This Article Is About Epitaphs

Anthony Madrid asks what's up with ancient Greek epitaphs at the Paris Review Daily, and in so doing, distinguishes "epitaph" from "epigram" and "epigraph." "Naturally, epigrams can be used as epigraphs, but let’s not even. This article is about epitaphs." To continue:

An epitaph is a little dab of poetry that you stick on a gravestone. It doesn’t have to be about the deceased, but it usually is. Keats suggested a good one for himself, and they actually used it: “Here lies one whose name is writ in water.” That’s not really a poem, but it’s a little dab of poetry. It counts.

Epitaphs are a good idea. You got your block of stone, you got the cutter standing there, chisel in hand, waiting for what to put. One of God’s children has fallen; gotta write something. Give a précis of his or her life in four lines. Or say how the person died. Remind people they’re next. Anyhow you have to say something.

The ancient Greeks loved this. They made zillions of these things. In fact, a very large chunk of the book we call the Greek Anthology is nothing but epitaphs.

What is the Greek Anthology? It’s this ridiculously comprehensive book of itty bitty Greek poems. It’s divided into fifteen or sixteen “books.” The Table of Contents is a sketch. The level of agglutinative, improvised, cross-eyed incoherence is like something out of Borges. You remember that famous bit that knocked Michel Foucault half dead with pleasure, from the “Chinese” Encyclopedia of Celestial Wisdom or whatever—?

Read on at the Daily.