{"id":280,"date":"2023-03-03T20:18:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T20:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=280"},"modified":"2023-03-03T20:18:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T20:18:47","slug":"look-on-my-sad-remains-and-rejoice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/03\/03\/look-on-my-sad-remains-and-rejoice\/","title":{"rendered":"Look On My Sad Remains, and Rejoice"},"content":{"rendered":"

A graphic novel I\u2019ve read for another of my classes contains a quote from \u201cOzymandias\u201d by Percy Bysshe Shelley as a minor detail, the specific excerpt of \u201cMy name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; \/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!\u201d. However, I found it fascinating that they chose this specific excerpt considering the wider context of the poem, as one of the characters of the graphic novel was meant to relate to this quote. The graphic novel focuses on many political and social themes, with the character being a \u201cking\u201d of sorts. I thought it might be fitting to apply a political\/social lens back to the poem itself to see what interpretation it yields.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One key aspect of the poem is the overconfidence of the king, Ozymandias, who becomes a sort of character in the poem. The above quote alone displays this show of power: he is not just a king, but a king <\/span>of <\/span><\/i>kings. He commands all people to fall under his rule and his land, as well as preserve all his creations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the poem details a traveler meeting someone and telling them of the statue on which this is engraved\u2014a broken-down, sad-looking old sculpture surrounded by nothing but barren land. The \u201cvisage,\u201d or face, of the statue is \u201cshattered,\u201d its detached pieces are \u201clifeless.\u201d Not only is it broken, the poem\u2019s main voice of the traveler (speaking through quotations) goes to great lengths to show how the statue is truly in ruin. They call the pile of stone \u201cdecay,\u201d a word that isn\u2019t often used in the context of such a sturdy material. Stone can be weathered and broken, but \u201cdecay\u201d is usually reserved for things that were previously living: such as bodies. The traveler, then, seems to see the \u201cWreck\u201d as something that, though made of stone, previously had a life to it. This \u201clife\u201d might\u2019ve been the sheer power it displayed, with its \u201csneer of cold command\u201d\u2014this would make sense, considering that statues such as this one have been used for a long time to remember and pay respect to political leaders and other important figures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why the traveler takes great care, then, to emphasize that the sculpture\u2019s reign is long gone, might be interesting. The voice of the traveler doesn\u2019t seem overjoyed nor sad to see the state of the statue, but they do describe in detail how broken it is. The traveler is likely interested by the irony of the statue\u2019s engraved words and the fact that no \u201cworks\u201d to \u201clook upon\u201d remain: \u201cNothing beside remains\u201d, they say, remarking about this irony.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The graphic novel\u2019s excerpt of the poem invites focus on the figure of Ozymandias as incredibly influential but cruel within his time, as it refers to a powerful character within the graphic novel who controls the lives of many people and is a huge public figure. Applying this political\/social lens to the original poem, the traveler seems to not only be thinking of the statue as an isolated and ironic story, but the suggested history in all its complexity\u2014here lies a king who was so important and brash, now reduced to nothing though he thought his influence would remain over the wider population forever. Perhaps it hints at the fact that the wider public not only will recognize this hubris and irony, but also that the population can reshape, over time, what is put in place by those in power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A graphic novel I\u2019ve read for another of my classes contains a quote from \u201cOzymandias\u201d by Percy Bysshe Shelley as a minor detail, the specific excerpt of \u201cMy name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; \/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!\u201d. However, I found it fascinating that they chose this specific excerpt considering … Continue reading Look On My Sad Remains, and Rejoice<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}