Epitaph

An epitaph (from Ancient Greek ἐπιτάφιος (epitáphios) 'a funeral oration'; from ἐπι- (epi-) 'at, over', and τάφος (táphos) 'tomb')[1][2] is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves before their death, while others are chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be written in prose or in poem verse; poets have been known to compose their own epitaphs prior to their death.

Epitaph on the base of the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument, Waldheim Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois

Most epitaphs are brief records of the family, and perhaps the career, of the deceased, often with a common expression of love or respect—for example, "beloved father of ..."—but others are more ambitious. From the Renaissance to the 19th century in Western culture, epitaphs for notable people became increasingly lengthy and pompous descriptions of their family origins, career, virtues and immediate family, often in Latin. Notably, the Laudatio Turiae, the longest known Ancient Roman epitaph, exceeds almost all of these at 180 lines; it celebrates the virtues of an honored wife, probably of a consul.

Some are quotes from holy texts, or aphorisms. One approach of many epitaphs is to "speak" to the reader and warn them about their own mortality. A wry trick of others is to request the reader to get off their resting place, inasmuch as the reader would have to be standing on the ground above the coffin to read the inscription. Some record achievements (e.g., past politicians note the years of their terms of office). Nearly all (excepting those where this is impossible by definition, such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) note name, year or date of birth, and date of death. Many list family members and the relationship of the deceased to them (for example, "Father / Mother / Son / Daughter of").

History

The history of epitaphs extends as far back as the ancient Egyptians and have differed in delivery.[3] The ancient Greeks utilised emotive expression, written in elegiac verse, later in prose.[3] Ancient Romans' use of epitaphs was more blunt and uniform, typically detailing facts of the deceased – as did the earliest epitaphs in English churches.[3] "May the earth lie light upon thee" was a common inscription for them.[3] Due to the influence of Roman occupiers, the dominant language of epitaphs was Latin, evidenced by the oldest existing epitaphs in Britain. French and English came into fashion around the 13th and 14th centuries, respectively.[3]

By the 16th century, epitaphs had become more literary in nature and those written in verse were involved in trade.[3] In America and Britain, comedic epitaphs are common in the form of acrostics, palindromes, riddles, and puns on names and professions – Robert Burns, the most prolific pre-Romantic epitaphist, wrote 35 pieces, them being largely satirical.[3][4] The rate of literary epitaphs has been historically overshadowed by "popular sepulchral inscriptions which are produced in countless numbers at all time"; "Strictly literary" epitaphs were most present during the start of the Romantic period.[4]

The lake poets have been credited with providing success to epitaph-writing adjacent to that of poetry significance – Robert Southey, in focusing simultaneously upon transience and eternity, contributed substantially.[4] General interest for epitaphs was waning at the cusp of the 19th century; in contrast to a considerable burgeoning intellectual interest.[4] Critical essays had been published before on the matter, possibly contributing towards its flourishment in the latter half of the 18th century.[4] Epitaphs never became a major poetic form, and, according to Romantic scholar, Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch, they had "virtually disappeared" by 1810; "The art of the epitaph was largely lost in the 20th century", wrote Encyclopedia Britannica.[3][4]

Format

Sarcophagi and coffins were the choice of ancient Egyptians for epitaphs; brasses was the prominent format for a significant period of time.[3] Epitaphs upon stone monuments became a common feature by the Elizabethan era.[3]

Epitaphs in England

Medieval era
Ledger stone with epitaph in ledger lines of Sir John Harsyck (d.1384), South Acre Church, Norfolk

Stock phrases or standard elements present in epitaphs on mediaeval church monuments and ledger stones in England include:

  • Hic jacet.. (here lies...)
  • ... cuius animae propitietur deus amen (generally abbreviated to cuius aie ppitiet ds ame with tildes indicating the omitted letters) ("whose soul may God look upon with favour Amen")
  • Memoriae sacrum ... / MS ("Sacred to the memory (of) ...")

