Beyond the Verse - 'Ozymandias' and the Ruins of Power: Shelley's Vision of Empire

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, hosts Joe and Maiya delve into the world of Percy Bysshe Shelley with a close reading and analysis of his 1818 sonnet, 'Ozymandias.' They explore the poem’s profound reflections on power, legacy, and the inevitable passage of time as Shelley critiques the hubris of rulers who believe themselves immortal.Maiya and Joe unpack Shelley’s layered portrayal of decay, the influence of Romantic ideals, and the broader implications of empire in a rapidly changing world. They reflect on Shelley’s unique position as a radical voice in the Romantic era, questioning the nature of power and the forces of art that survive long after empires crumble. In this journey, they discuss the deeper meanings of Shelley’s “colossal wreck” and how the poem resonates with contemporary reflections on history and art.Poetry+ users can access exclusive PDFs of 'Ozymandias':​Full PDF Guide​PDF Snapshot Guide​Printable Poem PDF​with Rhyme Scheme​with Meter Syllables​with both Rhyme and Meter​For more on Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry, visit PoemAnalysis.com, where you can explore extensive resources in our PDF Learning Library, explore a wide range of analyzed poems, with thousands of PDFs, and much more - see our Percy Bysshe Shelley PDF Guide.This episode underscores why 'Ozymandias' remains a staple in literary studies and its enduring relevance in understanding human ambition and mortality.Tune in and discover:The timeless significance of Shelley’s depiction of OzymandiasShelley’s critique of empire through irony and structureThe influence of Shelley’s radical Romantic beliefsHow Shelley’s themes continue to speak to us todaySend us a textSupport the showAs always, for the ultimate poetry experience, join Poetry+ and explore all things poetry at PoemAnalysis.com.

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 it sculptor well those passions red which yet survived, 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 Ozymandthius, king of kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair. No thing beside remains, round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away. Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poem of a poem. Poetry Podcasts brought to you by Poemanalysis.com in partnership with Poetry Plus. Now, today we are talking about Ossimandias by Percy Shelley. Thank you so much for your reading at the start there, Joe. Now, today we're going to be touching on the relationship between power and time

and the importance of place and narrative voice. Well, many of our listeners will already be familiar with Percy Shelley as one of the most important romantic poets of his era alongside the likes of William Wordsworth, John Keats and Lord Byron. He was born in 1792 and this poem was first published in The Examiner in 1818, just three years before the poet's death in a boating accident at the age of 29 in what is modern day Italy. So relatively late in his life, although of course the sudden unexpected nature of his death meant he could not have known that. It was not a poem written with old age and sight and yet many of its themes relate to kind of the way in which things fall apart and decay. In fact, we might talk about this later.

The poem almost feels as though it might be written by a much older man who's a. a little bit more introspective. In terms of the sort of the broad facts of his life that are relevant for today's episode, many of our listeners will be aware that Percy Shelley was married to Mary Shelley, Ney Godwin, who of course wrote the very, very famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein. They eloped together in 1814, and the poem itself was written in 1817 as a kind of competition with a fellow friend and poet Horace Smith, who challenged Percy Shelley alongside himself to write a sonnet about Ramesses II, who was a pharaoh in ancient Egypt.

And the title of this poem, Ozymandius, is the Greek name for Ramesses II. So that's kind of a little bit about the poem itself, as a background where it comes from, a little bit more about Shelley, but Maya. In terms of the poem itself, there's so much to discuss here. But where would you like to begin? I mean, the first thing I think it's incredibly important to note here is that this poem is based on a real set of ruins that were discovered of Ramesses the Second. Now, at this point in time, the late 18th, early 19th century, there was a trend of what is now known as Egypt and Mania. there was a huge number of artefacts that were discovered during this time,

so Egypt was very much in the forefront of people's might. Now, Ramesses II was known as Ramesses the Great. Not only did he reign for 66 years between 1279 to 1213 BCE, but he was revered for social, military, diplomatic achievements. He was also an autocrat. He had absolute power. Now, this is something the poem deals with very, very explicitly, about pride and power and hubris. So, Joe, let's start with that first few lines.

The first place to really focus our attention is on that opening line. I met a traveller from an antique land because what that immediately establishes is a degree of distance between the poet and, of course, the reader, with this figure of Ramesses. And again, the title, which perhaps we'll touch upon later on when we actually get the voice of Ozymandias, is kind of deliberately obfuscatory in a way. By using the Greek name for the Egyptian ruler, Hershey Shelley is already kind of playing with layers of history.

Because the traveller in this poem is actually based upon a real-life Greek historian, ancient Greek historian by the name of Diodorus Siculus. Cyclus was himself, to us, a very ancient sort, but he was looking back at Ramsey's II, who to him was also ancient. You really get a sense of the scale of history here, but I think the decision to frame Diodorus Siculus as a condition, contemporary of the poet as somebody the poet could themselves have interacted with is really fascinating. The reason for that is simple because what it does is it forces us as the modern reader to look at history through a much more contracted lens.

