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070806-6 Column "Here lies one whose name was writ in water..." A survey of evidence for the 'memory' of liquid water casts little light on its putative role in homeopathy, says Philip Ball. Philip Ball I suspect it will be news to most scientists that Elsevier publishes a peer-reviewed journal called Homeopathy. I also suspect that many, on discovering this, would doubt there is anything published there that it would profit them to read. But I propose that such prejudices be put aside for the current special issue, which collects a dozen papers devoted to the 'memory of water' 1 .

It's worth seeing what they have to say — if only because that reveals this alleged phenomenon to be as elusive as ever. The inability of water to act as a memorial was a well known poetical trope before the poet John Keats chose as his epitaph the quotation that serves as a headline here; its ephemerality was noted by Heraclitus in the fifth century BC. But 'the memory of water' is a phrase now firmly lodged in the public consciousness — it even supplied the title for a recent play in London's West End. Scientists, though, tend to side with the poets in rejecting any notion that water can hold lasting impressions. Indeed, Homeopathy 's editor, Peter Fisher of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital admits that "the 'memory of water' casts a long shadow over homeopathy and is just about all that many scientists recall about the scientific investigation of homeopathy, equating it with poor or even fraudulent science." The term was coined by the French newspaper Le Monde in the wake of the 1988 Nature paper 2 that kicked off the whole affair.

The lead author was the late Jacques Benveniste, head of a biomedical laboratory in Clamart run by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). Benveniste's team described experiments in which antibodies stimulated an allergic response in human white blood cells called basophils even when the antibody solutions were diluted far beyond the point at which they would contain a single antibody molecule. The activity seemed to disappear and then reappear periodically during serial dilutions. Uncertain memory Does “drip, drip, drip” ring a bell?Getty The results seemed to offer some experimental justification for the use of such high-dilution remedies in homeopathy. But they defied conventional scientific understanding, specifically the law of mass action that demands that the rates of chemical reactions be proportional to the concentrations of reagents. How could this be? Benveniste and colleagues suggested that perhaps the antibody activity was 'imprinted' in some fashion on the structure of liquid water, and transferred with each dilution. The idea made no sense in terms of what was known about the structure of water — but what prevented it from being dismissed straight away was that liquid water has a complicated molecular-scale structure that is still not perfectly understood.

Water molecules associate by means of weak chemical bonds called hydrogen bonds. Although in the main they form and break on timescales of about a trillionth of a second, nonetheless they seem to offer a vague possibility that water might form clusters of molecules with specific shapes and behaviours. Benveniste's experiments were investigated by a team of 'fraud-busters' led by Nature 's then editor John Maddox, who demanded that the studies be repeated under careful observation. Although Benveniste acquiesced (and the results proved utterly inconclusive), he complained of a witch-hunt. Certainly, it was an unprecedented act of scrutiny that not even the proponents of cold fusion — the far more storied water-related pathology that blew up the next year — had to endure. In any event, the results were never unambiguously repeated by others. Benveniste, however, progressed from high-dilution experiments to the claim that the activity of biomolecules could be 'digitally recorded' and imprinted on water using radio waves.

Until his death in 2004, he insisted that this would lead to a new age of 'digital biology.' Cabinet of curiosities There are many good reasons — too many to fit in this column — to doubt that water molecules in the liquid state could mimic the behaviour of antibodies or other complex biomolecules in a way that persists through dilution after dilution. As water expert José Teixeira of the French nuclear research organisation's Saclay laboratories, outside Paris, says in the sceptic's perspective he provides in the Homeopathy special issue, "Any interpretation calling for 'memory' effects in pure water must be totally excluded." But the idea won't be squashed that easily, as some of the other papers show. These papers report several experimental results that, at face value, are intriguing and puzzling. Louis Rey, a private researcher in Switzerland, reports that salt solutions show markedly different thermoluminescence signals, for different homeopathic dilutions, when frozen and then rewarmed. Bohumil Vybíral and Pavel Vorácek of the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic describe curious viscosity changes in water left to stand undisturbed.