Modern era
  • Requiescat in pace / RIP ("may he rest in peace")

Notable examples
Wikiquote has quotations related to Epitaphs.

Poets, playwrights and other writers

While you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and Time demands his due.

— Seikilos epitaph (oldest surviving complete musical composition)[5]

This is my father's crime against me, which I myself committed against none.

— Al-Ma'arri[6]

Good frend for İesvs sake forebeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.

(In modern spelling):
Good friend, for Jesus's sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

— William Shakespeare[7]

Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water

— John Keats

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

— W. B. Yeats, Under Ben Bulben

Heroes and Kings your distance keep;
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flattered folks like you;
Let Horace blush and Virgil too.

— Alexander Pope[8]

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

— Joseph Conrad, in Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Homo sum! the adventurer

— D. H. Lawrence

Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

— Virginia Woolf[9]

Statesmen

Oh God (Devanagari: हे राम)

— Mahatma Gandhi

Mathematicians

I've finally stopped getting dumber.
(Hungarian: Végre nem butulok tovább.)

— Paul Erdős[10]

We must know. We will know.
(German: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.)

— David Hilbert[11]

Soldiers

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
that here, obedient to their law, we lie.

— Simonides's epigram honoring the 300 at Thermopylae

Here sleeps at peace a Hampshire Grenadier
Who caught his early death by drinking cold small beer.
Soldiers, be wise at his untimely fall,
And when you're hot, drink strong or none at all.

— Thomas Thetcher tombstone epitaph in Winchester Cathedral

To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

— Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier, written by W. H. Auden[12]

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today

— The Kohima Epitaph by John Maxwell Edmonds

There is borne an empty hearse
covered over for such as appear not.
Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb.

— Unknown Soldier's epitaph, Athens; passages taken from Pericles' Funeral Oration[13][14]

Entertainers

And the beat goes on.

— Sonny Bono

That's all folks!

— Mel Blanc

I told you I was ill.
(Irish: Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.)

— Spike Milligan[15]

Other

He never killed a man that did not need killing.

— Gunfighter Clay Allison

Monuments with epitaphs
  • Epitaph painted by Guidon Reni, for the knight van Ertborn de Witte
  • Grave of Selena at Seaside Memorial Park in Corpus Christi, Texas citing Isaiah 25:8 writings
  • Epitaph for heart of Frédéric Chopin
  • Grave of W. B. Yeats; Drumecliff, Co. Sligo
  • Lengthy epitaph for Johann Wauer a (German pastor), died 1728, concluding with a short Biblical quotation
  • The epitaph on voice actor Mel Blanc's tombstone
  • Inscription at Heather O'Rourke's crypt
  • Ezzatollah Sahabi, Glory of Iran and his patriotic daughter Haleh
  • A folksy epitaph to an English village blacksmith in Houghton, Cambridgeshire, UK
  • The gravestone of comedian, writer and actor Spike Milligan showing the notable epitaph
  • Grave of Mary Kay Bergman, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills). Note that it features etchings of characters she voiced on South Park.
  • The epitaph of the preacher Berthold de Wyrbna (Dominican) from 1316 in Szprotawa, the oldest tombstone in Silesia, Poland.

In music

In a more figurative sense, the term may be used for music composed in memory of the deceased. Igor Stravinsky composed in 1958 Epitaphium for flute, clarinet and harp. In 1967 Krzysztof Meyer called his Symphony No. 2 for choir and orchestra Epitaphium Stanisław Wiechowicz in memoriam. Jeffrey Lewis composed Epitaphium – Children of the Sun for narrator, chamber choir, piano, flute, clarinet and percussion. In 1969, King Crimson released the song Epitaph, giving a reference to epitaphs within the song. Bronius Kutavičius composed in 1998 Epitaphium temporum pereunti. Valentin Silvestrov composed in 1999 Epitaph L.B. (Епітафія Л.Б.) for viola (or cello) and piano. In 2007 Graham Waterhouse composed Epitaphium for string trio as a tribute to the memory of his father William Waterhouse. The South African poet Gert Vlok Nel wrote an (originally) untitled song, which appeared on his first music album "Beaufort-Wes se Beautiful Woorde" as "Epitaph", because his producer Eckard Potgieter told him that the song sounded like an epitaph. David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, released in 2016, is generally seen as his musical epitaph, with singles "Blackstar" and "Lazarus" often singled out.

