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Ozymandias Analysis · Acedra
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The poem Azymandius by the romantic poet Percy Bish Shelley is probably one of the most famous sonnetss in the English language at the moment. It made appearances in TV shows like Succession, Breaking Bad, and Watchmen. And it's one of the most taught sonnets in high school, at least in America, and it recently appeared in a controversial tweet where it was categorized under literature that is labeled as Reddit. And as a poetry instructor,
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this is really interesting to me because this is a poem about reading, specifically the act of meaning making out of bare facts. And that's what the poem asks us to do. It's so subtle, this poem, and it shows what an excellent artist Shelley himself was. So, there's also a great surprise in its popularity uh as a sonnet, because it's probably the least representative of that form. It's the least sonnet-like of sonnets, but we'll talk about that soon. But first, let's talk
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about why this is such a great poem and what it means and why Shelley wrote it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Shelly, he is one of the great poets of the English romantic movement. He was born into privilege. Uh yet he was estranged from much of that privilege by choice. He defied convention in nearly every aspect of his life. He was expelled from Oxford for uh publishing the necessity of atheism. He was disinherited by his family. Uh eventually self-exiled to Italy
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to escape creditors and sensors. So you might know him from his beautiful works of literature uh his his his poem Prometheus Unbound, The Mask of Anarchy, the beautiful ode to the west wind and my personal favorite of his his wonderful poem Alastor. Shel son at Ozamandius was published in Hunt's examiner uh just as 1818 was beginning and it was published under the name Glasses. So here
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you see uh the signature here. He didn't publish it under his own name. This is a madeup name that basically means the lover of door mice. Uh it's a port manto of the Latin word giraid uh which is the door mouse family and it's combined with the Greek word irises meaning the lover of so literally the lover of a door mouse. This is a bit of an inside joke uh because his wife Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein uh was affectionately called by
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Shel the door mouse. Uh so and the date here is critical because the sonnet is in part a critical response to the political moment. So 1818 is important the fact that he's publishing it right at the beginning of 1818. But reading it you'll see that it is a very disturbing and unsettling poem. Let me read it aloud here. So this is the way it looked in the examiner. I'm just going to move over to one that's a little easier to read. I met a traveler from an antique land who said,
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"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 welers passions red, 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 Ozamandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
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Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. Just a fantastic poem. You can see how it became so popular and why it still is read today. It's a poem that among other things mocks political greatness. Um, this is one of the most enduring statements uh in literature about how art outlives the tyranny of kings. And it claims that artistic greatness is greater than political greatness. Uh but why
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is this poem a sonnet? If if you've read sonnetss before, you probably remember that they are love poems predominantly. They emerged out of the Renaissance and came over to England from Sir Thomas Wyatt under the reign of King Henry VIII. And then they had such a flowering during the reign of Queen Elizabeth because these sonnetss were written to uh ladies in in high estate. So Queen Elizabeth became a a muse for many of these writers as did many other ladies at the time. Sir
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Philip Sydney wrote his famous Astrofll and Stella sonnetss. You have Michael Drayton with his sonnet sequence and Shakespeare's famous sonnetss were all written during this time and they were predominantly love poems. So from Petrarch to Shakespeare they were mostly love poems although Shakespeare will complicate that and then when Milton arrives on the scene his sonnetss transform the sonnet mode into uh meditations. Charlotte Smith at the end of the 18th century
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turned them into little eleies in a way meditative eleies and Wsworth would transform and the sonnet into moments of reflection. So it starts to move away from from passion from love, romantic love from aeros into a more meditative mode. But the time Shelley gets his hands on it, he transforms it into a mode of prophecy, a mode of political critique, which is something that's relatively
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new, had been done before, but not to this extent. Shelley is really doing something brand new and exciting here. A sonnet, for those of you who don't know, is a small poem of 14 lines. Usually you can identify it on a page just by its shape. There it is like a block um little bit of a rectangle um whose a length is whose height is bigger than its width. Um 14 lines. You can divide a sonnet into its octet eight lines and its cest. Here's the cestet of the final six lines. This is
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the usual structure of the sonnet. And usually there's a turn right about here called the volulta. And you notice that the turn that happens in this sonnet, by the way, is the turn from the ruins of the statue to the inscription. So there's this movement from the eye, from the ruins to what is written and then what's around it. So that's called the volulta. Again, Shelley does something
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strange here. And then to get a little bit closer on the structure here, you'll notice that each line has 10 syllables, five of which are stressed, usually in the alternating pattern of unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed. I I met a traveler from an antique land. Roughly, it's amic pentameter. And that's the the meter there. I am means that it's a metrical foot here. unstressed stressed and there are five of those and that's where you get the pentameter. That's
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the overall structure of a sonnet. But let's see what he does with it here. You'll notice that it's it's nestled. This is such a disturbing poem uh because it's so carefully crafted in a way and it simply tells a story without preaching a moral and that's the magic of it because the moral is definitely there but he's just laying out the facts. I met a traveler from an antique land who