And Benveniste's collaborator Yolène Thomas, of the Andre Lwoff Institute in Villejuif, outside Paris, reports some of the results of radiofrequency 'programming' of water with specific biomolecular behaviour, including the induction of Escherichia coli-like 'signals', the inhibition of protein coagulation, and blood-vessel dilation in a guinea pig heart. The volume is, in other words, a cabinet of curiosities. There is rarely even a token effort to explain the relevance of these experiments to the supposed workings of homeopathy, with its archaic rituals of shaking ('succussion') and 'magic-number' dilutions (one must always use factors of ten, and generally only specific ones, such as 106, 1012 and 1030). The procedures and protocols on display here are often unusual, if not bizarre, because it seems the one thing you must not do on any account is the simplest experiment that would probe any alleged 'memory' effect: to look for the persistent activity of a single, well-defined agent in a simple reaction — say an enzyme or an inorganic catalyst — as dilution clears the solution of any active ingredient.

ADVERTISEMENT If that sounds bad, it is nothing compared with the level of theoretical discussion. This 'field' has acquired its own deus ex machina, an unsubstantiated theory of 'quantum coherent domains' in water proposed in 1988 3 that is vague enough to fit anything demanded of it. Aside from that, the 'explanations' on offer seem either to consider that water physics can be reinvented from scratch by replacing decades of careful research with wishful thinking, or they call on impurities to perform the kind of miraculous feats of biomolecular mimicry and replication that chemists have been striving to achieve for many years. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard once wrote "We attribute to water virtues that are antithetic to the ills of a sick person. Man projects his desire to be cured and dreams of a compassionate substance." On this evidence, that dream is as strong as ever. Visit our liesonewhosenamewasw.html">newsblog to read and post comments about this story.

References ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’ | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis Lifestyle ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’ 1821: English poet John Keats (1795 - 1821) in Rome. Original Artwork: Painting by Joseph Severn. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Shares28 Gowri Ramnarayan | Fri, 15 Jul 2016-06:47am , DNA “Please go to the Protestant cemetery and stand by John Keats’ grave for me,” I begged my London-based son weekending in Rome. Years ago, I had made my pilgrimage to the same spot to find the gates locked. Why Keats? Well, how can your imagination not be captured by a poet who knows he is going to cough his way to death in a foreign land at age 26, love unfulfilled, genius unrecognised? Shelley and Byron also died disastrously young, but not before winning fame, lovers, and notoriety as rebels. Members of the privileged class, they had mourned Keats’ death with aristocratic condescension.

After all, Keats was a stable keeper’s son and a surgeon’s apprentice. Short and nondescript against their terrific good looks. Enough stuff here for my adolescent indignation. Later, writing on films, I discovered in Keats a fine guide as an expert cameraman — silhouette, dissolve, close up, long shot, mid shot, panning, jump cut, intercut, irising were all child’s play to him. I turned his odes into little screenplays — no dialogue, just visual sequences. A huge learning experience! Visitors to Italy learn resignation. Most things remain “chiuso” (closed). Looking through the cemetery’s gates at marble tombstones under ghostly trees shivering in dusky breezes, I wondered: how can I fulfil my dream of filling the delicate ivory casket I carried with me from India, for the sole purpose of placing in it a pinch of earth from the poet’s grave? Then… I saw the cats! Feline creatures of every colour, size and shape — white, black, grey, brown, ginger, tawny — patrolling the graveyard like evil spirits metamorphosed into a feral posse. Hitchcock pure and ghastly.

When I tried to climb over the gate, five cats scrambled up the grills from the other side, claws rasping rusty metal, miaows tearing my eardrum. With a gasp of horror I slid down and ran. And yet, after all these years, the memory of missing that grave darshan makes me as forlorn as Keats himself in his odes. Writ in Water - The New Yorker Writ in Water April 18, 2011 Had Keats heard about sentences floating on Italian rivers, he might not have requested this epitaph: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” For his latest project, the Italian street artist Guildor cut calming sentences out of foam ( “Love, let the rest flow,” “Think thoughtless,” “Happiness happens” ) and tied them with nylon cords to river banks; that way, his work holds still on the water’s surface.

“Writing on water is like writing down a thought in order to keep it secure,” Guildor told reporters, “even when it is shaken by the course of life, to distinguish the important things from those you should just let flow by.” After I read his explanation, I contacted him and asked what he thought about Keats’s epitaph in relation to his project. His reply was sort of bleak. “Keats was right. I have no idea how long my work will last,” Guildor said. “The only parameter determining my work’s lifespan is the spectator’s memory.” But he sounded much more accepting of fleeting fame than Keats did. At the end of his life, the poet wrote in a letter: “ ‘If I should die,’ said I to myself, ‘I have left no immortal work behind me.’ ” Hence, the epitaph’s depressing metaphor, which Keats borrowed from the depressingly titled seventeenth-century play, “ Philaster, or Love Lies-a-Bleeding :” “All your better deeds / Shall be in water writ.” That said, Guildor lives in Italy, and Italians have a reputation for knowing how to relax and enjoy life. Keats only moved to Italy after he became seriously ill and died there a year later.

