Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
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.
Commentary
The
poem expresses the fleeting nature of fame and its ultimate vanity,
or futility. It begins with the speaker of the poem recounting his
meeting a “traveler from an antique land.” The “antique land”
is Egypt, a place steeped in ancient history, tradition, and lore.
According to this traveler, “two vast and trunkless legs of stone/
Stand in the desert,” not far from a “a shattered visage” that
lies “half sunk” in the sand. Obviously, this had once been a
huge statue of a man, whose figure had been carved to stand for all
time.
Apparently,
the figure was one of authority, for the haughty, contemptuous face
that is now half buried in the desert sand wears a “frown,/ And
wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.” The face is lifelike in
the sense that it conveys its real-life counterpart’s arrogant
disdain: showing “that its sculptor well those passions read,”
passions which “survive” in the features of the stone visage that
the artist had “stamped” centuries ago, “on these lifeless
things.” Ironically, the statue that was to memorialize the proud
ruler has come to ruin in the desert wasteland, a victim of centuries
of erosion. It is broken, partly missing, and to some extent buried.
It has not stood the test of time very well. Time has not been kind
to the memory of the harsh ruler. His memorial has not immortalized
him.
On the
pedestal, the haughty ruler has left a final address to the world.
His last words identify him as “Ozymandias, king of kings,”
commanding the mighty who should see his statue to consider his
accomplishments and “despair” at ever hoping to rival his own
mighty works. These final words, however, are empty and vain. They
are hollow and seem to mock the broken, decapitated statue that has
long since become nothing more than “a mighty wreck”:
Nothing
beside remains. Round the decay
Of
that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The
lone and level sands stretch far away.
Fame
is as uncertain as life itself. In pagan societies, even far later
than those of the vanished Egypt of centuries ago, people aspired to
immortality by being remembered and honored by succeeding
generations. We see this impulse as late as the Anglo-Saxon period,
in which the hero Beowulf hopes to attain an immortality similar to
Ozymandias’ by virtue of his having performed great deeds of
courage. Ozymandias, it seems, was more than a mere warrior
chieftain. He was “king of kings” who had accomplished peerless
deeds. His person had been commemorated with a gigantic statue of
stone. Nevertheless, his hopes were all in vain. The sole reminder of
his long-ago existence is a crumbling “wreck,” which has been, as
it were, not only dismembered and decapitated by the wind and the
sand, but also half buried in the lonely desert, “boundless and
bare,” that stretches away from the ruined monument on every hand.
If this king’s life has been forgotten, certainly those of ordinary men and women will not be remembered. Centuries after one’s death, what shall it mean that a man or a woman ever lived at all? The poem seems to suggest a pessimistic answer, ending not only as a cautionary tale concerning the vanity of human pride and the futility of memorials as a means of attaining immortality, but also a declaration that human existence is, when all is said and done, what the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre characterized as “absurd.” We live and we die, and centuries later, it is as if we never existed, no matter how great our accomplishments might have been during our lifetimes.
If this king’s life has been forgotten, certainly those of ordinary men and women will not be remembered. Centuries after one’s death, what shall it mean that a man or a woman ever lived at all? The poem seems to suggest a pessimistic answer, ending not only as a cautionary tale concerning the vanity of human pride and the futility of memorials as a means of attaining immortality, but also a declaration that human existence is, when all is said and done, what the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre characterized as “absurd.” We live and we die, and centuries later, it is as if we never existed, no matter how great our accomplishments might have been during our lifetimes.
Ozymandias,
we should note, is the pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279
to 1212 B. C. His shattered granite statue lies at the site of the
Ramesseum, his temple, at Gurna, Egypt, and the “colossal wreck”
of his shattered statue has been photographed. The ancient Greeks,
who derived “Ozymandias” from one of Ramesses’ many titles,
gave him the name “Ozymandias.”