Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context : Shelley the Eternal Traveler

Eternal Traveler

The sonnet Ozymandias was written by a poet by the name of Percy Shelley (1792 -1822). The poem was published in a newspaper called The Examiner in 1818 when Shelley was only twenty-six.[1] Shelley lived a very brief life, but he has and interesting story. Percy was the “eldest son” and first in line to “inherit not only his grandfather’s considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament”.[2] He attended Eton College for six years starting in 1804 where he learned the love for the written word.2 He was first published in 1810. Shelley then began his education at Oxford, but his stay there is short and he is expelled for writing and distributing a pamphlet titled “The Necessity of Athiesm”.2 This pamphlet caused a “complete break between Shelley and his father” and he was cut off from the family fortune.2 This did not stop Shelley and within two years he was back on his feet.2 He married the author of “Frankenstein”, hobknobed with Lord Byron, and wrote numerous popular reads. Shelley mentions an “ancient traveler” in his sonnet Ozymandias, but when Shelley himself, attempted to “sail from Leghorn to La Spezia, Italy”, he was caught in a storm, his schooner, the Don Juan sank, and Percy Shelley drowned. Ozymandias is one of his more visible works read to this day. There are many observances to be made on the structure, the history, and the message this poem holds. The poem Ozymandias, has travelled through time, been read by countless minds, and interpreted, inspired, and looked upon as a repeating prophecy in this endless expanding and contracting world in which we exist.

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

10 (1) I met a traveler from an antique land
10 (2) Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
10 (3) Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
10 (4) Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
10 (5)   And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
10 (6)   Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
10 (7)   Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
10 (8)   The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
10 (9)   And on the pedestal these words appear:
10 (10) `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
10 (11) Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
10 (12) Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
10 (13) Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
10 (14) The lone and level sands stretch far away".

This may be one of the faces of a “traveler from an antique land”.[3] His name is Diodorus Siculus and he was a historian from Greece that was thought to have lived within one hundred years before Jesus Christ. Siculus wrote for over thirty years a history of the world encyclopedia called the Bibliotheca Historica.[4] It is presumed that Percy Shelley had read Siculus’s work and it perhaps inspired him to use the name Ozymandias.4The poem Ozymandias contains fourteen lines, but what is really interesting is that Shelley was able to keep ten syllables in each line. This fourteen line iambic pentameter poem is called a sonnet and was a popular practice in Shelley’s time. [5] The number of syllables per line in a poem is known as syllabic verse.5 Syllable count became a useful tool for English speaking poets because English can become very “awkward” due to its “heavily stressed” form. By using syllabic count patterns, “the masters could count the syllables” to “produce admirable cadences”.5The poem uses a limited amount of rhyme like a light seasoning on a delicious meal.

The tone throughout Ozymandias is cold and straight forward, as though the traveler was the voice of justice pronouncing a sentence, carried out by the scolding hand of God. The head of the sculpture of Ozymandias is broken off from the body and rest “half sunk” into the sand:

“Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”

This image of the head of Ozymandias barely sticking up out of the sand evokes a scene from Dante’s Inferno from the “lowest region of Hell”[6]. This place in Hell is called “Antenora, the second ring” from the “Ninth Circle of Hell”.6 This is where “those who betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to their heads” in a solid lake of ice for eternity. Antenora is where “Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life”. 6 Ozymandias’s eyes are forever wide open and fixated on those that stand before him to read the arrogant inscription at the base of his statue that reads:

“`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'”

This is Ozymandias’s Hell. His head unable to move, his eyes unable to shut, and his words lay before him, to be read by unknown travelers for eternity. It’s almost as though his own arrogant words and ego is forever to “gnaw” on his head.

A poetic technique that seems to encapsulate Ozymandias’s full meaning is Shelley’s use of irony. The sonnet Ozymandias is fairly straightforward with its story line. It is the story of a traveler that comes across a land where a great civilization once stood. With this great civilization, comes a powerful ruler who is blind to the possibility of his kingdom’s demise. The arrogant inscription at the base of Ozymadias statue fully illustrates the use of tragic irony.

The use of imagery by Shelley is incredible. Shelley is able to clearly open the reader’s mind to a place where all senses come to life, as if entranced by a vivid dream. When reading the sonnet, one can imagine the wasteland where the traveler has been. Shelley is able to do this without a long detailed description. From Shelley’s masterful use of brief description, one can imagine this wasteland of sand swirling through the air, the hot sun relentlessly pounding down upon one’s head, unable to quench the persistent thirst weakening all the internal mechanisms that enable one to keep moving forward. This vivid dream unfolds into a deeper one. The reader squints the eyes to see through the swirling sand and begins to see what once had been. The blowing sand subsides, stone walls rise and the statue of Ozymandias is once again to its original glory. The sound of people, the smell of livestock, and the great civilization once again stands before the reader. Just as quickly as grand vision fully develops, it collapses upon itself and the swirling sand once again stings the eyes.

This sonnet tells the story of a civilization that, at one point and time, was one of the most powerful in the world. However, this story can be applied to many seemingly impervious civilizations in human history. It is a story that repeats itself over and over again. From civilization’s very beginnings, great nations expand and contract, never learning, always forgetting, becoming overzealous, or complacent, and then crumble upon their own weight, to be buried by the sands of time.

Where will the great nations of today stand two thousand years from now?

Works Cited

Deutsch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of terms. 4^th ed. Harper Perennial. 1974. Print.

Parr, Johnstone. Shelley's "Ozymandias" again. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 46, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1951), pp. 441-442

Shelley, Percy. Poem of the Week. Ozymandias. PotW.org. 1996. <http://www.potw.org/archive/potw46.html>

Sparknotes. Inferno:Dante Alighieri. 2012. <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno/summary.html>

[1] Shelley, Percy. Poem of the Week. Ozymandias. PotW.org. 1996. <http://www.potw.org/archive/potw46.html>

[3] Shelley, Percy. Poem of the Week. Ozymandias. PotW.org. 1996. <http://www.potw.org/archive/potw46.html>

[4] Parr, Johnstone. Shelley's "Ozymandias" again. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 46, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1951), pp. 441-442

[5] Deutsch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of terms. 4^th ed. Harper Perennial. 1974. Print.

[6] Sparknotes. Inferno:Dante Alighieri. 2012. <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno/summary.html>

Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Shelley the Eternal Traveler

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