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Excerpt from Dissertation:
Shelley and Smith’s Ozymandias Compare/contrast
In Ways of Seeing, Steve Berger (1972) claims, “When we ‘see’ a scenery, we position ourselves in it. Whenever we ‘saw’ the ability of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. inches Berger offers that writing ones experience is dependent upon that person’s perspective. Two poets that can demonstrate just how perspectives varies after go through the same function are Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith, who also in 1817 competed against each other to determine who can write the best sonnet regarding Ozymandias, a partially demolished monument of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses 2. During the course of this competition, Shelley penned “Ozymandias” and Cruz penned “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Uncovered Standing By Alone in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Exergue Inserted Under. ” The two poems had been published by Leigh Search in The Examiner; Shelley’s about January 11, 1818 and Smith’s about February one particular, 1818. Even though both poetry were drafted in the same sonnet format and about the same object, Shelly and Smith offer readers differing points of views of the actual experienced.
“Ozymandias” is advised from a second person’s perspective and explains to a story. In the poem, Shelly (1818) disagrees he heard about Ozymandias from someone else. He writes, “I met a traveller from an antique land/Who said: Two vast and trunkless lower limbs of stone/Stand in the desert” (Shelley, 1818, 1-3). Shelley’s traveller takings to describe the battered sculpture as he recognizes it and provides commentary in what he believes the sculptor attempted to convey through his function. Shelley (1818) continues, “Near them on the sand, /Half sunk, a shatter’d vignette lies, in whose frown/And old and wrinkly lip and sneer of cold command/Tell that their sculptor well those passions read” (3-6). Through this account, Shelley (1818), by the traveller, insinuates that the sculptor had a close relationship with Ozymandias and knew him well enough to determine how to capture his phrase. Shelley (1818) simultaneously comments on the sculptor’s ability to capture Ozymandias’ manifestation and how having been able to get was able to imbue the figurine with realistic qualities, although they are “stamp’d on these/lifeless things” (7-8). Shelley (1818) also responses on the statue’s ironic exergue that reads, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look in the works, en Mighty, and despair! ” And notes “Nothing beside remains: round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, /The lone and level sands stretch much away” (10-14). Despite Ozymandias’s proclamation, his kingdom offers eroded apart and even the statue that was created in his image features fallen to pieces.
On the other hand, Smith’s “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Found out Standing by Alone in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Wording Inserted Below” is told from Smith’s personal point-of-view and should provide the audience with his thoughts of the statue. Unlike Shelley (1818) who have sets out to tell a story, Johnson (1818) hopes to describe the statue as it is and think about how someone would interpret a monument enjoy it in London in the foreseeable future. Smith commences by describing the crumbled monument in simple terms: “In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone, /Stands a gigantic Lower-leg, which remote throws/The just