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said, so it's it's a bit nestled here. So it's the speaker of the poem is relaying a report spoken by somebody else, a traveler. The moral again is just incredibly clear. Imperial pretention and the boast of kings live on only amidst the irony of its ruins. Uh there's something here about the antique land that was very interesting to English people in the early 19th century. uh there was a fascination with Egypt, European travelers. It wasn't just with English folk. Uh
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European travelers were fascinated by Egypt. So in fact in 1817 uh the year before this was published news was circulating in Britain about the transport of the colossal statue of Rammesus II to the British Museum where Rammesus II is known for Egypt's greatest king, one of the greatest pharaohs. Uh so for Shel this was one of the occasions of the sonnet. He has this in his mind. Um and it's a reflection upon how empires fall into sand and obscurity. And here's the
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traveler's report beginning here 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 again you're met with something pretty ridiculous. the image of trunkless legs of stone, which is it's kind of funny. There's
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an absurdity to this in the description, which is in part working toward the great romantic irony of this poem. It's the irony of the claims of power made ridiculous by the ravages of time and nature. And what is it near them on the sand, half sunk? Notice how he's uh increasing the suspense here by not revealing what's described until on the sand half sunk a shattered visage. And a visage is a
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face um a countenance lies. And there's a bit of a double meaning here. This lies because it's it's lying in the sand. Yes. But there's also a bit of a deception here. The head of stone is beside the legs. Uh, and it's this visage whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command uh, is lying there beside the trunkless legs. Another ridiculous image, another brilliant bit of irony here. Um, as what once gazed upon subjects below with a sneer now stares blindly into
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the level sands surrounding. But notice we get this this emergence of this new figure here. The sculptor here, the tyrant's essence or the tyrants representation really survives in art instead of power and empire. The sculptor of the artist is actually he becomes the true preserver of Azimandius and a preserver of the eventual fall from power. It's really the art itself in its ruins be bear the testament of not his greatness but of his eventual fall. His sneer survives in
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the wrinkled lip. That's what's left. And the irony is sharp that art triumphs over power but it preserves um also the ugliness of of power or rather power abused the ugliness of of domination. This bit here about mocked is interesting. So the sculptor well those passions read. So the sculptor is reading too. Notice how we're reading the sonnet. The the the the speaker of the sonnet is relating it to us. The traveler who's telling the speaker of the sonnet is telling us what he
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saw. But the sculptor is also reading in the past because he had to read the figure of Ozamandius in order to represent it into the the document. So you see how there are nestled layers of meaning here which is distancing. I think the the poet from the poem in an interesting way. So here you have the sculptor who's also reading passions. He wet he read them well. We hear because they survive. And it's his hand, the sculptor's hand that mocked them. Mocked the features of the face
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of Osamandius and the heart that fed. Now mocked has a double meaning here. The word is ambiguous because it could it could just mean that he imitated in the way that Plato talks of misuses. It's this uh representation representation of something. And so the the sculpture is literally imitating the the great uh Osamandas. But of course there's also that meaning of of mocked as to deride. So in a way the sculptor is deriding in his representation of that sneer. Either way,
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the passions of command and the art that records them endure, though both are lifeless, these lifeless things. He has to add this because you might say, well, all things are lifeless, inanimate objects if you're talking about things. But for Shelly, not so. He actually had a very um almost pantheistic view of nature. You can call it pantheus for shorthand, but it's a little bit a little bit more complicated than that. So he has to say these are lifeless things because
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for Shelley some things even inanimate things do participate in a life that's a separate uh lecture perhaps but Shelley the poet may have in mind in Ozimandius here his own England after the victory of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 um Britain endured uh severe economic depression it was not a great time for England there was high unemployment rates The price of food was rising
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partly due to the corn laws of 1815. And there's also a widespread distress among laborers. Britain from 1817 to 1819, perhaps even longer than that. These were not good years for England. Um, this was not really a land of liberty either, as it boasted abroad, but it was instead very much a state of hunger, of censorship, of spies and suspicion. and also of oppression. Britain was practicing tyranny. Shelley sonnet written as news from an ancient empire's collapse circulated
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in London and it implicitly rebuked his own government and he knew that he was having this this this attack. He was attacking deliberately here. His message is clear that even the proudest regimes built on oppression will eventually dissolve into ruins. Now, what else was going on around this time when the sonnet was published? Some citizens in Britain were starving and hunger exacerbated uh the unrest. The rich elite answered the people's demand for justice and reform with
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repression. And for example, when the Manchester Weavers revolted or actually it was it was just a gathering um a protest, there wasn't any violence. It was actually a peaceful protest march in London to petition for relief. Uh the authorities broke it up with force and they made laws against public gatherings of over 50 people. You couldn't gather publicly with more than that and they made it a an
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act of treason to speak against the government and free speech was further oppressed as citizens were put on trial for simply writing pamphlets. And this would all lead up to the Peterloo massacre in 1819 where British soldiers charged on a crowd of peaceful protesters and killed several people. Uh so that hasn't happened yet. In 1818 the the Peterloo massacre would happen in 1819. But you can see the tensions are rising. Shelley has this in mind when writing about Ozimandius.