His friends buried him at a Protestant Cemetery in Rome. If you ever happen to visit the poet’s grave, expect a much longer epitaph. His well-meaning friends felt he deserved one: “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.” Pretty wordy, right? Maybe it’d read better on water. “Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water” | The Write Stuff “Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water” Posted on February 23, 2016 by ljackson2013 British poet John Keats died at age 25 on this date in 1821 in a small room near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Keats went to Rome hoping the warm air would ease his suffering, which was caused by tuberculosis.

He is buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome; his epitaph reads, “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.” Share this: Here lies one whose name was writ in water - Everything2.com Here lies one whose name was writ in water by Dorian Sat Nov 13 1999 at 14:39:11 It's the epitaph on the gravestone of John Keats (1794-1821). He died of tuberculosis in Rome , and was buried there. Some say the epitaph moves them to tears...can't see it, myself. Maybe you have to be there to feel it. by lemuru Sat Sep 09 2000 at 12:40:24 Whenever I hear John Keats ' epitaph , a sick, little tremor ripples through my belly. Consider what it would (and maybe will) feel like to know that not only are you going to die , but your entire life --all of your suffering , wonder , love , and hate --was for naught ? You won't be remembered, your life won't be thought of, you're name was writ in water .

There will be nobody there to shed a tear , and you might as well have never been . John Keats was wrong, for he was brilliant --his poetry is a thing of wonder , and I and others will remember his name until death . But what of you? What of me? What will be when we no longer are? by enkidu Mon Apr 02 2001 at 16:48:59 Keats , as a non-stupid Romantic , was in a bad place. First of all, anyone who lives for emotion and occasional transport s of divine inspiration will have their footsteps dogged by death... the inevitable decline of love's first passions, the friendships that wither while you're apart, all the way down to the occasional bad day when everything seems to suck for no good reason. But then there's the much larger death, ultimately the heat death of the universe . Even if you live well, and even if you live on through the people you've loved or inspired, ultimately everything will die . In Håvamål proverbs , Odin the all-father told the people Cattle die and kindred die. Gods and men die. You yourself will one day die.

There is only one thing that will live on The name , good or bad, that you have left for yourself. But he was being dumb . Your name will die. Everyone who knew you will die, and everyone they knew will die too. Even if our children or great-great-grandchildren make the leap to incorruptible silicon synapses and simulated biochemicals and infinitely reproducible digital minds, living on near zero energy with megahertz thoughts that span centuries, eventually the universe will dodder towards maximum entropy and none of it will mean a thing anymore. Everything is going to go away. Everything is ephemeral. You have to deal with that; there's no choice . All we have is our own enjoyment and understanding of life, and if we choose to believe in other people we have that which we can bring to them as well. It's kind of stupid to feel bad that your name is writ on water; everything is. It always has been, and it will be no matter what you do. So have fun or something. Do something meaningful anyway. Drink from the cup as if it's already broken , because you know that it is.

by Lometa Fri Jan 14 2005 at 21:40:09 Utter this phrase to just about any English Lit major and chances are they will know whom you are talking about. So why the nebulous expression and what body of water is the author referring to? In many literary circles water can indicate a cleansing and certainly Shakespeare’s The Tempest is awash with it. Water in Genesis is a means of destroying the wicked and in Matthew as a way of remitting sins. It can also symbolize the river of life or the extinguishing of baptism by fire and re birth. Calling it his “posthumous life” in 1820 John Keats dutifully headed to the warmer climes of sunny Italy after being diagnosed with an almost certain death sentence, tuberculosis. After declining Percy Bysshe Shelley 's invitation to join him at Pisa, Keats went to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn where they lived in the Piazza of the Spanish Steps . Not far from the bottom of the steps is the Fontana della Barcaccia (1627) or "leaky old boat" created by Pietro Bernini , the son of Giovanni .

