Ozymandias

This article is about Shelley's poem. For other uses, see Ozymandias (disambiguation). "Ozymandias" (o-zee-MAN-dee-as) (IPA: or ) is a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem.

It deals with a number of great themes, such as the arrogance and transience of power, the permanence of real art and emotional truth, and the relationship between artist and subject. It explores these themes with some striking imagery, amplified by a setting–Egypt and the Sahara desert–that was exotic for European audiences in the early 19th century. The poem's sense of distance is further enhanced by its second-hand narration; the commentator is relating to us the words of an unnamed "traveller from an antique land".

Shelley's poem

"Ozymandias" was written in December 1817 during a writing contest, and first published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner of January 11, 1818. It was republished in Shelley's Rosalind and Helen volume of 1819, and in the "Advertisement" prefacing the volume, Shelley describes it as one of "a few scattered poems I left in England" which were used to pad out the book. Shelley also points out that the poem was selected for the book by his "bookseller" (publisher) and not by himself. Some consider these nonchalant statements as indicating that Shelley was not particularly proud of this piece. Others disagree, considering the consistency of the ideas with Shelley's hatred of tyranny and the impact of the poem.

Despite its enduring popularity, many Shelley scholars have seen it as a piece of trivia, and few studies of Shelley's career make much of it. Harold Bloom's Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), the major Shelley study of the 20th century and the book that restored the importance of Shelley's reputation, does not mention it at all.

Fallen colossus of Ramesses II, Ramesseum, Luxor

The name Ozymandias (or Osymandias) is generally believed to refer to Ramesses the Great (i.e., Ramesses II), Pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses's throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue,given by Diodorus Siculus 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."Reprensentative Poetry Online–Percy Bysshe Shelley. (URL accessed 23 April 2006).

In line 7, the word "survive" is a transitive verb, with "hand" and "heart" as its direct objects. Thus, the lines mean that those passions (arrogance and sneer) have survived (outlived) both the sculptor (whose hand mocked those passions by stamping them so well on the statue) and the pharaoh (whose heart fed those passions in the first place).

The verb "mock'd" originally meant "to create/fashion an imitation of reality" (as in "a mockup") before meaning "to ridicule" (especially by mimicking). In Shelley's day, the latter meaning was predominant (as seen in the works of William Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible), but in the specific context of "the hand that mock'd them", we can read both "the hand that crafted them" and "the hand that ridiculed them".

The impact of the sonnet's message comes from its double irony. The tyrant declares, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Yet nothing remains of Ozymandias' works but the shattered fragments of his statue. So "the mighty" should despair — not, as Ozymandias intended, because they can never hope to equal his achievements, but because they will share his fate of inevitable oblivion in the sands of time. A second irony lies in the "survival" of the tyrant's character in the fragments being due not to his own powers but to those of the artist.

This poem is often incorrectly quoted or reproduced. The most common misquote — "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!" — replaces the correct "on" with "upon", thus turning the regular decasyllabic (iambic pentameter) verse into an 11-syllable verse.

Smith's poem

Shelley apparently wrote this sonnet in competition with his friend Horace Smith, as Smith published a sonnet a month after Shelley's, in the same magazine, which takes the same subject, tells the same story, and makes the same moral point. It was originally published under the same title as Shelley's verse; in later collections, however, Smith retitled it "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below".Poets' Corner–Ozymandias. (URL accessed 23 April 2006).

In contrast to Shelley's subtlety, Smith dedicates the entire last six lines of his verse to getting his point across and the end result gives an impression of heavy-handedness. Shelley's poem refrains from stating a specific moral as such, and instead presents a vivid tableau, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions and ponder upon the themes. The moral pathos against tyranny is so strong, however, that few readers are likely to conclude that poor Ozymandias got a raw deal from time and the elements. Nor does it address an audience of a specific time or place: until the English language falls into disuse or changes enough for the poems to be unintelligible, the audience is whoever is reading the poem and not just a Londoner. The image of a destroyed London will have no more or less effect on someone not from London than Ozymandias's statue. Also, by not wasting words on didactically pointing a "moral", as Smith does, Shelley is able to compress a comprehensive vision into a few lines, and encompass in his poem ideas entirely absent from Smith's poem.

In pop culture

Shelley's poem and the character of Ozymandias are frequently referenced in popular culture.

