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6 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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OZYMANDIAS THEME OF ART AND CULTURE |
The traveller makes a point of telling us that the statue was made by a really skilled sculptor, and the poem as a whole explores the question of art's longevity. |
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OZYMANDIAS THEME OF PRIDE |
Ozymandias calls himself the "king of kings" while also implying that his "works" are the best around. Ozymandias thinks pretty highly of himself and of what he's achieved. The fact that he describes himself as this "colossal" statue with "vast legs" points to his sense of pride, while the statue's fragmentary state indicates the emptiness of Ozymandias's boast.
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OZYMANDIAS THEME OF MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD |
"Ozymandias" suggests that the relationship between art and nature is a double-edged sword: while the natural world furnishes the artist with raw materials, it also has the power to reclaim those materials by later destroying the work of art. |
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PRIDE "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair" |
There is a lot of arrogance in this statement, and it's almost as if he were saying that his name means "king of kings." He brags about his "works" as well, telling the "Mighty" to "despair" because their works will never be as good or as his. Ironically, Ozymandias's works are nowhere to be seen, all that's left is a barren desert and this broken statue. His pride is made to look stupid because his "works" are all gone, except for this fragmented statue that, quite literally, is on its last legs. |
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ART AND CULTURE "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, half-sunk A shatter'd visage lies" |
These lines describe a very strange image; just imagine two legs in the middle of the desert, with a head partly submerged nearby. When we imagine a desert, we often imagine a really hot place with lots of sand that is, appropriately, deserted. The "culture" that has produced the "art" has disappeared or, better yet, has sunk beneath the sand, just like the statue's head. The partially-shrunken head is a symbol of a vanishing, "antique" culture. And yet part of the statue is still "standing." It's hard to account for this, but it could be because its "colossal" dimensions make it hard to destroy, or because art somehow finds a way to persist. |
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MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD "those passions...which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things" |
"Lifeless" is an incredibly rich word in this passage. That the pieces of the statue are now "lifeless" suggests that they were in fact once alive. Perhaps a work of art is alive when it's complete or, rather, not in fragments like the statue of Ozymandias. Or perhaps it has something to do with the role or function of the work of art in a particular culture. Because the surrounding temples and civilization have been destroyed, the statue no longer functions as a tribute to, or symbol of, Ozymandias's political power; it is "dead" because it is now an artistic curiosity, an object for museum-goers to look at and poets to write about rather than a statue with a specific function within a particular culture.
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