Today I am going to be making an iconic argument for my favorite poem of all time:

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Hopefully some of you have seen this poem before, as it
is one of the most often anthologized sonnets from the romantic era, and has even found its
way into our popular culture in the show Breaking Bad. I am going to do my best to do this
poem justice in my short amount of time up here, but I encourage you all to take a closer look
at it after class. Allow me now to read it for you:

READ THE POEM ALOUD TO CLASS

Im going to argue here that what the poem really does, what its really about, is the desire,
attempt, and the achievement of immortality through art. In order to show how this happens
lets take this poem line by line.
As per most sonnets, the poem is written in iambic pentameter. There is not a lot of metrical
substitution going on in the poem, but this makes the ones that Shelley does use all the more
powerful. In the first line we have an initial trochaic substitution as well as a medial anapest. I
will come back to this initial trochaic substitution near the end of our analysis, but for now let
us look at the anapest. The rising accentuation appears on the first syllable of the word
antique. There are only four anapestic substitutions in the entire poem, each of them
drawing attention to the places where Shelleys form and content iconically merge. They all
occur on words dealing with archaic things the anapest, the hallmark of the age, marked a

return to artistic experimentation, as well as the possibility for metrists to have more power
in their lines. Here, with so few anapests, they seem to function as a way to bridge the gap of
time, of the tendency for the old to go by the wayside. In His Own Way, Shelley uses the
anapest to make the quote antique (which by definition is a relic that has lost the pertinence
of its function, if not its ability to perform said function altogether) once more modern. The
fact that the 19th century sees a revival of the anapest -- itself considered archaic the century
before -- showcases the ability of the art form (poetry) not only to overcome its own
archaisms, but to pluck other bygone relics from the wayside of history, and to bring them
easily back into a state of relevance.
Lets take a look now at the image contained in lines 2, 3, and 4. Line 3 allows for multiple
prosodic notations of foot divisions and stress placement. (you can scan it as a fully
pentametric line with an initial trochee, followed by four iambs, but I do not feel that this was
Shelleys intent) While most anthologizations of this poem spell the word desert with our
common contemporary spelling, the original version was published with an archaic spelling
D-E-S-A-R-T, which is preserved in your handouts. By 1817 our contemporary spelling was
considered correct and proper. However several things happen as a result of Shelleys use of
the archaic spelling. First, it makes in the desart read as an anapest, which also allows the
conjunctive phrase on the sand to function as it would in natural speech, as an anapest as
well. These factors, combined with the ellipsis, which denotes something missing, cause me to
favor a shortened tetrameter line. Having accepted this line is tetrameter, we can understand
how this line works at an even deeper iconic level: the line opens was initial trochee, and the

shortened meter make this appear as a kind of militant form of catalexis, where the entire
terminal foot is missing, and the initial unaccented syllable is trochaically deposed.
Interestingly enough, such a line is often referred to as a headless line. So here we see form
mimicking content again at first it appears as though the statue of Ozymandias is headless,
until we get to the true image, wherein his head is simply deposed. Also, finally, as the spelling
is by Shelleys time already archaic, its appearance on the page immediately causes the reader
to make tentative connections to art and artifice, which is what the poem is really about.

Lets now look at what kind of sonnet this poem is. It opens up like an English sonnet and then
it shifts into the mode of a Italian and sonnet. We will return to why this blending is important
at the end of our discussion, but for now let us look at what this blending allows Shelley to do:
both forms of the sonnet are often referred to as arguments, because of the way they develop
problem and then pose a solution. The solutions come at points called turns, as we all know
from writing sonnets ourselves. In a Petrarchan sonnet the turn occurs on line nine after the
problem has been fully described. The problem which is fully described, is not only the
crumbling monument falling to the sands of the desert the final image we get before the
first phase of our turn, has to do with the sculptor, whose work mocked the very man it was
meant to immortalize. Our problem has been developed to a point where we can see that art
which has been commissioned truly belongs to the artist, not to the subject.