It almost distorts the sense of distance. And the reason for that is because Shelley is not just making a point about the collapse of one great ruler. He's thinking about the collapse of empire more broadly. And we're going to talk about this at great length. But I love the way that opening line kind of wrong foots the reader somewhat and kind of challenges their expectation. of what is contemporary in this poem and how close we can feel to the ancient world. Absolutely, and as the poem moves on

and you come to understand that actually the voice we're hearing in this poem is that of the traveller. It creates even more distance between the reader and the speaker of the poem. Now, because we begin with I met, you immediately assume that the rest of this poem is going to follow in the first person.

It's going to be I met, I saw. Because it isn't, Because you then take that secondary voice, it almost, for me, creates a sense of slight distrust. Whereas usually when you read any sort of first person narrative, you feel quite intimately involved with that speaker. And here you don't. It just adds and adds to that sense of distance and separation. I think it also really captures something about Shelley's own relationship to these artefacts that you mentioned. So it's likely that Shelley was inspired to write the poem once the British Museum in 187,

acquired a statue called the Younger Merman, which is a statue of Ramesses a second. Now, by the time it made it to London in 1821, Shelley was not living in the UK. Shelly was in Italy where he died. So it's likely he never actually saw this statue. So again, that sense of distance, that that sense that this statue is based on an account of an account

is replicating what Shelley himself experienced with regard to his own relationship to these artefacts. He never saw these things in his own eyes. I'd actually really like to look at this second line. because I think it's another one that adds to that sense of scale. Two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Now, aside from being an objectively brilliant descriptor, the choices that Shelley makes here seem to add to that sense of intrigue.

Rather than, you know, in many instances when you first meet someone, when you look at a statue, you see its face. We understand that there is a face within this poem. However, you're introduced from the legs upwards. Now, this creates a sense of anonymity, yes, but also a sense of real grand scale. From the moment we are introduced, you recognise it to be absolutely enormous. You imagine the speaker gradually kind of looking up this vast statue and there is a sudden sense of disconnect. And the reason for that, breaking the line that disruptive use of Seizura is because, as the person goes on to describe,

the upper body of this statue is nowhere to be seen. It has collapsed, it has broken in half and it lies sort of a few meters away on the sand. and that immediately sets up what the poem is going to go on to explore, which is about collapse. And obviously the physical collapse of the statue is meant to represent and embody the collapse of empire, not only of Ramazzis II and his own personal legacy, but of the Egyptian Empire more broadly.

And as we're going to discuss later on, Shelley is actually looking to extrapolate learnings from this to apply to kind of empire more broadly. No matter how grand this statue was. And as Maya says, those lines emphasize a scale, it too has collapsed. it too has broken. The poet's attention then shifts to look at the upper body of the statue,

in particular, paying attention to its face. And I just think it's really important for listeners and readers to have a sense of scale here. Maya mentioned the dates that Ramsey's lived and ruled earlier on. This is more than 3,000 years for us in 2024. And even for Shelley, you're looking at more than 2,500 years old. And yet the description is so sharp. We're told that the statue has identifiable features, his frown, his wrinkled lip, his sneer of cold command.

And for me, this touched upon one of the really fascinating undercurrents of the poem, because yes, Shelley is talking about empire, yes, he's talking about the lives of great men, and yet Shelley is a poet, Shelley is an artist. Inevitably, Shelley cannot help but admire fellow artists. And the attention poured into those facial expressions. For me, is Shelley doffing his cap, not to the king, not to the pharaoh, but to the sculptor, the unnamed artisan, who was able to create. this image of a person with real personality.

And I guess the fact that you and I, Myra, are sat here talking about this poem, not thousands of years, granted, but hundreds of years later, is kind of testament to that very idea. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, let's not forget that he's encapsulating the idea of a whole movement, other romantics, very much valued individualism over collective endeavour and particularly looked at exploring the consequences of unbridled power. Now, as Joe says in this poem,

He explicitly dosses cap to the sculptor. It's sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things. He is sat there and telling us that regardless of power and time, what stays is art? I think it's very telling that this poem, despite being done as a writing exercise, when you look at its content, I find it very hard to believe that Shelley wasn't actively aiming for this poem to be one that was read and reread. and revised and revisited. This is a poem, ultimately, about what has power within the world. And it's one of those that I think proves time and time again that it is art.