In a city famed for its fountains, this one stands out from the rest. Pope Urban VIII commissioned the Fontana della Barcaccia and even reopened an ancient aqueduct from the 17th century to provide water to the arid region. Instead of spouting grandeur with the magnificence of great crashing torrents, the streams flow with gentle murmurs. Carved in the shape of a half sunken ship with water overflowing its bows, researchers differ on what it is a tribute to. Some say that its mild mannered form was simply a necessity in a part of the city with such low water pressure, while others conjecture that it is symbolic of the Catholic Church ceaselessly afloat in the face of unfeasible odds. Another theory suggests that the fountain is a reminder of the Tiber River which frequently flooded this area of Rome. Still many like to imagine this is the where Domitian , a Roman emperor, held splendid sea battles in his great water stadium. Keats could hear the sound of the water flowing soothingly from his deathbed and perhaps the marble carving echoed Charon’s leaky boat upon the river Styx .

He said it reminded him of the lines from the 17th century play Philaster Or: Love Lies A-bleeding (1611) by playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher. They often portrayed stories about the loyal devotion of both men and women to king, lover, or friend and Philaster is one of their best. The tragedy is about a Sicilian king whose kingdom was taken by the father of the woman he loves. It is a romance and tragicomedy about forgiveness. Thinking he is about to be put to death King Philaster observes: Sir, let me speak next, And let my dying words be better with you Than my dull living actions; if you aime At the dear life of this sweet Innocent, Y'are a Tyrant and a savage Monster; Your memory shall be as soul behind you As you are living, all your better deeds Shall be in water writ , but this in Marble: No Chronicle shall speak you, though your own, But for the shame of men. Philaster. Act v. Sc. 3. Beaumont and Fletcher's published Philaster in 1714 having borrowed the line from another tragicomic romance.

These kinds of plays were rising in popularity at the time and it was a genre Shakespeare frequently used nearly a century earlier. In this instance the expression comes from Henry VIII a different play that centers on the instabilities of another royal court. Only this one dates from the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Bard’s intentions are to portray the warning signs of far-ranging consequences of infighting among the members of the court. One historian says, “The king of Shakespeare's day, James I , was a direct descendent of the royal family in this play. The merging of romance and history provides the suggestion that fate or providence helped to determine the unfolding of English history of the previous century.” In the fourth act Queen Katherine is being divorce from Henry VIII and discovers Cardinal Wolsey has schemed against her for political reasons. Angry, she swears him as her enemy. The Cardinal is put to death for his plans and hearing of his demise Katherine speaks out against him again and her attendant Griffith observes: Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water.

King Henry VIII IV.ii Katharine is eventually convinced by Griffith to exonerate Wolsey with his elegy of forgiveness and pity that is encouraged throughout the play. So perhaps it is with speech and pardon in mind that Keats desires his pithy epitaph. There is no doubt that there are a few readers who are wondering what has brought this 25-year-old poetic genius in the making to such a humble summit. The lower class son of a livery stable owner John was apprenticed to a surgeon only to discard a medical career in pursuit of a passion for poetry. By the fall of 1816 two of his sonnets, O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell and On First Looking into Chapman's Homer were published in the Examiner , a literary magazine edited by journalist and poet Leigh Hunt . Hunt introduced Keats to an upper class circle of literary men including poet Percy Shelly Blythe . With the support of this group Keats was able to get his first volume of verse Poems by John Keats published in 1817. His thesis was a justification of Romantic poetry and it main beliefs as publicized by Hunt and the assailing of the practice of Romanticism as represented by Lord Byron .

Two years later a follow up volume by Keats was published, Endymion . It was brutally criticized by the Quarterly Review and in particular Blackwood’s Magazine who called it “nonsense” recommending Keats abandon poetry altogether. One biographer writes: Keats's second book, the woefully ambitious Endymion (1818), was savaged by the Tory press. Blackwood's sneered: "It is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr. John." Undeterred, Keats entered a period of rapid intellectual and poetic development, beautifully charted in his remarkable and moving letters . With astonishing speed, supreme confidence, and the greatest artistic mastery, Keats wrote virtually all his major poetry between January and September of 1819. Blackwood’s was relentless with their criticisms calling the romantic verse of Hunt’s literary circle, “the Cockney school of poetry.” But in spite of the disparagement Keats most impressive production of verse followed and by the summer of 1820 his third and best volume Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems was published.

