It's astonishing how much political upheaval this formerly bourgeois, educated German caused with that very sane statement.
And how many visitors he attracts to London's Highgate Cemetery. I even managed to drag along Thom and Chris.
Chris and I are on different sides of the fence about Mr. Marx. I'm of the opinion great men can't control what is done in their name, particularly after they've been lain to rest. Look no further than Jesus, Muhammad or Buddha for evidence of that.
Given this sign's lack of subtlety and respect, I suspect the cemetery's caretakers think more like Chris.
We can agree on this, however: Russia's current autocrat is an evil man worthy of Biblical justice, as in "an eye for an eye." Putin engineered the radiation poisoning of the man buried here, Alexander Litvinenko, a defector known as Sasha to his family and friends who knew too much. I wonder how many Marx pilgrims cross the road from the East Cemetery to the West to see his much more modest grave? Call their proximity dialectical materialism.
Our afternoon tour began in the West Cemetery, landscaped in the atmospheric Victorian style more easily inhabited by ghosts.
A "menagerist," who jumpstarted his unusual career in 1800 by exhibiting a pair of boas at the London docks, is buried beneath a gentle king of the jungle.
You don't often find same-sex declarations of love like this one from Una for Radclyffe Hall in old cemeteries.
Chris seemed shocked when I mentioned my father, a late-in-life English major at the University of Texas in El Paso, had written a paper on The Well of Loneliness, the 1928 novel that put Radclyffe Hall on the literary map. Kind of like how I felt as a 20something closeted gay man. I never read it. My bad and one that I vow to correct. I wish I'd saved Dad's paper which I recall as being vaguely sympathetic.
I loves me an ornate tomb.
The carving on the most protected side is in much better shape
. . . than that exposed to the elements.
Chris caught me in the act of capturing what I love about cemeteries almost as much as tomb aesthetics: the resurrection of life, more easily facilitated by Google and Wikipedia than ever before.
Look no further than Hubert de Burgh-Canning for a perfect 19th-century example of the rich exploiting the poor. The 2nd Marquess of Clanicarde died with an estimated worth of 180 million (in today's pounds), amassed from rents paid to him by struggling Irish tenant farmers. He literally owned 3.5% of county Galway.
The East Cemetery boasts more than just Karl Marx among its celebrated occupants. George Eliot, for example, née Mary Ann Evans. I devoured The Mill on the Floss but have yet to tackle Middlemarch. So many novels, so little time.
If Mary Ann twists her neck, she can glimpse Karl through the trees.
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, attracts a lot of pilgrims bearing pens, including an American who wrote him a fan letter and got a personal reply. "Do you still have it?" I asked. "No, I lost it when my mother burned her house down." The same pilgrim began spewing anti-Trump opinions at Marx's grave when he learned we lived not far from Mar-a-Lago. I guess oversharing political opinions is becoming just as characteristic of the American left as the right, even in spaces that should be reserved for quiet contemplation. Let's all of us just STFU!
I had forgotten that the svengali of the Sex Pistols was interred in Highgate among 170,000 other people, but Malcom wasn't about to let you miss his heavily styled, even narcissistic gravestone.
Still, Waltz Darling provided the soundtrack for the magical first summer that Chris and I spent at the Muller Cottage, with "Deep In Vogue" on repeat.
Some of the graves are beautiful in their simplicity.
But it's generally the sculptural that attract my camera lens.
Women seem to be depicted more often that men.
There are occasional pets, too, like the weathered "Emperor."
Bling is more likely to be found at the graves of the recently deceased
. . . while those who have been lain to rest the longest are mostly forgotten.
But really, what more can you say about any of them?
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