Art lasts. It's retold. Maybe we'll talk a little bit at the end of the podcast, as we often do, about kind of the afterlife of this poem. But the number of people that drew upon it for inspiration, I mean, we already talked in a previous episode on WB. Yates is the Second Coming, one of our best episodes, about the way in which Yates was, you know, I think very explicitly engaging with this poem because it's such a touchstone for artists who are looking to explore kind of timeless themes

around the collapse and rise of empire. I'd just like to touch upon something that we were looking at a moment ago, which is those lines. Especially how the sculptor was able to stamp his vision on these lifeless things, because the hyperbolic nature of that description imbues the sculptor with some kind of almost divine power. that's a kind of godlike description, that ability to create, that ability to meld the world in your own image. And I love the way that's juxtaposed against the figure of Ozymandius, who professes himself to be a godlike figure later on when he uses the phrase King of Kings, which obviously to modern readers is very, very biblical. Now, of course, Ramesses II lived in a pre-biblical age,

but there is no doubt that Shelley is aware of the fact that by using the phrase King of Kings, he is suggesting that Ozymandius viewed himself as a kind of Christ-like figure, as somebody with divine power. The irony of the poem, therefore, is that Shelley decides to imbue that power, not in Oseman Dias, but in the unnamed sculptor who is able to create the world in his own image. And one of the things I always think is very interesting about this poem in particular is that a lot of the time when you discuss history, it tends to at least aim for some sort of unbiased account. is not one of those. Yes, it is a poem. Yes, it is partially at least influenced by some sort of fictional creative power, right? However, when you explore this poem, and you said it before, the wrinkled

lip, the sneer of cold command, the frown, not only is Shelley offering us a really, really critical descriptor of what this statue looked like, but he is also imbuing that with the power to say, this is what the real life person was like. He actually adds, to all of those terrible things that may have been assumptions. And instead of focusing on the achievements of Ozymandias, he focuses on the effect that he had on people. The sculptor, in fact, created that look because it was one that they had seen so many times.

Now, you have a real sense of fear that's created here, even 3,000, 2,500 years down the line. And I think it's fascinating to see even now that this is one of the most enduring poems in the British school system, for example. In 1817, when this poem was being written and published, the first French empire had kind of reached its peaks and Napoleonic wars had ended in 1815.

And that sense of where the next great empire, and I use that word great in inverted commas, because obviously I don't think that's really a word that's appropriate for us to be using for expansionist empire. But in terms of the world power of its day, there was a sense, I think, after the collapse of Napoleon, that that title was up for grabs, that that position in the world, that ability to shape the world in your own image was to be determined.

And of course, when we look back at this, we might look at sort of the 18-teens, the 18-20s as the early years of what went on to become the British Empire and occupy that space to fill that void. So I think to read the poem for us, looking back at the British Empire, which of course no longer exists, but whose legacy kind of remains controversial, remains current in our sort of modern public consciousness,

is fascinating because that's one empire that we know for a fact Shelley was not writing about because it hadn't yet really existed in the form that it went on to. And yet it still has parallels. And that for me is the power of the poem. And let's not forget, too, that Shelley wasn't writing truly from a disenfranchised perspective. He grew up in an aristocratic family. He attended Eaton and Oxford in the UK, some of the leading educational institutions. But he was a political radical. So this poem is very much rooted not in class and disenfranchisement, but actually almost written from the inside out, which I think makes this poem so powerful. You're absolutely right when you say that Shelley's early life in particular at Eastern and at Oxford would have

had him surrounded by people who would go on to control the levers of power in Britain. You know, people who would hold massive influence, people whose family members already wield its huge influence. So that ability to frame the collapse of empire from position of access to the powerful is a really interesting perspective, the one I think we don't often get. And that's the point that I think this poem touches on so well is that not only does Shelley take that access, but he's actually able to resituate it. I mean, let's talk about the desert. Take one of our earlier episodes. We talked about Wordsworth. So if listeners haven't had a chance to check that one out yet, I highly recommend you do. We talked about the impact that

he had on the Lake District, which is an area of massive natural beauty. in the UK. This is so far removed from that. This is not only in a foreign country, but you really get this sense of boundlessness. This desert is absolutely isolating for the figures that stand with in it. And I think Shelley's ability to kind of transpose

what is a very current and fresh topic onto a completely different landscape is one of the things that makes this poem so enduringly powerful. Now, not only do Poetry Plus members get unrivaled access to the site. They will also receive every weekend a personalized newsletter that contains poetry news, a poem of the week, book recommendations and a personalized commentary from our very own Joe. Welcome back to this episode of Beyond the Verse, where Maya and I are discussing Percy Shelley's Ossimandias.

And just before the break, Maya was talking a little bit about the significance of the desert, especially when viewed to the lens of the romantic tradition to which Shelley belongs. I just like to linger on that point a moment more because as we're going to discuss in this poem a little bit later, Shelley's desert is important because the implication is that it was not always there or not always there in the way that it is currently.

