Shelley, Ozyandias and me

[Ecurb]

In ninth grade, my English class read Shelley's "Ozymandias" (I've copied the poem below, for reference). Our teacher (I still remember, decades later) thought the poem was an example of "irony". Yuk, yuk. Ozymandias thought his works would lead other great kings to despair, because they could never be equaled.
Yet look at them now -- the "shattered visage" and the "trunkless legs".

My English teacher was right -- in a way. But it seems to me that she missed the point of the poem, and that she fell into a pedagogical error common to many educators. She wanted to teach her students the jargon of literature. What is the literary technique called "irony"? Having done a short turn at pedagogy myself, I'm not totally unsympathetic. Teaching jargon makes testing the students easy. You merely ask them to define terms, and they are either right or wrong.

Unfortunately literary jargon is boring, and force feeding it to students is dull. In addition, the irony involved in the ruins of Ozymandias's colossal sculpture hardly explains the virtues of Shelley's poem. Of course works of art fade with time, and monuments turn into ruins. We all know that. But the virtue of the poem is the mood it creates. First, it is a story told by a traveler to an "antique land". Travel is romantic -- and stories about travel are romantic.

Second, the picture of the mysterious, gigantic head, and the two legs create a romantic mystery in the mind of the reader. The dry, sterile desert air has both preserved and destroyed the sculpture.

Finally -- and most important -- we see not only the sculpture, but Ozymandias himself. The passions which "yet survive" in the "wrinkled lip" of the visage were, perhaps, those of the King. And why should the mighty not despair? Are they capable, mighty as they are, of Oymandias's hubris? His gigantic statue might be a ruin, but his pride and his glory remain "stamped" indelibly on the pedestal. Was Shelley suggesting that words (poetry, perhaps) outlive sculptures?

I was only 14 (or so) in that English class. But I already knew (and argued with my teacher) that irony was hardly the greatest virtue of Shelley's poem. Or if it is, the irony is not that Ozymandias was mistaken in thinking that the mighty might despair of being able to equal him, but that he was correct.

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 its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, 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 Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

[Danik 2016]

For me the irony of this beautiful poem is the contrast between the former power of the king and the present ruin of the statue.
What remained of his works?
"Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

[Ecurb]

You agree with my teacher, Danik. However, that seems a shopworn and trite message, inadequate to explain the beauty of the poem. The poem is entitled "Ozymandias" (despite the typo in my thread title). It describes a scene in the desert, as recalled by a traveler. However, it is also a poetic portrait of a man (hence the title). Statues collapse and erode. Kings die. But the human soul, and the human story are eternal. What is "stamped on these lifeless things", if not Ozymandias's vainglorious words? The sculptor sculpts -- he doesn't "stamp". Do the words not tell a story of human pride and vanity beyond the skill of the sculptor to represent? The story of Ozymandias -- the king and, more important, the man -- remains, undamaged by the centuries and by the desert air. Physically, statues outlive people. But stories outlive statues. And -- because of Shelley -- Ozymandias' story will outlive the shattered visage he created. .

[Jackson Richardson]

Not so much ironic as tragic.

I'm far more used to seeing "irony" applied to Shellley's near contemporary, Jane Austen. If "irony" is used to describe both Ozymandius and Pride and Prejudice, it doesn't tell us very much.

PS I can remember being awed by Ozymandius at school. It is the only poem by Shelley I spontaneously admire.

[Danik 2016]

I quite understood your point. There are many ways of looking at good poems, that´s why they are good.
I merely chose what I think it´s it´s main and most obvious contrast. I didn´t mean to go further into it.
And you should be a bit more careful in qualifying people´s comments.

[Ecurb]

PS I can remember being awed by Ozymandius at school. It is the only poem by Shelley I spontaneously admire.

I loved Ozymandias when I was young, but I also liked "Ode to the West Wind", with its beautiful opening:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,...

And I think "Love's Philosophy" is particularly appealing to the young (it's certainly romantic enough):

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

Shelley was something of an anarchist and an aristocrat -- which may seem contradictory, but (I think) isn't. Aristocrats are anarchic -- they do what they like. Traditionally, they also defy the king (which might support Danik's and my teacher's reading of Ozymandias). By the way, I never thought Ozymandias "tragic", either -- except inasmuch as all human life is tragic. Ozymandias' sculptures have fallen; his spirit lives on.

[Ecurb]

I have returned from Greece, where I learned the legend of Biton and Kleobus. These two young men had a mother, Cydippe, who happened to be a priestess to Hera. On the way to an important ceremony honoring Hera, her the oxen pulling her oxcart were stolen. So the young brothers pulled their mother to the ceremony, strong as oxes. Cydippe, impressed with her sons' efforts to support her worship of the Goddess, begged a boon of Hera. "Give my sons the greatest gift a God can give a mortal," Cidippe asked.

After the celebration that night, the two youths died in their sleep. Not only had they died in the flower of their young manhood, avoiding old age and suffering, but (since the legend was told) their fame and glory endured forever.

Ozymandias' eternal life is, perhaps, less happy. He wishes his rivals to "despair". But he also remains preserved, by Shelley's poem, more eternal than the most monumental statue. I (at least) can see his "sneer of cold command" and "wrinkled lip". I'll grant that the standard reading of the poem (as expressed by my teacher, Danik, and Jackson) is reasonable. I agree. It's clearly there in the poem. But I continue to think that the merits of the poem do not reside there. It is the portraiture that makes it a great poem.