At the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome

At the right foot of the Spanish Steps, in the very heart of Rome, I´ve just visited the Keats-Shelley House, a museum dedicated to the second generation of the English Romantic poets. It preserves the memory of Keats, Shelley and, to a less extent, Byron. All of them, geniuses who have attained an iconic status, died very young. In fact, it was as if the Romantic spirit and its intensity of feelings had to be associated with youth and that peculiar and sublime immaturity. 

The house was the final dwelling place of Keats, who had travelled to Italy with symptoms of consumption, in vain hope of a better climate to alleviate his poor health, but who would finally die here at the tender age of 25. He was the archetype of the young, beautiful and doomed Romantic writer. On his gravestone (also on one of the walls of the building) a Greek lyre was carved with four of its eight strings broken, in order to "show his classical genius cut off by death before its maturity".

Devastated by his death, Shelley wrote the elegy Adonais. A year later, he would drown off the coast of Tuscany at the age of 29. A volume of Keats´ poetry was found in his pocket. Both are buried in Rome´s Protestant cemetery.

Also imbued by the classical mythology, but having the epic ancient Greece in his imagination, the aristocratic Lord Byron would die (from a fever) for the cause of Greek independence against the Turks, in an adolescent attempt at making himself a Homeric hero.

Definetely, the museum was worth the visit. And a great pleasure to leave, at least for just half an hour, the hustle and bustle of the overcrowded Piazza di Spagna outside. I could enjoy the quiet solitude of the library, full of first editions, and, strolling around the rooms, gaze not only at original letters (by authors like Mary Shelley or even Oscar Wilde or Borges, who adored Keats) but also at a variety of memorabilia such as a lock of Keats´ hair or a carnival mask Byron once bought in Venice.

These tortured poets were dreamers who created a religion from the spirituality of their own experiences. And it is inspiring and overwelming to believe that the fellowship and reciprocal admiration they maintained was genuine and sincere. Nothing to do, I´m afraid, with the so often recurring rivalry between some green-eyed authors nowadays.

Good reasons to read biographies

There is nothing more enlightening and inspiring than reading the life and work of great people. We live in a world built by the genius and creativity of human beings who have had the ability of achieving extraordinary triumphs and it may be instructive to know how their interesting careers have developed. In fact, their priceless lessons of experience can encourage us to start working for greatness on our own. Biographies remind us that history repeats itself. Even if the person we are reading about is unworthy of praise or admiration - we don't read about Martin Luther King or Hitler for the same reason - their real stories can be instructive and valuable.

When it comes to writers, analyzing their lives may help us understand their literary work better. Their experiences usually shape what they create. Let´s take the most intellectual and revolutionary of the British romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, for instance.

Heir of a rich estate and educated in Eton and Oxford, he gave up everything to liberate humanity from misery. An atheist and anarchist, he was considered a pariah for his lifestyle. His first wife committed suicide by drowning in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, when he ran away with 16-year-old Mary. Shelley was only 29 when he also drowned during a sudden storm while sailing in Italy. His unrecognizable fisheaten body was found on a beach. They knew it was him because of a volume of Keats' poems in his pocket. The corpse was burnt right there in presence of Byron and Leigh Hunt and his heart was given to his second wife, who would carry it with her in a silken shroud everywhere for the rest of her life. Mary Shelley, best known for her Frankestein, would work tirelessly to edite and promote his poetry.

Apart from getting a glimpse into the minds of these two artists, these are only a few facts which will certainly make us pay attention to certain aspects of their poems and stories we might otherwise miss or consider unimportant. Now we know that his obsession with thunders, water and evil images turned out to be prophetic. Her interest in the supernatural, the weird and the horrible also had an explanation.