In space

In the late 1990s, a unique epitaph was flown to the Moon along with the ashes of geologist and planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker.[16] At the suggestion of colleague Carolyn Porco, Shoemaker's ashes were launched aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft on January 6, 1998.[17] The ashes were accompanied by a laser-engraved epitaph on a small piece of foil.[16] The spacecraft, along with the ashes and epitaph, crashed on command into the south polar region of the Moon on July 31, 1999.

See also
  • Chronogram
  • Cenotaph
  • Death poem
  • Epigraph
  • Epitaph (TV series)
  • Eulogy
  • Epitaphios logos (ancient Greek funeral oration)
  • Hero stone
  • Seikilos epitaph
  • Epitaph Records

References
  1. ἐπιτάφιος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
  2. "epitaph". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2012-03-18.
  3. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia (June 20, 2019). "Epitaph | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-08-05. {{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. Bernhardt-Kabisch, Ernest (1967). "The Epitaph and the Romantic Poets: A Survey". Huntington Library Quarterly. 30 (2): 113–146. doi:10.2307/3816994. ISSN 0018-7895. JSTOR 3816994.
  5. Landels, John G. 1999. Music in Ancient Greece and Rome. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415167765 (cloth); ISBN 9780415248433 (pbk); ISBN 9780203042847 (ebook)
  6. Blankinship, Kevin (2015-09-20). "An Elegy by al-Ma'arri". Jadaliyya. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  7. Photograph of William Shakespear's grave, 3 June 2007
  8. Charles Dickens (1893). Dickens' Dictionary Of The Thames. p. 269.
  9. Woolf, Virginia (1931), The Waves, Berlin: Harcourt
  10. "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2022-07-28.
  11. "Göttingen Stadtfriedhof Grab David Hilbert". Wikimedia.
  12. "Famous Epitaph on Unknown Soldier tomb stone". Famousquotes.me.uk. Retrieved 2012-03-18.
  13. Thucydides (1843). "History of the Peloponnesian War 2.34.3". In Molesworth, William (ed.). The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Vol. VIII. Thomas Hobbes (translator). London: John Bohn. p. 188. Available online at the Perseus Project.
  14. Thucydides (1910). "2.43.3". The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. London, New York: J. M. Dent; E. P. Dutton. Available online at the Perseus Project.
  15. "Milligan gets last laugh on grave". BBC News Online. 2004-05-24. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  16. Porco, Carolyn. "The Eugene M. Shoemaker Tribute". Diamond Sky Productions. Retrieved 8 June 2013.
  17. Porco, Carolyn C. (February 2000). "Destination Moon". Astronomy. Retrieved 8 June 2013.

Bibliography
  • Vidor, Gian Marco (2014). Satisfying the mind and inflaming the heart: emotions and funerary epigraphy in nineteenth-century Italy. Mortality (Routledge), on-line edition. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/fByCJS8IEiui62NK5wrq/full#.U_HCzFOBq3o
  • Bertrand, Régis (2005). Que de vertus. Les épitaphes édifiantes des débuts du XIXe siècle. In R. Bertrand, A. Carol, & J.-N. Pelen (Eds.), Les narrations de la mort (pp. 241–255). Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l'Universite' de Provence.
  • Guthke, K. S. (2003). Epitaph culture in the west. Variations on a theme in cultural history. Lewiston, NY: Mellen.
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