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Shelley himself was a bit of a radical. He had a complicated relationship with political tyranny. Shelley was a committed uh radical who opposed the monarchy or rather the oppressions of of monarchy, tyranny in all of its forms and he aligned himself with the ideals of liberty uh a form of republicanism at the time. The sonnet dramatizes the impetence of desperatism when measured against the sweep of time. The sneer of cold command preserved in stone is the sculptor's record
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of oppression, not of its glory. You notice that what's recorded here is not the happiness of its citizens, but just the nastiness of the tyrant and this sneer of cold command uh preserved in stone as the sculptor's record of oppression. And you can really tell how unapproving the sonnet is of tyranny just in this description alone. Again, he's not preaching. He doesn't actually critique. He's just giving the facts. I think that's what's so interesting and complex about the sonnet
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and the way it works. By the way, by the time this was published in The Examiner um in 1818, Shelley was already in in Italy. He was estranged from his homeland both socially and politically. Uh so although we should seldom connect the eye of the poem to the poet and we should instead read it as a voice or a persona, the poem is deeply connected with Shel's own political beliefs. Doesn't mean that he actually met a traveler. But that's often how lyric poetry works. The eye is
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not really the confessional poet. It's just a voice, a person. Now here we come to the turn. So we've been reading the lifeless things, the ruins. Now we're going to read the inscription. And notice that turn here with the volta. And on the pedestal these words appear. My name is Azymandas, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains. Uh so we're turning to the visual inscription here. Notice, I mean, here's the despair here.
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uh the desert is really rewriting the inscription through irony. I mean you can have these words. This is what's interesting about reading and the forms of meaning making that we practice every single day in a beautiful country where people are flourishing. If you were to read this statement on the monument would have been very different. But to read it within the context of the ruins, the
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nasty sneer and everything else, this statement looks very different. And notice how this bare statement, this just very laconic sentence, this tur statement almost an understatement and the liotes, nothing besides remains put up right close to this really contextualizes that statement with irony. The decay of that colossal wreck. Oh, what a what a description, too. The decay of that colossal wreck. Beautiful rhythm. What a phrase. Boundless and bare, the lone and
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level sands stretch far away. A beautiful cadence is achieved here at the end of the utterance, at the end of the sonnet. Uh the the cadence in a way empties the king's claim to into silence or the pharaoh's claim into silence. Ozimantius I should say because nowhere in the poem does it say he was a pharaoh. Notice Shel's diction. Boundless bare the lone and level sands allow the sounds to recede away and far away are the last words we hear before the poem falls into silence. And
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silence is a part of every poem. The silence at the beginning, the silence as the sound dies away, the utterance and the pauses by the punctuation all are a part of the poem. So in a way the poem itself becomes the true monument here. The inscription becomes ironical and concise. Note again the poet is not preaching here. He's merely describing what is seen and allowing the facts to appear allowing the situation to arise as it is. And I think that is one of the great subtleties
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of this song and of Shel's poetry largely. the ability to communicate a meaning without directly saying it. This is really the the art of all good poetry. But if you were to distill this poem into a message, um it might be something like the power of the tyrant is fleeting or even more concise, art and nature mock the proud. Regardless, these pro statements, if you're just to say that it they
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may communicate a similar meaning to the poem, but they do not communicate the effect of the meaning. And that's how poetry has a special role to play uh in the human story. It brings the full effect of meaning into the experience of reading, which is just something very different from a blank pros statement. So, I hope you enjoyed this poem and came away with a little bit better of an appreciation as to why this poem, I think, is so popular. Thanks for watching and until next time.
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