PB Shelley (1792-1822) belonged to the Second generation of the Romantic Age. He became a key member of a close knitted circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Peacock and his second wife, Mary Shelley. He is known for classic poems such as “Ozymandias”, “Ode to the West Wind” , “The Cloud’ and others. He wrote a verse drama “The Cenci” and philosophical poems such as “Queen Mab”, ‘Alastor”, “Adonais” , “Prometheus Unbound” and his final unfinished work “The Triumph of Life”.
The poem is treated with satire. His satire is directed against the political tyranny and rulers. “Ozymandias” is a classic poem and a sonnet with the ironical message of the temporal physical power that decays with time. Time is personified to a human masculine power of destroyer which destroys any governing authority with the passage of time. Shelley mocks at the King Ozymandias who was an Egyptian King and instituted a political tyranny over his people and kingdom.
Shelley wrote in a form of a monologue where there is a speaker who met a traveler from an “antique land”. As a monologue, there are always a feature of narration and the traveler narrates the story of the statue that has been destroyed with Time. He describes the statue as “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” suggesting the disintegration of the statue into fragments which stand isolated in the desert and there are nothing but “sand” surrounded the statue.
Shelley was a revolutionary poet and derives much influences from the French Revolution.The French Revolution also sought to establish the destruction of old order implying that it also gets destroyed with Time especially the overthrowing of the rule of monarchy. In the poem, Shelley revolutionized Time as the ultimate factor for the destruction of temporal monarchical power and sovereignty. Shelley mocks at the statue implying that the physical appearance of “wrinkled lip” tells the character of the King who seems to be dominion and tyranny in his ideology which “Tell that its sculptor well those passions read”. He further makes a mockery that the sculptor who created the statue mocks him with his hand and institute his character of the political dominion which on “the heart that fed”.
Lastly, the poem contempt the temporal state of physical power as a satire. Shelley highlights the irony on the pedestal to show the hypocrisy of the political dominion in contrast to the present situation. He brings forth a mockery in the poem where the pedestal appears “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” is an implication ironically of temporal political power which had been decayed and lost with the passage of Time in contrast to the written statement on the pedestal. Hence , Shelley depicts the present situation as barren where “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay” around the statue and it is completely “boundless and bare” in the “sands stretch far away”.
Nice and informative notes. Thank you!
Thank you.