Not only did he benefit from a huge critical success, Keats also fell madly in love with Fanny Brawne (1801-1865) and it was also the year that he first showed signs of tuberculosis. Dying in a small room in Rome Keats realized that his accolades on the publication of the volume Lamia, Isabella would be the end of his career as a poet. Keats told Joseph Severn that he wanted no dedications on his gravestone not even his name, but simply the words: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." After Keats death Severn deliberated on a variety of combination of Keats’ words that would explain his choice was from the poet's sense of disregard by his peers.

Nevertheless he kept his word for the time being and although the common sentiment towards the remembrance of Keats between English residents and visitors were for the most part considerate, there were a few insolent jeers, -"his name was writ in water"; yes, and his poetry in milk and water.' Even so his friend Shelley nobly defied Keats vague phrase in his own poem Adonais with,” He lives, he wakes - 'tis Death is dead, not he.” Over the years Joseph Severn eagerly looked for any signs of growing admiration of his friend's poetry, or of change in attitude from the scoffers, but reprints of Keats's poems weren’t published until nearly a decade later, “and then only by the Paris house of Galignani, who printed for the continental market, in a single tall volume with double columns, a collective edition of the poems of Shelley, Coleridge , and Keats.” Severn felt regret at agreeing to such an insignificant tombstone and after much deliberation among his group of friends that included several proposals of change Keats tombstone was carefully re-cut more than half a century later.

A design of a lyre with only two strings attached was added perhaps as a symbolic metaphor for lyricists life cut tragically short. Today Keats’s tombstone rests upon a green, sunny slope in the Rome's Protestant Cemetery . In addition to the lyre is the inscription: This Grave Whose Name was writ in Water" Feb 24 1821 When John Keats died it had only been a handful of years after he had begun to write and the value of his legacy was only evident to his friends. There was a deep desire to ensure that Keats' brief work became well known, and it soon attained great popularity. Not only is it a reminder to many that the poet was a victim to the malice of his enemies, but that he was also capable of forgiveness. And like Shakespeare’s plays about court rivalries and the ripples they cause across time, the simple epitaph has had its own far-ranging consequences of infighting among the poetical elites because today Keats’ odes are to be found in almost every anthology of English poetry.

Sources: CCS Web Academy - English IV - Unit 6, Lesson 1: english.ccswebacademy.net/ english4renfro/Units4to7/U6L1.htm John Keats Forum • View topic - Here lies one whose name was writ in water Here lies one whose name was writ in water by shirley » Wed May 07, 2003 10:16 am I don't even understand these words been engravened on his Tomb Stone,tell me by Endymion » Sat May 24, 2003 8:59 pm Hi Shirley welcome to the Bulletein Board! The original quote that Keats modified to his own needs came from a book that he read and studied almost fanatically during his life, and I think says a lot about the depressed nature he felt as a result of his early death and poor reception with the public when they read his poems.

This link has the origin of the quote and the full text of his epitaph: "He Stood in His Shoes and he Wondered He Wondered Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2002 4:03 pm Location: London, UK by kara » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:04 am Hi Shirley, I'm pretty sure that the intended idea was (as the person who posted before me pointed out), that he was despondent over what he thought was going to be a life and memory that would not be remembered after his death. In other words, his memory would be fast fading from people's minds. Obviously, he wasn't aware of the impact that he would make on an innumerable amount of later generations. The quote was taken from from the play [b]Philaster[/b] by Beaumont and Fletcher. "All your better deeds / Shall be in water writ,". Top by Matt » Fri Feb 06, 2004 6:51 pm No one is actually answeing poor Shirleys question!

Shirely, if you try writing your name in water (with your finger) then you will notice that the name dissapears very quickly, if it appears at all. Therefore as Despondence and Kara pointed out-Keats thought that he would be erased from peoples memories after his death. Muchos Gracias by kara » Mon Feb 09, 2004 8:36 pm I thought that that's what Despondence and I were saying... by Stephen Smith » Wed May 12, 2004 9:05 pm Now, now, don't argue. You're all getting the job done. Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 4:42 pm Location: Joplin, MO USA Top by Junkets » Mon Oct 11, 2004 12:53 pm The initial interpretation I formed of this epitaph was, as has been mentioned, that Keats was referring to his lack of success and assumed inferiority as a poet. But I now believe that I was wrong; this interpretation, I think, it is not justifiable.

