Ozymandias

The "colossal wreck" of Ozymandias

The most amusing thing I read about Percy Shelley, son of privilege, was when, after he had written that stupid pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, and had the gumption to mail it to the bishops and higher muckety-mucks at Oxford, he “to his shock and grief” was unceremoniously booted from the university. (Greenblatt, 741)  It showed that, even in the Romantic era, there remained plenty of people of good character and common sense, albeit at Oxford.

Shelley, at least in his youth (he only lived 30 years), was a loser in the mold of his contemporary, Lord Byron.  Kicked out of college, he ran off with a “commoner” and became a drifter.  No job.  No money.  No skill or willingness to work.  Yet he thought the world owed him something.  His development of thought, as expressed through one of his worthless poems, that “institutional religion and … morality” were the “roots of social evil,” and that they must soon “wither away and humanity will return to its natural condition of goodness and felicity” revealed him to be quite insane. (Greenblatt, 742)

The episode with Harriet, his wife whom he was tired of, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, whom he ran off with, and that girl’s stepsister … inviting his estranged wife, Harriet to come and live with them, revealed him to be … not exactly the kind of guy you’d want your daughter to bring home for dinner.

Shelley the poet “almost entirely lacked an audience.” (Greenblatt, 742)  This demonstrated that, in the Romantic period, good character and common sense was not limited to the faculty at Oxford.  It was something the lower and middle classes possessed in great quantity.  To gain his audience, Shelley was forced to sojourn in Italy.

The most interesting thing I read about Percy Shelley, son of privilege, was his poem about Ozymandias.  I learned that Ozymandias is the Greek name for the famous Egyptian king (pharaoh) Ramses II.  I took the poem as somewhat autobiographical.  It was about a man who thought very highly of himself, calling himself “king of kings.”  But the only evidence of support for that conceit was “two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desart,” a “shattered visage” still maintaining its “sneer of cold command,” and the words etched on a pedestal, “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings.”  Shelley described this sight as others might have described his life and work, as a “colossal wreck.” (Greenblatt, 768).

And, it was short.

Works Cited.

Greenblatt, Stephen and M.H. Abrams.  Eds.   TheNorton Anthology to English Literature. 8th Ed., Vol. 2.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.