There are several different voices in this poem that put some distance between us and Ozymandias. First there is the speaker of the poem, you know the guy who meets the traveler from an "antique land.
The speaker doesn't hang around very long before handing the microphone over to the traveler, whose voice occupies the remainder of the poem. One can imagine a movie based on this storyline: the speaker meets a strange guy who then narrates his experiences, which make up the rest of the film. We don't know a whole lot about this traveler; he could be a native of the "antique land" 1 , a tourist who has visited it, or even a guy who just stepped out of a time machine.
Personification is a literary device in which the author attributes human characteristics and features to inanimate objects, ideas, or anima Wednesday, 9 July How do the multiple speakers in the poem "Ozymandias" help create a sense of irony?
Ozymandias is quoted as saying "Look on No comments:. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. What are five songs that can be used to represent Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and how do the songs relate to him? Early in F. It is often said to be Shelley in sobriety; the ecstatic artist has been quieted, the revolutionary parlayed into the observer of history, the poet distanced from his subject.
I believe otherwise. I see Shelley deeply engaged in this poem. There is Shelley the outraged father, spitting barely concealed bile at the Lord Chancellor. To me this is not a random kaleidoscope, not a tumult, not a product of an unstable psyche. He is simply not a one-trick pony. He is clever and accomplished technically — hell, who these days could successfully write a wild, ecstatic poem and do it in five cantos of terza rima sonnet form, and make it good?
People normally identify three. This voice is contained in quotation marks, deliberately, and again this is taken to indicated distancing.
Thirdly there is the voice of Ozymandias — Pharaoh Rameses II — whose inscription raises him above kings, commanding all who consider themselves to be powerful to look on his works and despair. Ancient Rome took the best part of two millennia to go from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the fall of Constantinople; France realised its equivalent during the adulthood of a single man, Napoleon.
The poem is considered a warning to those who would carve out temporal power for themselves, to the effect that such power will not outlive them. But as I said, I believe that to be a superficial reading, and that Shelley is deeply engaged emotionally and intellectually in this poem. It is a self-referential and introspective work. The second voice, the traveller, is no one external to Shelley. He has given his pen to an inner voice of his own, which will pass judgment on him.
The Sublime is there. Imagination is there — imagination of Diodorus on the one hand, and that of Shelley on the other. Politics certainly is there, even if direct and inflammatory agitprop is not. Ruefully Shelley must acknowledge that he, like all the Romantics, could not quite achieve the quasi-divine power of expression that he wished to.
The Sublime desert, the expression of the unattainable, stretches far away. Because this is all expressed in a short, tightly-wrought sonnet, it is missed by many readers.
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