OZYMANDIUS by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817) I. Useful Definitions 1. Romanticism Romanticism is a European artistic and intellectual movement spanning the first half of the 19 th Century. a) A reaction to the rational scientific Age of Enlightenment of the 18 th Century b) Emphasises the individual s capacity to feel and react to intense emotions such as terror and awe, beauty, personal liberty and the power of the imagination. (Frankenstein) c) Emphasises Nature as the great force which sublimates men in their efforts to pervert Natural Timeless Laws. Some artists equated Nature with God (JWM Turner) d) Interest in folk art, which was seen as expressions of the pure untouched individual of the natural world e) The artist has the duty of the messenger whose words and images are eternal and whose job it is to demonstrate the moral and spiritual truths of inherent in time and space. 2. Irony Irony is a literary device (written, spoken or dramatic) in which what appears on the surface differs from what is actually true. It is used for emphasis in proving a truth. They are intentional contradictory propositions. Irony can be very close to sarcasm. Examples: You look really good in that when in fact the speaker thinks the opposite. 1
II. Background During the 17 th Century there was an active movement towards explaining the world in terms of the rational and scientific. This was the Age of the Enlightenment and allowed people to explore the world without the restrictions of religious dogma. They made many voyages to foreign places, increased trade and tried to synthesise their European world with that of new civilisations, current and ancient. There was an increased interest in Egypt after excavations revealed the enormity of the tombs and temples buried under sand and eroded by time. Shelley is known to have felt that George III was an empire building despot and has reinforced that in his sonnet England in 1819. One evening in 1817 Shelley and his friend Horace Smith (a banker) were discussing recent discoveries. They remembered a Roman writer Diadorus Siculus who had decribed the huge statue of Rameses II found when Rome conquered Egypt and which was said to have an inscription on the base declaring that the Pharaoh was the King of Kings and unconquerable. Siculus had written that the statue was the largest in the known world. Now the eternal power of the Pharaoh was in ruins. Human power is feeble in the face of Nature and what is left is the word and the image the writer and the sculptor art and the imagination to understand it. III. Structure The poem is a sonnet written in Iambic Pentameter (five beats to a line in an unstressed/stressed musical pattern. tadah, tadah tadah) It is said that it is closest to the human experience because it mimics the human heartbeat. Sonnets have 14 lines and have a flexible rhyme pattern. One of the most common is the Petarchan rhyme scheme. Another is Shakesperian. Sonnets are divided into two sections; the first 8 lines (an octet) and the last 6 lines (sestet). They often have different rhyme schemes. The octet introduces a problem, desire, thought 2
or situation. Usually the first four lines summarise this and the second expands /explains/develops it. The sestet opens with a clear change in rhyme and tone. This line is called a VOLTA. The last five lines offer a solution or comment to the octet. Petrarchan sonnets rarely close with a rhyming couplet but Shakesperian sonnets do. The most common rhyme scheme in a a Petrarchan sonnet is Abbaabba Cdecde or cdcdcd IV. Alliteration The literary device which uses repetition of the first letter or sound of closely placed words to bring the reader s attention to an important idea. Examples: cold command or the hand that mocked them, the heart that fed. V. Poet and Reader s relationship By using the device of storytelling Shelley places the subject matter the statue, a long way from the reader. We have the distance of Time, traveller who comes from a distant place and who tells a story to the poet who is telling the reader, all of them communicating orally (using communicative art) an important message. Shelley deliberately tries to emphasise one of his main ideas that the great natural force of Time does not erode Natural moral Truths of Freedom and individual liberty. That tyranny is eroded by Time. Another poem which uses travelers telling a story to the poet who tells the reader is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797-8. Coleridge is another Romantic poet. 3
VI. Analysis 1. The Octet I met a traveler from an ancient land You are made to feel as if you are personally in contact/face to face with the poet in informal conversation. Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone This image reminds a Romantic reader of ruins of abbeys and monasteries and cathedrals which were built for eternity and which are now destroyed by Nature and Time. This line sets the main purpose and atmosphere of the poem. Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand The alliteration across the line break holds the continuity of the image and emphasizes the coldness and hardness of the ruin (stone) and its position; immobile and improbable. Trunkless legs cannot stand these do because they are unnatural. The full stop in the middle of the line emphasizes the way a traveller would approach the statue. The reader begins to be part of the experience and becomes the traveller. The first thing you would do is see the massive pillars and you would stop in surprise. Then the poem takes your gaze to the sand where you would see the face. Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown You start to focus and the frown is the first thing you see. It introduces you to the rest of the details of the head and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command All centre around the mouth as if you can t see any other part of the head, this being so apparent/so central to your attention. The choice of adjectives wrinkled, sneer and cold all emphasise the character and nominal power of the subject of the sculpture. Note that the 4