What I mean about that is later when we get a bit of Osseman Diasis his direct speech, he makes an allusion to his works, and specifically he says look upon them as though there was once upon a time something else around this broken statue. The sense that the desert, it's not merely something that's been barren and kind of inhospitable for millennia, but the idea that the desert is perhaps some kind of apocalyptic world. Almost we could almost draw a correlation between the kind of greenery, the countryside that Maya mentioned before the break, as described in Wordsworth's poetry. and the desert. It's almost as though

Shelley is saying that when empires collapse, the landscape in which they exist also kind of falls away, decays, and until there's nothing left. It's almost so the sand is not merely sand, but actually the remnants of a lost empire. But the implication seems to be that the same kind

of geological changes could happen were other empires to collapse. It's not merely a societal change, but almost a change within the natural world as well. And I love the ability he has to do that. And just to jump ahead, actually, to those final lines, and I'll just repeat them for the benefit of listeners, round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch

far away. And actually the word I'd like to focus on there is level, because there is not even a slight insinuation that any city, any remnant of civilization remains. The sands are lone and level. You can picture it so clearly this real sense of flat, expansive, boundless desert. And I really, really think in a very abstract way, this creates a real sense of quiet and peace as compared to the more tyrannical description we get of Ossimandias. Now, this serves to do two things, at least for me. One is to actually amplify the grandeur and the size of that statue, because if the city has been levelled, and yet there are remnants of this statue still, this statue must have been absolutely amazing.

And I think what that does is then further add to this proclamation that is inscribed on this statue. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. The sense of the godlike in this, the fact that this statue seems to almost be not only in conversation with the gods, but perhaps almost risen up to a level where Ozymandias can almost look them in the eye, you really get this sense of height and elevation. I find that the brief glimpse we get into Ossimand Dias' direct voice to be so fascinating. There's so much to get into here. But on the inscription itself, I think while I was doing research to this episode,

I realized that actually Diodora Ciculus comes up again here because the inscription we find in this poem is a reworking of the inscription that he found in the statue itself. So again, we're looking at layers of narrative here. We're looking at accounts that have been merged and changed and embellished for different artistic reasons. I'd just like to read the inscription that he found on the statue, the real inscription, because I think the changes that Shelley makes to it are absolutely fascinating. So Diodorus wrote that the inscription read, King of Kings, Ossimandias, am I? If any want to know how great I am and where I lie,

let him outdo me in my work. And I think the subtle differences between those are fascinating, because again, the original inscription clearly offers a challenge. But compared to Shelley's, there is at least the sense of admission that there will be empires after me who can challenge me. There will at least be other great men and great rulers who might lay claim to being the greatest or most powerful or etc., etc. Shelly's look on my works, Eighty, and despair leaves no sense of that. There is no sense whatsoever that Ozymandias feels as though his equal will ever exist.

And again, these lines give us such an interesting insight as Shelley's perception of what these kind of autocrats think about themselves, how they perceive of their own power. And again, I can't help but think of the moment in which Shelley himself was living, because Shelley lived and grew up in the shadow of this figure of Napoleon, this man who cast this long shadow across Europe, a military ruler, a tactician, someone whose legacy remains incredibly iconic to this day. I mean, there was a biopic of made of him just this year. The public fascination with this figure remains. And just a little bit of an anecdote, I was actually lucky enough to be in Egypt almost a year ago exactly on holiday and one of the things that I was surprised to see

amongst all these ancient ruins was all of the reminders of Napoleon. Napoleon's army had been to Egypt and the amount of graffiti, the amount of times his name had been literally stamped upon these ancient artefacts. I mean, it's kind of horrible in some respects, but when I think about this poem, I think what Shelley is able to do is almost do a really brief character study into the ego that drives these, I use the word again advisedly, these great leaders. And they are often male leaders because that sense of almost a warped or embellished belief in their own divinity, I think is something that's really striking and quite horrifying to observe. I mean, my God, let's just compare the fact that Ozymandia's self

describes as king of kings in this poem. And yet by the person that finds him, he is described as a colossal wreck. We get these different figures in this poem. We get the figure of the speaker, who speaks very briefly at the beginning. We get the figure of the traveler, who we know is sort of an anonymized version of Diodora Ciculus. We get the sculptor. All of these figures are unnamed. We then have the contrast with Ossimandias. And again, at first glance, this seems to be about embellishing the power of the titular figure, this idea that great people's names live on through history and, you know, 99.9% of us, you know, fade into the ether. And, you know, Yet, and yet Shelley is doing something subtly different. Because again, when you have a figure

like Ossimandias who actually uses his own name as evidence of his power, it also speaks to a degree of irony because we're looking at a statue that's broken. And actually, we need the use of the name because we don't know who this person is. He needs to introduce himself because we are ignorant of him. So in many ways that presence of his name serves to emphasize his power in relation to those who are nameless. And yet, through the passage of time, which humbles everybody and brings his empire down, the fact his name is there is actually really useful because otherwise we might have no idea who he was. And I love the way that Shelley is able to use the same word, you know, his name to both accentuate his power on the one hand and kind of undermine it

