{"id":9671,"date":"2014-01-17T21:23:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/?p=9671"},"modified":"2014-01-17T21:23:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T01:23:00","slug":"friday-night-ozymandias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2014\/01\/17\/friday-night-ozymandias\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday night – Ozymandias"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I met a traveller from an antique land…” <\/em>so beings the sonnet Ozymandias by Percy Shelly in 1818.\u00a0..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For some reason. this poem has been coming into my life this week. First in a short story\u00a0 i was reading last night, then in a flash back to one of the most outrageously awfully wonderful Breaking Bad episodes<\/a> by that same name. (you know when you know who shoots those other guys .. (no spoilers here) )<\/p>\n

Like all good students of poetry.. i knew that the poem was written by Shelly .. but haven’t looked at it since.. what.. ? High school maybe<\/p>\n

I learned from Wikipedia today that The poem Ozymandias was written as part of a small competition between Shelley and his friend Horace Smith..\u00a0 That’s pretty interesting because if memory serves me, Shelly’s wife Mary wrote her masterwork Frankenstein as a competition as well..Competitive lot those Shelly’s<\/p>\n

Anyway, both Shelley and Smith\u00a0 agreed to write a poem about the find of\u00a0 a large broken\u00a0 staue of Ramses II (aka Ozymandias) in the Egyptian desert a few years earlier\u00a0\u00a0 All that was found were the statues legs sticking out of the barren dessert , and its broken\u00a0 and vandalized torso and head lying face down nearby. . The existing fragments were soon to arrive in London for the British Museum.. ;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Heres whats left of it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The inscription on the base of the statue was translated as :<\/p>\n

King of Kings<\/a> am I, Osymandias. If anyone should like to know my grandeur and reach of stature, let him surpass any of my achievements<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s what Shelly wrote about the statue and the quote<\/p>\n

I.met a traveller from an antique land<\/em>
\n Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<\/em>
\n Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,<\/em>
\n Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,<\/em>
\n And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,<\/em>
\n Tell that its sculptor well those passions read<\/em>
\n Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<\/em>
\n The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:<\/em>
\n And on the pedestal these words appear:<\/em>
\n “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<\/em>
\n Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”<\/em>
\n Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<\/em>
\n Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare<\/em>
\n The lone and level sands stretch far away.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and here’s what smith wrote<\/p>\n

IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,<\/em>
\n Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws<\/em>
\n The only shadow that the Desert knows:\u2014<\/em>
\n “I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,<\/em>
\n “The King of Kings; this mighty City shows<\/em>
\n “The wonders of my hand.”\u2014 The City’s gone,\u2014<\/em>
\n Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose<\/em>
\n The site of this forgotten Babylon.<\/em><\/p>\n

We wonder,\u2014and some Hunter may express<\/em>
\n Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness<\/em>
\n Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,<\/em>
\n He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess<\/em>
\n What powerful but unrecorded race<\/em>
\n Once dwelt in that annihilated place.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dunno which one i like best.. history has chosen Shellys as the one that survived.. so who am i to argue.<\/p>\n

Folks say that shelly was writing about the immortality of art…\u00a0 I think its more about our own mortality..\u00a0\u00a0 ie. nothing we do ultimately matters that much..<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about mortality alot\u00a0 lately .. not my own so much.. but just the general concept<\/p>\n

kinda makes me want to go and carve a statue or something<\/p>\n

night all, night sam<\/p>\n

-me<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I met a traveller from an antique land…” so beings the sonnet Ozymandias by Percy Shelly in 1818.\u00a0..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For some reason. this poem has been coming into my life this week. First in a short story\u00a0 i was reading last night, then in a flash back to one of the most outrageously awfully wonderful Breaking … Continue reading Friday night – Ozymandias<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[800],"class_list":["post-9671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ozymandias"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9674,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions\/9674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}