Smiths Ozymandias In Egypts 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 Citys 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.[9] Shelleys Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. 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.[4] Ozymandias From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. For other uses, see Ozymandias (disambiguation). A fair copy draft (c. 1817) of Shelleys Ozymandias in the collection of Oxfords Bodleian Library Ozymandias (in five syllables /ˌɒziˈmændiəs/ or four syllables /ˌɒziˈmændjəs/)[1] is a sonnet written by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). First published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The Examiner[2] in London, it was included the following year in Shelleys collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems (1819)[3] and after his death in a posthumous compilation of his poems published in 1826.[4] Ozymandias is regarded as one of Shelleys most famous works and is frequently anthologised. In antiquity, Ozymandias was an alternative name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museums acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth-century BCE, and some scholars consider that Shelley was inspired by this. The 7.25-ton fragment of the statues head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823). It was expected to arrive in London in 1818, but did not arrive until 1821.[5][6] Shelley wrote the poem in friendly competition with his friend and fellow poet Horace Smith (1779–1849) who also wrote a sonnet on the topic. Smiths poem would be first published in The Examiner a few weeks after Shelleys sonnet. Both poems explore the fate of history and the ravages of time—that all prominent men and the empires they build are impermanent and their legacies fated to decay and oblivion. Shelley and Smith both contrast this fate to the lasting power of art. Contents [hide] 1 Writing and publication history 1.1 Publication history 1.2 Smiths poem 1.3 Comparison of the two poems 2 Analysis and interpretation 2.1 Scansion 2.2 Themes 3 Cultural influence 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links Writing and publication history[edit] The Younger Memnon statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum. Its imminent arrival in London may have inspired the poem Publication history[edit] The Banker and political writer Horace Smith spent the Christmas season of 1817-1818 with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley. At this time members of Shelleys literary circle would sometimes challenge each other to write competing sonnets on a common subject - Shelley, John Keats and Leigh Hunt wrote competing sonnets on the Nile around the same time. Shelley and Smith chose a passage from the Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus, which described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted its inscription: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” In the poem Diodorus becomes a traveller from an antique land. The two poems were later published in Leigh Hunts The Examiner,[2] published by Leighs brother John Hunt in London. (Hunt was already planning to publish a long excerpt from Shelleys new epic The Revolt of Islam later the same month.) Shelleys was published on 11 January 1818 under the pen name Glirastes. It appeared on page 24 in the yearly collection, under Original Poetry. Smiths was published, along by a note signed with the initials H.S., on 1 February 1818. Shelleys 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[3] and in the 1826 Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by William Benbow, both in London.[4] Smiths poem[edit] Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this poem in competition with his friend Horace Smith, who published his sonnet a month after Shelleys in the same magazine.[7] 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 Shelleys 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.[8] Analysis and interpretation[edit] 1817 draft by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bodleian Library Scansion[edit] Ozymandias is a sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, but with an atypical rhyme scheme when compared to other English-language sonnets, and without the characteristic octave-and-sestet structure. Themes[edit] The central theme of Ozymandias is contrasting the inevitable decline of all leaders and of the empires they build with their pretensions to greatness.[10] 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.[11][12][13] Shelleys poem may 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. The poem was written and published before the statue arrived in Britain,[6] but the reports of the statues imminent arrival may have inspired the poem.[14] The statues repute in Western Europe preceded its actual arrival in Britain, and Napoleon had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire it for France. The verb, to mock, used in the poem to describe the actions of the sculptor, had two senses. The older sense, to fashion an imitation of reality (as in a mock-up),[15] existed for several centuries before the poem was written. By Shelleys day the second sense, to ridicule (especially by mimicking) had come to the fore.