and devalue it on the other. I think that's such a great point. And actually, one of the questions that I've always had about this poem and perhaps you might be able to to give me some advice on where to sit with it is so much of this poem is very, very intentional for. from Shelley, you really see the way in which he manages to unpack power and hubris and empires. But I've always wondered in those sort of closing lines where he very directly juxtaposes, look on my works ye mighty and despair with no thing beside remains. I do often wonder if that is a commentary on the fact that unbridled power results in just as much destruction as it does creation, or whether it's simply a commentary on the fact that his power

has lapsed and now there is nothing. I'd really love to know kind of where you stand on that. I mean, it's a really, really interesting question. I think first glance, there appears to be kind of a levelling of the great men and the less great men. And again, for listeners, I'm using that word advisedly, because Shelley is suggesting kind of in that almost Shakespearean way, a king may pass through the belly of a peasant because we all end up in the same place, we all end up in the ground and everything we've built, whether big or large, will eventually fade to nothing. So on the one hand, I think he's not suggesting that these powerful rulers are more likely to leave a destructive legacy than anything else. But I think one of the things

that he is doing, which I think is quite subtly done, is that when you have these rulers who leave behind enormous works, enormous reminders of their power, when that power is no longer theirs, when it is inherited either by an individual or a series of individuals, the only recourse those people seem to have is to outdo that which came before them, and to make bigger statues and to make bigger temples and to make bigger sort of reminders of their own importance. And again, without wishing to just make this a podcast about a holiday that I took, one of the things I was really struck by when I was in Egypt was how many times you would see statues that had been not destroyed because that would have been considered disrespectful,

but where a bigger statue had simply been built in front of it, or an obfirm. had been deliberately put somewhere so that you couldn't see the one that your father, grandfather, aunt, grandmother had made. And that sense of trying to outdo those who came before you does create a sense of of churn. And everybody thinks that they're the one who's going to last. But of course, as soon as people are dead and the next generation takes over, they're the ones who are looking to supplant you.

And I think what Shelley might be saying is that the greater lengths these rulers go to enshrine their own greatness, the more they ensure the fact that some will work harder to outdo them. Do you know what? You know, coming off the back of that, I think it's really telling actually when you remember that this is a comparative poem. Obviously, Shelley and Horace Smith wrote this

as a sonnet exercise. And also, I think we should touch on that shortly, is that this is a sonnet. And we've talked about the sonnet form in previous episodes, and there are many reasons why it's important that a poem about decay and transience is actually formed as a sonnet. But back to my original point,

which is effectively, when you compare Horace Smith's Ozymandias to Shelley's, I would argue that Smith's version is a little bit more forthright, a little bit more telling, but the lines that really stick with me from it are actually his closing lines. Effectively, in Smith's poem, you have the same journey. There is a hunter who is exploring this forgotten land and comes across some fragment huge and stops to guess what powerful but unrecorded race once dwelt in that annihilated place. Now, as I say, this is much more forthright than Shelley's poem.

I think if I had to say I had a preference, it would be for Shelley's. But what Smith really focuses on, I think for me is the very well-known phrase, history is recorded by the winners, right? And you're looking at an incredibly powerful figure, Ramesses II, who had this great and powerful legacy. and, as you say, taking great with a pinch of salt. What Smith does is really drill down into that sense of a record

and that sense of lasting legacy based on what people will take down of you. Now, all we have of Ozymandia Sengelli's poem is simply look upon my works. There is no description of those works. There is no recorded evidence of those works. All you have is that desert space. And yet in Smith's poem, the description again is different. The King of Kings, this mighty city shows the wonders of my hand. The city's gone.

The fact that in Smith's poem there is an implication of a city and in Shelley's there is not. Again, adds to this sense that Shelley's beliefs in many ways were far more resolute and far more concrete in the way he decided to describe empire. And I really, really enjoy the fact that as a comparative person, poem. Both of these poems offer so much about this single history that actually you can take two entirely different renditions of Ramesses II just by reading one of these. And the Ozymandias that Shelley knows is so vastly different from the Osemandius Smith knows, even though they are writing at the same moment in time for the same magazine with the same form. So I ask you, Joe,