Although I don't doubt that there was some humerous reference to his lack of success and inferiority in the epitaph, I don't think that Keats would pass up the opportunity of making a final and enduring statement without incoporating any poetical flair. Ask yourself, knowing the poetry, letters and theories of Keats, as I'm sure you all do, whether such a down-hearted, almost self indulgent and weak statement would be made by a man so continually concerned with truth and beauty, a man with such a strong vision, a man with such understanding and intent . I don't believe it would. I believe that epitaph echoes that which is seen throughout his poetry, and in particular Ode to a Nightingale and Hyperion, the notion of achieving the transcendent, the ability to 'dissolve' and obtain a degree of omniscience, to become in essence an etheral part of Nature. To further a point mentioned by Matt, if you take a pen and 'write' your name in the water with ink, the ink is dissolved into the water and becomes akin to nothing, but the ink will spread throughout the water and will always be present.

While my original reading of the epitaph made me feel a litle sad for Keats, this second reading makes me smile. Top by Despondence » Mon Oct 11, 2004 1:56 pm That's a heroic picture you paint, and quite possible, I suppose. Still, though. While he said that "I think I shall be among the English poets after my death," I find it hard to believe he would have twisted this humble dream, that secret feeling, into a prediction on his stone. What if it were not to be? And for sure, at the time he had no reason to believe that posterity would remember him at all. To make such a bold prediction in the face of despondence seems rather arrogant. Maybe this would not have been uncharacteristic of Keats, when it comes to his confidence in his own abilities, but still. I'm not sure I can buy it. That he viewed his passing as a transcendence seems also a bit of a stretch, since his life was cut rather short.

Despondence Top by Junkets » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:33 pm I think you would be right, Despondence, but I also think that you just may have got the wrong end of the stick of what I was implying (or could it be that I have not explained myself very well?). I was not intending to state that the epitaph was some sort of exaltaion of his own poetic genius; that would be erring toward arrogance. Using Nightingale, again, as an example, Keats expresses his desire to drink "a cup full of the warm south", "leave the world unseen" and "fade far away into the forest dim". Of course superficially it could be argued that he just wants to knock himself out and disappear, but to me this shows a desire to imbibe Nature in an effort to become (ok, excuse the cheese) at one with Nature, in an all embracing transcendent fashion (also to be seen in the desire to 'fly' with to the nightingale on the wings of posey - oh dear, I digress). It is this sentiment that I feel is reflected in the epitaph.

I hope this makes sense; trying to think about all this whilst doing my work and trying not to get caught by the boss is proving a significant undertaking. by Despondence » Tue Jan 04, 2005 3:04 pm Time to rehash, here. I'm wondering (in my shoes). Two posts mention the Beaumont and Fletcher play as the source for the epitaph, and Endymion pointed to "a book that he read and studied almost fanatically during his life," and gave a link to it which unfortunately does not work anymore. Was this Burton's "Anatomy"? And is this where Beaumont and Fletcher is quoted? Andrew Motion, on the other hand, mentions something about Keats arriving at this motto by translating something from Greek. What would that have been? But Gittings seem to say that Keats never studied Greek ("he...wished he had studied Greek with Bailey"), although he might have been able to do some minimal translations anyway, if he devoted himself to it, but probably not routinely. What is true here, could someone clarify?

Despondence Here lies one whose name was writ in water - phrase meaning and origin Here lies one whose name was writ in water Posted by ESC on February 11, 2003 In Reply to: John keats posted by norm on February 11, 2003 : what does this mean "here lies a man whose name was writ in water." please email me the awnser I believe it must mean that a person will be soon forgotten. Here's what I found online: In 1820 appeared the second volume of Keats poems. It gained a huge critical success. However, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis and his poems were marked with sadness partly because he was too poor to marry Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved. In a letter from 1819 he wrote. "I love you more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and nothing else. I have met with women whom I relay think would like to be married to a Poem and given away by a Novel." When his condition gradually worsened, he sailed for Italy with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn, to escape England's cold winter.

Declining Shelley's invitation to join him at Pisa, Keats went to Rome, where he died at the age of 25, on February 23, 1821. Keats did not invent his own epitaph, but remembered words from the play Philaster, or Love Lies-Ableeding, written by Beaumont and Fletcher in 1611. "All your better deeds / Shall be in water writ," one of the characters says. Keats told his friend Joseph Severn that he wanted on his grave just the line, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." From The Literature Network at A picture of the tombstone and the following text is at 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 engraved on his tomstone "HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER"

Question: Here lies one whose name was writ in water?
Answer: John Keats