Revisiting Shelley's Ozymandias

      Earthly Passions                         

The cover page of the current issue of ‘India Today’ reads the ‘High & Mighty’ Power List 2013. The features inside on celebrities are arranged in a hierarchical order, with money and assets as the discerning quotient for pickings. Reading the stories of these living icons, I reminisced of my last visit to Jaipur in January during the Lit Fest. The preserved museums and mahals, a narrative of the erstwhile maharajas’ power and pleasurable lifestyles, had evoked in my mind two poems which resurfaced again with the present reading of the 27- storey mansion of the Ambanis.

The first poem is the famous poem, ‘Ozymandias’ by   Percy Bysshe Shelley, a major 19^th century English Romantic poet, critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in  English language. The work is a fourteen- line sonnet , a quaint work of Shelley, rendered in ten minutes but invoking a radical thought. Historical records say that Shelley decided to enter a sonnet competition with his friend - Horace Smith and the subject decided upon was the partially-destroyed statue of Ramses II ("Ozymandias") that was making its way to London from Egypt, finally arriving there sometime early in the year 1818. The colossal statue had tempted Napoleon too, who had tried to get it transported to France from Egypt, but in vain, defeated by its dimensions. It weighs almost 7.5 tons. Shelley, like Napoleon, was fascinated by this giant statue.
Shelley published his poem in January of 1818 in The Examiner, a periodical run by his other friend Leigh Hunt .

Ozymandias

 I met a traveler  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.

The poem has a spiritual connotation for today’s materialistic, consumerist times. In its short space, it explores the relevance of kings, despots and tyrants , and men of insurmountable wealth and clout . What happens to them ?  The broken-down statue of Ozymandias in Shelley's poem points to the short-lived nature of political regimes and tyrannical power. Shelley uses  the irony of earthly power  to make a satirical statement.  At the very onset, we meet a traveller who describes the deplorable condition of the shattered visage that stands half- buried in the ever stretching sand  with ‘The wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command , stamped on the trunkless statue, a colossal wreck, boundless and bare’. A mighty king who was striving in his whole life for his possessions and got involved in worldly assignments so much that he forgot his ultimate destiny. Besides  this, Shelley reminds the readers of their mortality through the realization that our earthly accomplishments, so important to us now, will one day be finished, and nothing lasts forever. The psychological forces of the id as well as the superego of Oxymadias ,  appear as a character in a poem, and as a poetic work, writ large in the inscription ‘my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: look on my work , ye mighty, and despair!’. ‘Nothing  remains , Round and decay,  The lone and level sands stretch far away’ – dust mingles with dust, and death levels all as equals in its play.

Now I shall enumerate translated verses from a sacred text:

I have seen many abodes, where groups of sarogis, sudhs , sidhas, and yogis reside

I have also seen various groups of brave men, kings, Gods who drink nectar, and saints belonging to various sects

I have noticed religions of different countries, but none seems to be the religion of preaching worship of the creator by which the soul becomes his slave.

If emperors possess tall incomparable elephants painted in bright colors, adorned with golden trapping

If they were to own million of horses, capable of fleeting at a speed greater than that of wind and bounding like deer

If countless kings, having large and strong arms were to stoop low and bow before them

If such emperors were to march and conquer all countries beating drums

If in their stables herds of beautiful elephants were to trumpet loudly and horses of royal breed were to neigh

If they could break into pieces the revolting enemies and twist their necks and smash pride of even the furious elephants,

If they could capture forts and win the whole world territory simply by issuing threats

What matters if such emperors exist or existed?

They shall depart bare-footed in the end , they must go to their final home of death empty handed

The whole world being in the grip of false ceremonies , rituals and practices of the ego and vanity has not known God’s secrets.

A study in the following poems would be an interesting follow-up of the theme under scrutiny.  “To his Coy Mistress”, “Ozymandias” and “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”. All three of the poems clearly deal with the passing of time in different ways.  ‘Song’ , ‘We are Seven ‘ deal with death  and the attitude that human beings have towards it. ‘In Spring and Fall’, ‘To the Virgins’, ‘ and ‘Ozymandias’ poets tackle the question of mortality.

Poetry is powerful; in the hands of celebrated poets, it is sublime.