mouth is the source of words - a mechanism for communication. The statue was meant to communicate visually in stone the words written underneath tell that its sculptor well those passions read The sixth line introduces the sculptor; the relatively unknown craftsman who practices an art, and who has little power to tyrannise populations other than to send his message through Art. But for all his lowliness he is telling us down the thousands of years of his human reaction to this tyrant. He becomes more human than the stone face that he carved. This line is ironical. We know the truth behind the reading of the passions. The line tells us more than the literal words do. which yet survive, stamp t on theses lifeless things. The clear idea that the sneers etc., are there forever so we know forever what the sculptor/artist showed us. The words lifeless things dehumanizes the tyrant to become nothing but stone while the sculptor communicates a human reaction and individual emotion that only art can do down the centuries because Shelley then writes: the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed The hand belongs to the sculptor who COPIED (in this case) the tyrant s nature r(the them ) as he experienced it and his heart which gave it life. The last half of this line has been seen as ambiguous you may of course interpret it as you wish. Note how Shelley is bringing us into the focus of the pedestal of the statue and like an artist, holds us in a pose. 2. The Sestet Change of rhyme and on that pedestal these words appear Shelley directs our gaze to the words which are the central engine of the Romantic metaphor my name is Ozymandius, king of kings 5
The poet and you and the traveller are all making out the letters now, reading them together and understanding the tyrant s image he wanted to convey to the world throughout time. You might be bowing to read the words before this King of Kings you would have been terrified to have been this close in ancient reality. It is like a painting, still and grouped together. look on my works ye Mighty and despair is addressed to other rulers and tells of arrogance and conceit, power and oppression. The juxtaposition of the words Look (a command), ye Mighty sarcasm) and despair (another command) all thunder it. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay A complete contrast to the booming challenge of the last line. Shelley s use of the word nothing echoes silence. The reader/traveller/poet is stunned as the boom disappears into the silent distance. The contrast is a literary device to accent in this case the main message of the poem. The quick reference to decay reminds us of death and silence. The directional round contains the scene for just a while longer before we lit our eyes and look out. of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The reference to wreck repeats the sense of decay and suggests the abnormal image of a ship lying in a desert, dead for a long time leaving just the bare bones of it in the sand. This is emphasized by the alliterative boundless and bare. It is also suggestive of skeletal bones which are harmless after being subjected to Nature over Time the real bones of the human tyrant are lost and all we have left are inconsequential inhuman stones The lone and level sands stretch far away A single simple sentence as you lift your gaze to the sands (of Time) and hear the open vowel aaaa echo into space. Contrast that with the huge booming declaration written on the base. Ask yourself which message survives and will continue to survive. Note how Shelley has directed us like a piece of theatre or a painting into the scene and then down to the words before releasing us, having told us a moral story. We are left with thoughtful awe and much wiser thanks to art. 6
VII. Summary This poem, so relatively short, contains all the classic features of the Romantic period the artist as the only person who can communicate Universal Truths, one of which is that tyranny and oppression are no match for Nature and its interpreter, Art. Another feature is that Nature habitually destroys pride and the temporal power which is illusory and transient. Therefore Nature is by habit kind and fair. The humble man with naturally given talent leaves a deeper mark than the unnatural inhuman controller of men. The humble man has a louder voice in the end even if the voice is spoken quietly. Shelley s poem uses irony when the words on the pedestal are read the central image to which we have been directed throughout the poem. How ironic that they would one day no longer be more important than the wordless sculptor or slave who carved them. Ozymandius meant one thing, the truth was another. Humanity and humility outlasts temporal power and the bellowing of commands. The poem is a remarkable one for using simple structure, devices and control to tell the reader something important and universal while being right at the heart of Romantic thought and confident in his belief that art is the bringer of Beauty and Truth. 7
MCQ 1. Shelley wrote the poem in the year a) 1871 b) 1831 c) 1817 d) 1813 2. The form of the poem is a a) quatrain b) sonnet c) haiku d) free verse 3. It is divided into parts called a) A couplet and an octet b) a sestet and a quatrain c) an octet and two couplets d)an octet and a sestet 4. Ozymandius is set in ; a) Ancient Egypt b) Ancient Babylonia c) Syria d) the Sahara Desert 5. How many people are in the poem a) two b) three c) four d) five people. 6. Shelley s main idea in the poem is that nature s power is stronger than a) time b) geography c) human art d) human power 7. The role of the artist according to Shelley is to: a) interpret nature b) explain man s relationship with nature c) show how a respect for nature is the most enduring and correct way to live d) all of the above 8. Irony is ; a) showing a truth by presenting the opposite b) sarcasm c) a joke d) a riddle 9. Alliteration is ; a) a form of rhyme b) an exaggeration c) a full sentence d) words which Start with the same sound and are close together in a phrase for emphasis. 10. The picture below can be said to be Romantic because a) It is set in a remote place 8
b) It has a ruined building in it c) it shows man as small and powerless against nature d) it suggests clouds and rough waves Image; http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/ 9
Answers 1. C. Shelley wrote the poem in 1817. 2. B. The form of the poem is a sonnet of 14 lines divided 3. D. It is divided into 2 parts called the octet and the sestet. 4. A. Ozymandius is set in Ancient Egypt 5. D. There are 5 people in the poem, the poet, the traveler, the reader, Ozymandius and the sculptor. 6. D. The theme is human power is not as strong as the power of Nature. 7. D. All of the above.t he role of the artist is to communicate the moral timeless truths of Nature. 8. A. Irony is when what is written or said is not the real truth which is often the reverse. 9. D. Alliteration is the use of words beginning with the same sound to accent something important in the writing. 10. C. Man s relationship with nature is best enjoyed by pursuing simple activities and respecting the fact that nature can always dominate man s efforts at challenging her power and strength.. 10