Ozymandias

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox poem "Ozymandias" (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell)Template:Sfn is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was first published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The ExaminerTemplate:Sfn of London. The poem was included the following year in Shelley's collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems,<ref name="Shelley1876" /> and in a posthumous compilation of his poems published in 1826.Template:Sfn

The poem was created as part of a friendly competition in which Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith each created a poem on the subject of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II under the title of Ozymandias, the Greek name for the pharaoh. Shelley's poem explores the ravages of time and the oblivion to which the legacies of even the greatest are subject.

OriginEdit

File:Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon'.jpg

The statue fragment known as the Younger Memnon in the British Museum

Shelley began writing the poem "Ozymandias" in 1817, upon anticipation of the arrival in Britain of the Younger Memnon, a head-and-torso fragment of a statue of Ramesses II acquired by Italian archeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni from the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II at Thebes.Template:Sfn Although the Younger Memnon did not arrive in London until 1821<ref>British Museum. Colossal bust of Ramesses II, 'The Younger Memnon'. Retrieved 26 November 2015.</ref>Template:Sfn and Shelley likely never saw the statue,Template:Sfn the reputation of the statue fragment had preceded its arrival in Western Europe. European attempts to acquire the Template:Convert fragment had been made as early as 1798, when Napoleon's expedition unsuccessfully attempted to retrieve it.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Shelley, who had explored similar themes in his 1813 work Queen Mab, was also influenced by Constantin François de Chassebœuf's book Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (The Ruins, or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires), first published in an English translation in 1792.Template:Sfn

Writing, publication and textEdit

Publication historyEdit

The banker and political writer Horace Smith spent the Christmas season of 1817–1818 with Percy and Mary Shelley. At this time, members of their literary circle would sometimes challenge each other to write competing sonnets on a common subject: Shelley, John Keats and Leigh Hunt wrote competing sonnets about the Nile around the same time. Shelley and Smith both chose a passage from the writings of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in Bibliotheca historica, which described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted its inscription: "King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work." In Shelley's poem, Diodorus becomes "a traveller from an antique land."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Efn Template:Efn Template:Efn

Shelley wrote the poem around Christmas in 1817<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Em dasheither in December that year or early January 1818.Template:Sfn The poem was printed in The Examiner,Template:Sfn a weekly paper published by Leigh's brother John Hunt in London. Hunt admired Shelley's poetry and many of his other works, such as The Revolt of Islam, were published in The Examiner.Template:Sfn Template:Multiple image Shelley's poem was published on 11 January 1818 under the pen name "Glirastes".Template:Sfn The name meant "lover of dormice", dormouse being his pet name for his spouse, author Mary Shelley.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Smith's sonnet of the same name was published several weeks later.Template:Sfn Shelley's poem appeared on page 24 in the yearly collection, under Original Poetry. It appeared again in Shelley's 1819 collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems,<ref name="Shelley1819">Template:Cite book</ref> which was republished in 1876 under the title "Sonnet. Ozymandias" by Charles and James Ollier<ref name="Shelley1876">Reprinted in

Template:Cite book </ref> and in the 1826 Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by William Benbow, both in London.Template:Sfn

TextEdit

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Analysis and interpretationEdit

Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a sonnet, written in loose iambic pentameter, but with an atypical rhyme scheme,Template:Sfn which violates the Italian sonnet rule that there should be no connection in rhyme between the octave and the sestet.

Two themes of the "Ozymandias" poems are the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In the poem, despite Ozymandias' grandiose ambitions, the power turned out to be ephemeral.

The rhyme scheme reflects the interlocking stories of the poem's four narrative voices, which are its "I", the "traveller" (an exemplar of the sort of travel literature author whose works Shelley would have encountered), the statue's "sculptor", and the statue's subject himself.Template:Sfn The "I met a traveller [who...]" framing of the poem is an instance of the "once upon a time" storytelling device.Template:Sfn

Reception and impactEdit

The poem has been cited as Shelley's best-known<ref name=":02">Template:Cite news</ref> and is generally considered one of his best works,Template:Sfn though it is sometimes considered uncharacteristic of his poetry.Template:Sfn An article in Alif cited "Ozymandias" as "one of the greatest and most famous poems in the English language".Template:Sfn Stephens considered that the Ozymandias Shelley created dramatically altered the opinion of Europeans on the king.Template:Sfn Donald P. Ryan wrote that "Ozymandias" "stands above" numerous other poems written about ancient Egypt, particularly its fall, and described the sonnet as "a short, insightful commentary on the fall of power".<ref name=":4">Template:Cite journal</ref>

"Ozymandias" has been included in many poetry anthologies,Template:Sfn<ref name=":3">Template:Cite journal</ref> particularly school textbooks, such as AQA's GCSE English Literature Power and Conflict Anthology,Template:Sfn<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> where it is often included because of its perceived simplicity and the relative ease with which it can be memorized.Template:Sfn Several poets, including Richard Watson Gilder and John B. Rosenma, have written poems titled "Ozymandias" in response to Shelley's work.<ref name=":4" />

The influence of the poem can be found in other works, including Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> It has been translated into Russian, as Shelley was an influential figure in Russia.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In The Tripods trilogy, by John Christopher, a character who helps young men escape from the Tripods calls himself Ozymandias and quotes part of the poem.

In the AMC drama Breaking Bad, the 14th episode of season 5 is titled "Ozymandias". The episode's title alludes to the collapse of protagonist Walter White's drug empire. Bryan Cranston, who portrayed White, read the poem in its entirety in a teaser for the final episodes of the series.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandias, is the primary antagonist in the Watchmen franchise, based on the 1986 comics by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. Additionally, Shelley’s poem serves as the epigraph for one of the chapters.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Woody Allen used the term "Ozymandias melancholia" in his movies Stardust Memories and To Rome with Love.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The poem is quoted by the A.I. character David in Alien: Covenant predicting the decline and demise of the human empire<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and referenced in the penultimate episode of Succession.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The work is also referenced in Joanna Newsom's song "Sapokanikan".

The media company Ozy was named after the poem.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Ozymandias gilberti, a giant fossil fish from the Miocene of California that is known only from a few fragmentary remains, was named by David Starr Jordan as an allusion to the poem.<ref name="Jordan1921">Template:Cite journal</ref>

The cinematic short film for Bungie's video game Marathon features the poem read intermittently by Ben Starr.