In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece
Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.
Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph: no man can write my epitaph.
Nowhere probably is there more true feeling, and nowhere worse taste, than in a churchyard - both as regards the monuments and the inscriptions. Scarcely a word of true poetry anywhere.
Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual. "
The body must be regarded as a site of social, political, cultural and geographical inscriptions, production or constitution. The body is not opposed to culture, a resistant throwback to a natural past; it is itself a cultural, the cultural product.