Literature

*Ozymandias is the name of a vagrant in the books and the TV show based on the books The Tripods. In the first book, The White Mountains, Ozymandias says, "I am the king of this land. My wife was the queen of a rainy country, but I left her weeping. My name is Ozymandias. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." Will, who Ozymandias is talking to, remembers reading the name Ozymandias in a poem.
*The poem was referenced and printed in full in the first book of the Children of the Lamp series.
*In the Deathstalker series, Owen Deathstalker has an AI named Ozymandias that turns on Owen but is "killed". He is resurrected several times throughout the series for different purposes.
*In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, the narrator writes: "I am Ozymandias, king of kings," near the end of Chapter 28.
*The sonnet is referenced in George R.R. Martin's early novel, "Fevre Dream".
*Robert Silverberg short story based on the class poem.
*Ozymandias appears in Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series. He plays a prominent role in the sixth book, For Love of Evil, helping the protagonist, Parry, ascend as Satan to the office of Evil. The famous couplet "My name is...and despair!" is quoted, and the end of the poem is paraphrased.
*Jasper Fforde's book The Eyre Affair features a character by the name of Detective Inspector Oswald Mandias, CID, a pompous Yorkshireman who is easily impressed by fellow members of the Most Worshipful Brotherhood of the Wombat.
*Ozymandias is the name of the circus elephant in G.P. Taylor's fantasy novel Tersias.

Music

*Shelley's poem was referenced in the Sisters of Mercy song "Dominion/Mother Russia", on the album Floodland.http://www.mixi.net/Sisters.Of.Mercy/Discography/Complete.Lyrics.html#Dominion_Mother_Russia (URL accessed April 24, 2006)
*Ozymandias is mentioned in The Stranglers' song "Ugly", from their 1977 album Rattus Norvegicus. Stranglers bassist Jean Jacques Burnel, who wrote the lyrics for "Ugly", later used the words of "Ozymandias" (without credit to Shelley) as the lyric to the B side of his 7" single "Freddie Laker (Concorde and Eurobus)".
*The fourth album of the German medieval techno group Qntal is titled Ozymandias, and the title track whispers the phrase "My name is Ozymandias" several times.
*"My Name Is Ozymandias" appears as a song title by Gatsbys American Dream on their 2006 self-titled, full-length album.

Comics

*The poem provided the source for the title of Issue #11 of Alan Moore's comic book limited series Watchmen, "Look on My Works, Ye Mighty." and One of the primary characters in the series takes Ozymandias as his superhero identity, and the issue ends with a quote from the poem.
*In Marvel Comics, Ozymandias is a servant of the supervillain Apocalypse in the X-Men franchise. He first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #332.
*"Ozymandias J. Llewellyn" is the name of one of the title characters from the webcomic Ozy and Millie.
*In the first strip of the webcomic Errant Story, the poem is quoted in full. Phrases from the poem are used as the titles of subsequent chapters.
*Cartoonist Dorothy Gambrell refers to Ozymandias in a strip entitled "Memory Lanes", part of her webcomic Cat and Girl. A trophy with part of the poem engraved on it was also made available through her site.
*Ozymandias is the name of one of the title characters in D.C. Simpson's Ozy and Millie. A lyric of the poem is referenced on March 7, 2001.

Games

*An excerpt from the poem is included in the computer game Civilization IV.
*Ozymandias appears in an easter egg in Perfect Dark, a console game. Cassandra DeVries' necklace has the code "18M0ZYM8ND185". This, upon inspection, spells out "IAMOZYMANDIAS", and likely refers to DeVries' power complex.
*In the computer game Escape from Monkey Island, one of the villains proclaims: "I am Ozzie Mandrill, King of the Caribbean! Look on my works, ye mighty pirates, and despair!"
*The Machinima group Strange Company produced a version of the poem using Machinima technology in 1999, which was praised by film critic Roger Ebert.
*An excerpt from the poem was included in the Apple II computer game "Ultima II" in approximately 1980.

The Poem and archaeology

The "wrinkled lip and sneer" are not actually found on any extant sculptures of Ramses II or any other Pharaoh. Pharaonic faces always have a Buddha-like serenity in Egyptian art.

See also

*Egypt in the European imagination
*Sonnet

Further reading

*Reiman, Donald H. and Sharon B. Powers. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Norton, 1977. ISBN 0-393-09164-3.
*Shelley, Percy Bysshe and Theo Gayer-Anderson (illust.) Ozymandias. Hoopoe Books, 1999. ISBN 977-5325-82-X

Notes

External links

* Representative Poetry Online: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Ozyman (text of poem with notes)
* World Treasures (National Library of Australia) (autograph fair copy of the text from one of Shelley's notebooks; shows slight variants against modern editions)
* Horace Smith's poem of the same name, and of the same themes
* Ramesses the Great (general information about Ramesses)

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