Why is the sonnet form important? I think my answer actually relates to that word record that you mentioned when you were talking about Horace Smith's term, but I'll touch upon the sonnet first. And I think without wishing to generalise too much and if listeners are interested in more information about the sonnet, I really encourage those listeners who are interested in learning more about sonnets to go and check out the episode we did on Shakespeare's 154 sonnit

as well as Elizabeth Barrett Brownings. How do I love thee? Because we really delved into the form and the way it changes and evolves in those episodes, but just to be sort of slightly reductive, I think we tend to think of the sonnet as a love poem. We tend to think of it as something it expresses kind of adoration. I love the way in which Horace Smith and Shelley's use of it kind of twist what that means, because on the one hand, we could be thinking about the sonnet form as being a kind of evocation of Osseman Dias's love for himself in his own works, and his own creation. On the other hand, we could think

of it as being purely a sense of irony, the idea that this poem is used to describe love. Fortnerally is here, you describe things that feel very distant from love, decay, death, the passage of time, et cetera. But one thing that perhaps is a subtle link is that so many sonnets that explore love focus on the momentary, the fleeting, that moment of affection, that moment of beauty that fades with the passage of time. And what many of Shakespeare's sonnets doing is focusing in on the way that beauty changes through time. I mean, one of the things that we spoke about in that episode is how some of Shakespeare's early sonnets to the fair youth are imploring him to reproduce because he knows it. his beauty will not last long, he needs to pass that beauty on to the next generation, that sense of the fleetingness of human experience is kind of on steroids here, if you will, because what we're looking at here is not an individual's physical beauty,

but we're looking at a legacy of a lifetime. So yes, the time periods we're looking at along here, we're looking at hundreds and thousands of years, but the central conceit is the same. Your beauty physically will fade in a matter of 10, 20, 30 years. your legacy as a ruler will fade within the space of 100, 200, 300 years, your status as one of the greatest rulers of all time will fade perhaps in a thousand years, but it will fade nonetheless.

And I think that's one of the things that the sonnet is doing really interestingly. But if I may just quickly return to that use of the word record you mentioned, and I think this is a really interesting way in which Shelley's poem, I think, does have greater depth, perhaps, in Smiths, because what Shelley is doing by mediating the image of Ossimandias through these different sources, some of them historical, some of them artistic, some of them sort of apocryphal, perhaps, and some of them seemingly direct. We have these myriad range of sources about this man, and yet it's his poem that is perhaps the strongest conception of who

this man really was. We get more of a sense of personality of who this guy was in this poem that we perhaps had for thousands of years before this poem was written. And I think, much like I said earlier on when Shelley is kind of doffing his cap to the sculptor and saying that it is the art which survives and therefore the artists who should be celebrated, I think what he is doing here, Shelley, is he is sort of emphasising the importance of the artists of the day, not only because they are able to shine a light on the rights, the wrongs, the ills of society, but also because the people, the great men who exist in society, will be mediated through their work. You know, we think about the portrayals of Nero and Caligula without thinking about the novels of Robert

Graves, for example. You think about conceptions of Julius Caesar or Richard the 2nd and so much of that is about Shakespeare, not about what and anything they did in their real lives. And I think what Shelley is doing here is he's kind of firing a warning shot at the great rulers of his time to say, actually, regardless of what you do, it is people like me who will define your legacy, not anything you do in your own life. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that notion of mediating history through art. But also, I mean, what do you think about the importance of the sonnet form. As you say, Shelley is much, much bolder in his assertions in his poem.

And actually, as you were speaking then, I was just thinking about truly what the sonic form does represent. And here, I think you could potentially trade general expectations of love being in a sonnet form for respect. Because as I was comparing the two, it struck me that Smith's poem actually owes much more respect to Ozymandias. There is a sense of respect for the power that he had. You look at a powerful but unrecorded race. Even the fact that the captioning of the of the stone is the wonders of my hand. He talks about the Lost City as a forgotten Babylon. Now, Horace Smith,

let us know, was not a poet. He surrounded himself, as we were discussing before this podcast, with many, many greats. Now, I don't have the number to hand, but he didn't publish that many things. So yes, there is much more respect owed to Ossimandias in Smith's poem. By contrast, Shelley is bold. Shelly is absolutely undermining the power that Ossimandias had. One of the key examples of this that I think is worth touching on is actually positioning. We talk about the importance of place, the importance of the desert, the importance of narrative voice, but in Smith's Ossimandius, you have the same vast stone legs. However, there is no mention of Ozymandius' face in Smith's poet.

The leg has the same sense of scale, the same sense of enormity, and casts a shadow that the desert only knows. There is a real sense of darkness that goes hand in hand with the power that this huge, huge figure of history has. However, what Shelley does, in order to undermine that power even further, is take the same legs, but actually take the face that obviously in form would have been above those legs and place it half sunk in the sand. That, aside from anything else, I think, is a huge disrespect to this figure that could not be clearer to really disrespect authority figures

at the time, but really to answer your core question, which was about the sonnet form. I think that is where the difference lies. I think you can explore a sonnet by means. of love by means of some level of transients, like Shakespeare's sonnets that actually take decay as something that needs to be preserved, as a beauty that needs to be held. And what I think the sonnet form does for really both poems here, but maybe slightly stronger in Shelley's, is offer a reverence and a respect that can either be constructed or deconstructed.