[citation needed] Cultural influence[edit] The poem has influenced the production of numerous creative works across a range of artistic disciplines. Crime novelist Robert B. Parker opens his 1981 Spenser novel Early Autumn with a full quote of the poem. The writer Alan Moore named a superhero Ozymandias, in his 1986-87 comic book miniseries Watchmen and recited the poem in the course of the story.[16] The third-to-last episode of the American television series Breaking Bad, titled Ozymandias, was directly influenced by the poems content, and draws on the poems theme of greatness and collapse. The entire poem is also recited by lead actor Bryan Cranston in a trailer for the shows final eight episodes.[17][18] In the fifth season episode of the TV series Mad Men entitled Dark Shadows, copywriter Michael Ginsberg quotes the line Look on my works ye mighty, and despair.[citation needed] Woody Allens 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.[19] Musical works which reference the poem include a setting in Russian for baritone by the Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky.[20] References[edit] Jump up ^ Wells, John C. (1990). s.v. Ozymandias. Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harrow: Longman. p. 508. ISBN 0-582-05383-8. The four-syllable pronunciation is used by Shelley to fit the poems meter. ^ Jump up to: a b Glirastes (1818), Original Poetry. Ozymandias, The Examiner, A Sunday Paper, on politics, domestic economy and theatricals for the year 1818 (London: John Hunt): 24 ^ Jump up to: a b Reprinted in Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1876). Rosalind and Helen - Edited, with notes by H. Buxton Forman, and printed for private distribution.. London: Hollinger. p. 72. ^ Jump up to: a b c Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias in Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: W. Benbow, 1826), 100. Jump up ^ British Museum. Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the Younger Memnon. Retrieved 2 November 2013. ^ Jump up to: a b Chaney, Edward (2006). Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Revolution. In Ascari, Maurizio; Corrado, Adriana. Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. pp. 39–74. ISBN 9042020156. Jump up ^ The Examiner. Shelleys poem appeared on 11 January and Smiths on 1 February.Treasury of English Sonnets. Ed. from the Original Sources with Notes and Illustrations, David M. Main Jump up ^ 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. Jump up ^ Horace Smith. Ozymandias (Smith) at potw.org. 1 August 2013 Jump up ^ Author. MacEachen, Dougald B. CliffsNotes on Shelleys Poems. 18 July 2011. Cliffsnotes. Retrieved 1 August 2013.[dead link] Jump up ^ See footnote 10 at the following source, for reference to the Loeb Classical Library translation of this inscription, by C.H. Oldfather: rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/ozymandias, accessed 12 April 2014. Jump up ^ See section/verse 1.47.4 at the following presentation of the 1933 version of the Loeb Classics translation, which also matches the translation appearing here: penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1C*.html, accessed 12 April 2014. Jump up ^ For the original Greek, see: Diodorus Siculus. 1.47.4. Bibliotheca Historica (in Greek) 1–2. Immanel Bekker. Ludwig Dindorf. Friedrich Vogel. In aedibus B. G. Teubneri. At the Perseus Project. Jump up ^ Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the Younger Memnon. British Museum. Retrieved 10 January 2008. Jump up ^ OED: mock, v. 4...†b. To simulate, make a false pretence of. Obs. [citations for 1593 and 1606; both from Shakespeare] Jump up ^ William Irwin, Mark D. White (2009). Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test. John Wiley & Sons. p. 70. ISBN 9780470730300. Jump up ^ Breaking Bad Review: Ozymandias. Jump up ^ Moaba, Alex (July 30, 2013). Breaking Bad Ozymandias Teaser Sounds Ominous. The Huffington Post. Retrieved September 16, 2013. Jump up ^ Diane Keaton Kristin Griffith and Mary Beth Hurt in Interiors. Woody Allen on Woody Allen. Grove Press. 1995. p. 103. ISBN 0802134254. Retrieved 3 September 2013. Jump up ^ Allmusic. Borys Lyatoshynsky, Ozymandias and Other Romances For Low Voice and Piano. Further reading[edit] Rodenbeck, John. “Travelers from an Antique Land: Shelleys 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. Shelleys 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 Shelleys Ozymandias. Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 63–73. Edgecombe, R. S. Displaced Christian Images in Shelleys Ozymandias. Keats Shelley Review, 14 (2000), 95–99. Sng, Zachary. The Construction of Lyric Subjectivity in Shelleys Ozymandias. Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 217–233.
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