Jump to content

Ozymandias

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.47.245.66 (talk) at 21:57, 4 October 2013 (→‎Cultural influence). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about Shelley's poem. For other uses, see Ozymandias (disambiguation).
Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[1]

"Ozymandias" (/ˌɒziˈmændiəs/,[2] also pronounced with four syllables /ˌɒziˈmændjəs/) to fit the poem's meter) is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem. It was written in competition with his friend Horace Smith, who wrote another sonnet titled "Ozymandias".

In addition to the power of its themes and imagery, Shelley's poem is notable for its virtuosic diction. The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is unusual and creates a sinuous and interwoven effect.[3]

Publication history

Both Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith submitted sonnets on the subject to The Examiner, published by Leigh Hunt in London. Shelley's was published on 11 January 1818 under the pen name Glirastes, and appeared on page 24 under Original Poetry. Smith's was published, with the initials H.S., on 1 February 1818. Shelley's poem was later republished under the title "Sonnet. Ozymandias" in his 1819 collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems by Charles and James Ollier and in the 1826 Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by William Benbow, both in London.[citation needed]

Smith's poem

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
      Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
      The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
    "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
      "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
    "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
      Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
    The site of this forgotten Babylon.

    We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
    Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
      Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
      What powerful but unrecorded race
      Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

– Horace Smith.[4]

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this poem in competition with his friend Horace Smith, who published his sonnet a month after Shelley's in the same magazine.[5] It takes the same subject, tells the same story, and makes a similar moral point, but one related more directly to modernity, ending by imagining a hunter of the future looking in wonder on the ruins of an annihilated London. It was originally published under the same title as Shelley's verse; but in later collections Smith retitled it "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below".[6]

Analysis

1817 draft by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bodleian Library
File:Pzymandiasfair.gif
Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1817 fair copy, Bodleian Library

The central theme of "Ozymandias" is contrasting the inevitable decline of all leaders and of the empires they build with the lasting power of art, the only thing that has any permanence.[7]

The Younger Memnon statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum. Its imminent arrival in London may have inspired the poem

"Ozymandias" represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica, as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."[8][9]

Shelley's poem is sometimes said[by whom?] to have been inspired by the arrival in London in 1821 of a colossal statue of Ramesses II, acquired for the British Museum by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in 1816. However, the poem was written and published before the statue arrived in Britain.[10] Nonetheless the statue's imminent arrival may have inspired the poem.[11] The statue's repute in Western Europe preceded its actual arrival in Britain, and Napoleon had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire it for France.

Among the earlier senses of the verb "to mock" is "to fashion an imitation of reality" (as in "a mock-up"),[12] but by Shelley's day the current sense "to ridicule" (especially by mimicking) had come to the fore.[citation needed]

Cultural influence

The poem has made numerous appearances in popular culture and has significantly influenced the production of new creative works. Edward Elgar began setting the poem to music but never finished it. The best-known setting appears to be that in Russian for baritone by the Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky.[citation needed] Short excerpts of the poem, or references to its title, have appeared in a variety of other contexts, including the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.[citation needed]

Writer Alan Moore named a superhero Ozymandias, in his 1986-87 comic book miniseries Watchmen and quoted the poem explicitly in the course of the story.[13]

Woody Allen's films Stardust Memories (1980) and To Rome with Love (2012) use the term "Ozymandias Melancholia", which Allen defines as "the realisation that your works of art will not save you and will mean nothing down the line".[14]

The fourteenth episode of the fifth and final season of the American television series Breaking Bad, titled "Ozymandias", features the main character, Walter White, his drug empire and fortune rapidly decaying, collapsing in grief on the sand in a parallel to the statue in Shelley's poem. The episode has often been cited as the series' greatest. In July 2013, Breaking Bad debuted a trailer that featured Bryan Cranston reciting the entire poem.[15]


References

  1. ^ Text of the poem from Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1819). Rosalind and Helen, a modern eclogue, with other poems. London: C. and J. Ollier. OCLC 1940490.
  2. ^ Wells, John C. (1990). Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harlow, England: Longman. p. 508. ISBN 0-582-05383-8. entry "Ozymandias"
  3. ^ "SparkNotes: Shelley's Poetry: "Ozymandias"". SparkNotes. Retrieved 26 February 2008.
  4. ^ "Ozymandias – Smith". Potw.org. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
  5. ^ The Examiner. Shelley's poem appeared on 11 January and Smith's on 1 February.Treasury of English Sonnets. Ed. from the Original Sources with Notes and Illustrations, David M. Main
  6. ^ Habing, B. "Ozymandias – Smith". PotW.org. Retrieved 23 September 2006. The iambic pentameter contains five 'feet' in a line. This gives the poem rhythm and pulse, and sometimes is the cause of rhyme.
  7. ^ Author. "MacEachen, Dougald B. ''CliffsNotes on Shelley's Poems''. 18 July 2011". Cliffsnotes.com. Retrieved 1 August 2013. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  8. ^ (Greek Text) Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, 1.47.4 at the Perseus Project
  9. ^ RPO Editors. "Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ozymandias". University of Toronto Department of English. University of Toronto Libraries, University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 18 September 2006. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  10. ^ Chaney, Edward (2006). "Travelers from an antique land". Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Revolution, Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines, (eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado). Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. pp.39–74
  11. ^ "Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon'". British Museum. Retrieved 10 January 2008.
  12. ^ OED: mock, v. "4...†b. To simulate, make a false pretence of. Obs. [citations for 1593 and 1606; both from Shakespeare]"
  13. ^ William Irwin, Mark D. White (2009). Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test. John Wiley & Sons. p. 70. ISBN 9780470730300.
  14. ^ Björkman, Stig (1995). "Diane Keaton Kristin Griffith and Mary Beth Hurt in Interiors". Woody Allen on Woody Allen. Grove Press. p. 103. ISBN 0802134254. Retrieved 3 September 2013. {{cite book}}: |first1= missing |last1= (help)
  15. ^ Lynch, Tess (July 30, 2013). "Afternoon Links: Look on This New Breaking Bad Trailer, Ye Methy, and Get AMPED". Grantland.

Further reading

  • Rodenbeck, John. “Travelers from an Antique Land: Shelley's Inspiration for ‘Ozymandias,’” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 24 (“Archeology of Literature: Tracing the Old in the New”), 2004, pp. 121–148.
  • Johnstone Parr. "Shelley's 'Ozymandias,'" Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. VI (1957).
  • Waith, Eugene M. "Ozymandias: Shelley, Horace Smith, and Denon." Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 44, (1995), pp. 22–28.
  • Richmond, H. M. "Ozymandias and the Travelers." Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 11, (Winter, 1962), pp. 65–71.
  • Bequette, M. K. "Shelley and Smith: Two Sonnets on Ozymandias." Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 26, (1977), pp. 29–31.
  • Freedman, William. "Postponement and Perspectives in Shelley's 'Ozymandias'." Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 63–73.
  • Edgecombe, R. S. "Displaced Christian Images in Shelley's 'Ozymandias'." Keats Shelley Review, 14 (2000), 95–99.
  • Sng, Zachary. "The Construction of Lyric Subjectivity in Shelley's 'Ozymandias'." Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 217–233.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ozymandias&oldid=575788307"