I think it's very important that we touch on the fact that Shelley's Osemanlius, is technically structured as a Petrarchan sonnet. However, many lines of thought around this sonnet are based on the fact he actually corrupts the sonnet form. He changes the rhyme scheme, although he sticks to the same line formations, the rhyme scheme is really quite off-putting in many ways, and I think that, again, just translates into this absolute disrespect

for power and institution and tradition, more importantly. You mentioned earlier on the colossal wreck. And I think I love these two words because I think there is a real sort of subtlety imbued within them because we might look at that word colossal and simply think about something large. But we can't look at that word without thinking about where it comes from. It comes from the word colossus in particular the colossus of Rhodes, which is one of these great statues, these great symbols of the classical world. So it does not simply mean something vast and big, but also something innately impressive.

And of course, refers to another statue, like the one of Ozymandias in this poem. And I think the use of that word next to the word wreck obviously creates a kind of oxymoronic effect for the reader, which is a really sort of satisfying thing to read. But also speaks to the fact that within our conception of greatness and what greatness is, is baked in a kind of awareness that when the fall happens, when the collapse happens, it will be big enough to justify the greatness. If that makes sense, you know, the bigger you are, the harder you fall. et cetera, et cetera. There's almost that sense that when these rulers build bigger, expand further, all they are really doing is preempting the humility that they'll have to be sort of accept when those empires collapse because it won't collapse by 10% it will collapse back down to its beginning. So the greater the thing you have created, the bigger a wreck it will go on to become

when it is destroyed. As we draw towards the end of this episode, I'd like to just think a little bit about the importance of Shelley's relationships with other writers. You mentioned, of course, that this poem comes from a very deliberate contest with Horace Smith. And I think, you know, for any listeners who want to learn more about Shelley, they can also subscribe to Poetry Plus at Pomeranus.com and they can get the Percy Shelley PDF. They can also get PDFs on the other romantic poets if they want to think about the way those people were engaging with his work. But I'd just like to sort of zoom out slightly and go back a couple of years before this poem was written. So as I mentioned earlier on, Shelley eloped with Mary Godwin and they married.

and she became his wife, Mary Shelley, who of course wrote the novel Frankenstein. And again, that novel comes out of a very particular moment of artistic collaboration. So if you can just sort of cast your minds back to the summer of 1816, you have a very, very bad vacation because an eruption from a volcano in Asia had caused there to be no sunshine for an entire summer.

In Lake Geneva, and you have Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, this group of writers who are collaborating, who are exploring what it means to be writing against their contemporary moment. The gloomy nature of their surroundings, the darkness of that summer inspired them to have a ghostwriting competition and from that eventually came the novel Frankenstein. But I'd like to just think about the way in which there are some common threads between those stories.

So not only did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein out of that environment, but also John Polidori wrote the novel The Vampire, which is the first example of a vampire story being written in English. It's an incredibly kind of influential moment in time. And as I've said, again, that is just one year before Shelley writes Ozymandias. Frankenstein, of course, is a novel about regretting the thing you create, the thing you create almost being the thing that destroys you. And, you know, perhaps we can look at parallels between that and this poem about Ossimandias' desire for his own legacy is ultimately the thing that makes him look ridiculous because his legacy is belied by the fact that it does not survive. But also, of course, the way in which those stories are mediated through

other voices. I mean, the novel of Frankenstein is a tale told by Victor Frankenstein to a captain in letters back home to his sister. And again, that sense of distance. I wonder, is there something about that moment in time? Or is it something sort of more universal about our desire to view stories that we don't perhaps fully comprehend through the eyes of others? I mean, big question, Maya, but what do you think about that? Is there any kind of connection with that particular contemporary moment, or is that something more universal? Why do we feel the need to create distance, whether temporal or geographic, between ourselves and the figures that we are fascinated by, but perhaps struggle to understand? I think you've definitely touched on something that, you know,

maybe is looking back a commonality, but maybe not 100% intentional at the time. I think it really leads back to the point I was making earlier about sometimes it is so much harder to write when you are entrenched within something because you have to write your way out of it. If you are already outside, you almost occupy the position of an observer. You are someone who is given certain artistic liberties and artistic freedoms to create narrative where you observe because you're not within it. If you fundamentally know how structures of power work, you know, in Shelley's case, if you know how elitist institutions work,

you then have to find a way to negotiate and know on certain terms how to work your way out of those in order to then create commentary on them. And I think that's really my answer to your question there is that in order to create commentary, sometimes you have to create distance. Sometimes you have to write your way out of these things. And as you so aptly mentioned,

all of these writers are creating work at a time of great political, turmoil with increasingly powerful figures. I think one thing I'd actually really like to pay attention to within kind of the scope of the question you just asked me is the fact that many of these stories that came out of this singular summer seem so vastly different. Obviously, you have Frankenstein in which there is a creator and a created monster. And then Polydori's The Vampire perhaps seems to occupy a very different strain of literature.

