Giornale 4: The Keats-Shelley House

After my chaotic visit to the Vatican Museums in the morning, I was so looking forward to the calmness of a smaller museum. Although it is situated right next to the Spanish Steps, one of the most popular tourist destinations for sight-seeing and shopping, the Keats –Shelley House is modest in size and seemingly overlooked. I had tried to go there on Thursday morning after our visit to the Trevi Fountain, but it was closed for Republic Day. This time, however, the wooden doors at the entrance were wide open and I excitedly walked up the steps to the Gift Shop to retrieve my €4.50 ticket and enter the museum.  The first room I entered was a large sitting room lined with mahogany book shelves. The only employee upstairs told me the layout of the floor; to my right would be information on Keats, and the rooms to the left focused more on Shelley and Lord Byron. I immediately entered the rooms to my right because Keats is the main reason I wanted to go to the Keats-Shelley House in the first place. I originally wanted to choose the museum as my group’s Adopt-A-Site project, but its size created logistical difficulties. The Protestant Cemetery in Testaccio, where Keats and Shelley are buried, proved to be an easier location for our large class and also provided a good context for seeing the museum. There were many written descriptions on the walls about Keats’ choice to be buried there and paintings and engravings depicting the Cemetery and Pyramid of Cestius in the early 19^th century. After seeing his grave, it was eerie but also fascinating to see the exact room in which he passed away from tuberculosis.  As a letter from his close friend and cohabitant Joseph Severn reveals, Italian officials burned the entire contents of his room because they thought it would stop the spread of the disease. But the museum acquired an antique bed with linens that would be typical of the time and placed it in the bedroom, so it was not difficult to picture the scene. It was harder to imagine the Protestant Cemetery at the time; according to the accounts of Keats and Shelley, it only had about thirty graves and was populated by flocks of sheep and a shepherd. Other letters written by Severn explain how as Keats’ physical condition worsened in Rome, his mental state also deteriorated and resulted in more erratic behavior and thoughts. I thought back to my poetry class this semester in which we briefly studied Keats and the Romantic Movement, and remembered how my professor mentioned the almost euphoric effect tuberculosis can have on the mind. Perhaps the tragedy of Keats’ sickness and brief life were actually contributors to his poetic genius and description of the senses. After walking through the two rooms on the Keats side and reading about his biography, I went back to the main room and sat down to peruse an anthology of his poems. After rereading a few of my favorites and surveying the rooms on Shelley and Lord Byron, I was more than content with my visit and ready to leave.