Now would be a good time to look at the second handout you have, in order to help make
sense of what Im about to argue is going on here. We look at the framework of the poem, we
see that Ozymandias is attempting to secure his own immortality through a monument left to
him. The phrase on the pedestal, my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / look on my works,
ye Mighty, and despair! is transformed by Shelley, or rather interpreted by Shelley, as a
challenge to God. The phrase King of Kings did not mean for Ozymandias what it means for
us, what it meant for Shelley. Ozymandias was a real person, Ramses II. he lived from 1292 to
1225 BC, long before the Christian faith came around and gave the exact epithet he chose for
himself to God or Christ. This irony was not lost on Shelley, who chooses to capitalize the word
mighty in order to turn Ozymandias assessments of his legacy as mighty into an
apostrophe addressed to God. What Shelley has done here, then, is draw attention to the fact
that Ozymandias is attempting to usurp the immortality of God. And yet as we have already
seen just prior to the first phase of our turn, whatever power Ozymandias had has been
usurped by the sculptor who created his statue. Now we begin to work our way up the layers
of the poem back to Shelley himself, the author. The sculptors statue has been ravaged by the
sands of time, and we know it will not be around forever. The power of the sculptor, which
was usurped from Ozymandias, is at the beginning of the poem in line 1, usurped by the
traveler who is telling the tale to the speaker. The traveler represents an even older art form,
the oral tradition, whose power bounces from speaker to speaker depending on whoever is
telling the story. The first word of the first line is I. thus the speaker of the poem has usurped
the power of the traveler.

Let us return now briefly to our prosodic notation, so that we can wrap this all up. In line 7
there is a medial trochaic substitution on the phrase stamped on which functions as a literal
iconic stamp, the equivalent of what is known as a Makers Mark. Going back up to line 1,
and the initial trochaic substitution which I promised to return to at the beginning of my
presentation, we see that the poet, Shelley, has imposed his own metrical Makers Mark upon
the layering of power which has been usurped by the speaker of the poem.
The power of this initial trochaic substitution cannot be overstated. Shelley here has created a
position for himself which supervenes on time by virtue of his notcold command of meter
and literary devices.
One literary device we have not talked about yet is the fact that the poem is highly sibilant,
that is, it alliterates on the S more than on any other letter. The final image of the desert sands
which are literally reclaiming Ozymandias monument, are also metaphoric of the Sands of
time. As readers, because of the preponderance of sibilance, we can hear the shifting of these
sands. Here is where things get really weird, if they werent weird already. The sands of time
are contained within the poem, which itself is contained in the speech of the traveler who
story has been appropriated by the speaker. Shelley himself supervenes on all, and he is
removed from the influence of time referenced in his work of art: his work will not erode or be
buried; there is more than one copy. In fact its existence is nearly platonic, as new copies can
be printed for as long as there are humans; indeed this is the only way artistic immortality
matters.

Shelleys form is the sonnet, but as we have already mentioned, it is not a traditional sonnet. I
was unable to find in my research exactly when the blending of English and Italian sonnet
forms and conventions began, or who was the first to do so. However, that does not mean
that we cannot extrapolate something here. English sonnets are interchangeably referred to as
Shakespearean Sonnets. Italian sonnets are interchangeably known as Petrarchan sonnets.
Both often deal with the poets desire to immortalize some youthful figure or object of love.
By blending these two forms in his own way regardless of whether he was the first to do it
Shelley has usurped the power of the name-brand sonnet; he has created his own Shelleyian
sonnet.

All of these representations and usurpations are grabs not just for power, but attention. If no
one is around to pay attention, then the whole point of immortality through art is moot. Here
we have in the final phase of the turn which occurs with the final image contained in lines 13
and 14, the real solution: the only way to achieve immortality, or a Godlike status through
art, is to escape the erosive sands of time. The only way to do this is through the art form of
the artist its self. The art form of poetry endures over oral history, over sculpture, and the
tools by which the artist leaves his mark are intricately woven into the very fabric of the
words without leaving chisel marks the artist is safely hidden and removed from the
immediacy of his work which allows it and him to achieve true timelessness.