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Ozymandias
by Percy Shelley
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.
Intention Slips to Chaos: Shelley’s Ozymandias
by beckina
In The Flexible Lyric, Ellen Bryant Voight describes how poetic form functions to "create and resolve tensions" through "levels and opposites" (p. 124). She proposes that poems should be analyzed according to their function rather than their substance.
In this definition, Ozymandias is a sonnet. Its mechanisms for creating and resolving tensions are the same. Although Ozymandias does not have the exoskeleton of sonnethood, it does maintain some common internal characteristics, and the potency of expression in the sonnet form. With only little exception, the lines fall into iambic pentameter. The poem’s fourteen lines are arranged in varying rhyme schemes, and the quotation mark for the pedestal inscription (line 10) serves as a differentiating volta.
Ozymandias begins with the narrator voice of "I" (line 1), which is soon replaced by that of the "traveler" (line 2). Subsequently, other people and entities hold the power of expression in the poem, namely, the "shattered visage" of the described statue (line 4), the "sculptor" (line 7), and finally, the "pedestal" (line 11). To a certain extent, the context of the "lone and level sands" (line 14) expresses its own meaning, but this is less explicit, and more ambiguously presented, than those expressions formerly named.
In this progression of expression, temporality is a meaningful undercurrent. As the memory of each entity is recalled, the reader is transported to an earlier occasion. This plunge into the past corresponds with images of increasing disorder. In his essay, A Philosophical View of Reform, Shelley says (p. 230): Let us believe not only that [revolutionary reform] is necessary because it is just and ought to be, but because it is inevitable and must be.
Shelley’s belief in the inevitable momentum towards a leveling equality is expressed effectively through the imagery of the poem. The "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" (line 2) and the "shattered visage" (line 4) are a "collosal wreck" (line 13), implying that they once composed an ordered, whole, non-wreck. The orderless and particulate image of the "lone and level sands" (line 14) concludes the poem with the implication of complete disorder. The form of the poem also creates this sense of inevitable entropy. The first eleven lines of the poem are one sentence. From line 12 through line 14, the poem is broken up into two more sentences and two non-corresponding line breaks. The rhyme scheme, too, takes the form of an initial unified block (ababa), which is followed by a more erratic and varied group of rhymes (cdcedefef). These could be split into groups in multiple ways. The division and unity between the rhyme scheme of these lines is ambiguous. These aspects create a fittingly disintegrated feeling at the end of the poem.
The concept of interpretation is also intertwined with the poem’s notion of temporality. Because the poem’s temporalities are arranged in receding episodes, the form creates an experience for the reader that is akin to peeling layers off an onion. At the center of the onion, one is left with only the simple end of the poem, " the lone and level sands" (line 14). However, because of the role interpretation plays in the poem, the simple end is not quite simple. Each layer of temporality is changed by every exterior layer. This dynamic is apparent on every temporal and narrative scale in the poem. In line 8, the sculptor’s handiwork has "mocked" the features of Ramses, who is "the heart (the statue) fed." The intention of Ramses in procuring the statue is not self-mockery. However, such is the interpretation of the sculptor, and this is portrayed through sculpture. This isn’t the extent of the complexity of the interpretation. The "mockery" (line 8) by the sculptor is the interpretation of the sculptor (line 6) through the statue (line 3), by the traveler (line 2). The traveler’s interpretation is in turn told by the "I" of the first line. The difference between an original reality and intention , and their subsequent metamorphosis through interpretation, occupied Shelley’s thoughts on more than one occasion. As he expressed in A Philosophical View of Reform (p. 230): Names borrowed from the life of Jesus Christ were employed as symbols of domination and imposture, and a system of liberty and equality was perverted to support oppression- not his doctrines, for they are too simple and direct to be susceptible to such perversion, but the mere names.
Shelley is explicitly addressing a similar issue within the poem, as is illustrated by his use of the Greek name "Ozymandias" as the poem’s title instead of the original Egyptian name "Ramses". By using the interpreted name, Shelley in effect proves the temporary nature of the power of intention. Ramses, as powerful as he was and as large a statue as he commissioned, can not escape having his life and works interpreted. He is unable to preserve his power through time.
In this manner, Ozymandias illustrates the fleeting nature of order, which is established through intention. Shelley does this with all means available to his art: the prosody, imagery, and form of his poem. He writes (lines 10-11):
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
In the context of the fallen power, the despair comes from an understanding of the inevitability of decay. Such a change in meaning is out of Ramses’ hands, illustrating the inevitability of the decay of intended meaning as well. Shelley has, in a sense, further crumbled Ramses’ power through this interpretation, and thus illustrated his argument with itself. The poem’s rush back in time and into disorder is a very pertinent comment on the universal dynamics of interpretation and disintegration of the mighty.
Bibliography
Shelley, Percy (Ed. David Clark). 1954. Shelley’s Prose: A Trumpet of a Prophecy. Alb. NM: UNM Press
Voight, Ellen Bryant. 1999. The Flexible Lyric. Athens, GA
Ed. Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy.1996.The Norton Anthology of Poetry. New York, NY: Norton & Co. Inc.