Obviously, this is a brand new creation at this point. However, I would like to touch on the fact that really all of these, Ozymandius, Frankenstein, The Vampire, are really just iterations and questions that concern immortality. The vampire has a huge, huge standing in literature to this day. I mean, look at Twilight. This is a story that has been rewritten thousands of times and has a massive, massive influence in just our body. our social culture, really.

But it is about immortality. It's about bearing the brunt of history. The same goes for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is about a creator who has unbridled power, creates a monster, and then has the question of then what to do with it. So they then left with. Exactly the same goes for Ozymandias. And that is why I think my answer to your question is really,

they have created distance because it is a very real and troubling question they're dealing with. So in order to explore it with any sort of lack of bias or interest, they then have to create the distance from it. Let's not forget, obviously, Mary and Percy were probably sat in the same room's writing. They were very often editing each other's work. They were discussing it over dinner. You have a real intimate relationship between the two of them that will have undoubtedly influenced one another's work.

So when I explore something like Frankenstein in conversation with a poem like Ozymandias, there are so many themes that run through the two of them that you can't ignore the fact that they come from a central sphere, a central moment, or perhaps even just one singular conversation. I love the way that you have drawn that connection between Frankenstein and this poem because I was thinking about it kind of in terms of narrative voice

and about the distance I mentioned, but I love the comparison you've made between the creation, of Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein's creature, whatever you want to call it, and kind of Osamandias is less literal but kind of symbolic creation of his own legacy. Because what those two stories kind of share is the fact that even though you create something,

you do not control what it then goes on to do and become, and there are that sense of being horrified by your own creation, which I think is a really lovely comparison point. I mean, if Osimandias could be shown his legacy a thousand years later, maybe even 100 years later, we don't know, there is that sense that he'd be horrified by it because when you create something you kind of feel like you have a right to it

and a right to shape what it goes on to do and in the case of a legacy well it's going to be shaped by the people who take it on but in terms of Frankenstein Frankenstein's monster is a thinking active being in its own right who does not want to simply be a conduit for its creator's greatness

it wants to be its own thing I mean you know we could do a whole episode I'm sure on the ways in which which Shelley's work intersects with his wife, which intersects with Byron's, and we could talk for hours on that. But just thinking sort of from a broader lens here to finish off the episode, thinking about where this poem goes in the future. You and I both encounter this poem at school for the first time. It remained hugely prominent in the British education system. It's influenced many, many writers, of course, one of them being William Butler Yates enormously.

Shelley's reputation wasn't kind of huge during his own lifetime, but has grown steadily and certainly since about the 1950s, 1960s, you know, he has become, in retrospect, one of Britain's finest poets. His works are read very, very widely, hugely influential. But looking at this poem in particular, the thing perhaps I admire most about it, and if listeners haven't got the sense by now, there are many things I admire about it. But it's that character study. It's that ability to look into the eyes of somebody that has been dead for thousands of years and find the characteristics, the commonalities between him as a man, not as an Pharaoh, not as a ruler, but as an individual. individual egotist, and find the commonalities between that man and people that were alive in Shelley's time, and perhaps even more impressively, people who wouldn't be born for years

after Shelley's death. I mean, it is not a big jump away from Osman Dioces' claim that he is the King of Kings. It is not a big jump from there to things like the Third Reich that will last a thousand years in Nazi Germany, that kind of ego, the way in which the cults of personality that exists today in dictatorships like North Korea, where the leader is not. simply a powerful, talented, or brutal, or whatever word you want to use, political force, but they are somehow transcending the human race. That ego, that hubris, is something that Shelley was able to identify in a figure he would never see, and nobody had ever seen, because they'd been dead for thousands of years, find commonalities with dictators in his own period, people like Napoleon,

and also sort of foreshadow the way in which leaders, hundreds of years later, would conceive of themselves. And for me, that is a legacy that few poems can content with. I mean, what an incredibly insightful way to end this episode. Thank you so much, Joe. I feel like I've learned so much from this episode, even though this was a poem that I kind of thought I was familiar with in a strange way. Unfortunately, that is all we have time for today. But next time, I'm very excited we will be discussing, because I could not stop for death by Emily Dickinson. If you cannot wait for that episode to come out, I highly recommend you go to Poemanalysis.com to do your own exploration. There are many of her poems on the site. And if you want

to learn a little bit more about what we're talking about today, go check out Ossimandias too. Don't forget, you can sign up for a Poetry Plus membership that will give you unparalleled access to learn all you can about poetry, from meter to rhyme scheme to bespoke analysis. But for now, it's goodbye from me. And goodbye for me and the whole team at Pomeanalysis.com and poetry plus. Thank you.