Shelley published the poem in 1818-three years after the fall of Napoleon. The four colossi build into the Nubian cliffs at the temple of Abu Simbel are perhaps the most famous depictions of him-and they convey the grandiose scale of a monument such as Shelley describes in his poem. It is a Graecized corruption of the Egyptian Usermaatre-setepenre, the throne name of Ramesses II, who reigned as pharaoh for 67 years (1279-1213 BC), and was by far Ancient Egypt’s greatest builder of stone monuments. “Ozymandias” refers to an Egyptian king in the chronicles of the first-century B.C. The historical context behind the poem is indispensable for a proper analysis. The lone and level sands stretch far away. Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed. Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said:-Two vast and trunkless legs of stone The sonnet, like any other, should be read only in its entirety before analysis: And it is one of the few works, classical or modernist, that addresses a subject from that lodestone of the Western imagination, Ancient Egypt. Short, yet powerful and descriptive, it illustrates the sonnet at its best. But it deserves every bit of the reputation it has gained. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity. It is about much more than the futility of tyranny: It is about the power of art. I hope to inspire a similar sense of awe and smallness in the face of a strange, enormous world.Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” remains one of the best-crafted sonnets, as much for its vivid description as for the breadth and depth of its meaning. The title, Ozymandias, refers to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem of the same name, in which a towering monument to the greatest “King of Kings” is found, broken and abandoned in a desolate wasteland. In my mind, this desiccated statue of an alien figure comes from a time so far from now, that not only is humanity long gone, but the race that comes after has also crumbled into ancient history. Authors and artists use aliens to hold a mirror to humanity, to show what we are and are not.īy presenting a figure that is firmly associated with the distant future in this present state of degradation and decay, I hope to question our place in a grander time scale. I find it intriguing that when an artist or author sets out to create a superior alien race, they typically indicate this superiority with “more human than human” features - standing taller, more upright, larger brains, longer fingers, and so on. The portrayal of aliens especially fascinates me. Science-fiction has frequently been an inspiration to me, for the imaginative worlds and the possibilities they offer. Looking to the future, I have drawn from the visually rich and creative realm of science-fiction. To this day, our monuments rely heavily on the weight of Greek and Roman artistic traditions to lend them authority and power. Looking to the past, I borrowed from Greek tradition and the aesthetic language of monumental statues. With this piece, my goal is to present an artifact of future decay.Īs such, this piece draws inspiration from both our past and future. This particular work began as an exploration of dichotomies: the positive and negative space created in this cactus-skeleton-inspired pattern, the tension between life and death found in decaying objects, and the push and pull of the past and future. My driving motivation as an artist is to draw attention to how big and weird the world is and to celebrate the beautiful absurdity of life. Despite our general insignificance, we tend to take many things in our lives very, very seriously. This is true both in terms of physical size, as well as in the duration of our existence on a universal time scale.
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