Shelley and Smith\'s Ozymandias Compare/Contrast in Ways

Shelley and Smith's Ozymandias Compare/contrast

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger (1972) claims, "When we 'see' a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we 'saw' the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history." Berger proposes that sharing ones experiences is dependent on that individual's perspective. Two poets that are able to demonstrate how perspectives may differ after experience the same event are Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith, who in 1817 competed against each other to see who could write the best sonnet about Ozymandias, a partially destroyed monument of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II. During the course of this competition, Shelley penned "Ozymandias" and Smith penned "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing By Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below." Both poems were published by Leigh Hunt in The Examiner; Shelley's on January 11, 1818 and Smith's on February 1, 1818. Despite the fact both poems were written in the same sonnet format and about the same object, Shelly and Smith offer readers differing perspectives of what they experienced.

"Ozymandias" is told from a second person's perspective and tells a story. In the poem, Shelly (1818) contends he heard about Ozymandias from someone else. He writes, "I met a traveller from an antique land/Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert" (Shelley, 1818, 1-3). Shelley's traveller proceeds to describe the battered statue as he sees it and provides commentary on what he believes the sculptor attempted to convey through his work. Shelley (1818) continues, "Near them on the sand,/Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown/And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command/Tell that its sculptor well those passions read" (3-6). Through this account, Shelley (1818), by way of the traveller, insinuates that the sculptor had a close relationship with Ozymandias and knew him well enough to know exactly how to capture his expression. Shelley (1818) simultaneously comments on the sculptor's ability to capture Ozymandias' expression and how he was able to capture was able to imbue the statue with lifelike qualities, despite the fact that they are "stamp'd on these/lifeless things" (7-8). Shelley (1818) also comments on the statue's ironic inscription that reads, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" And notes "Nothing beside remains: round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/The lone and level sands stretch far away" (10-14). Despite Ozymandias's proclamation, his kingdom has eroded away and even the statue that was created in his image has fallen to pieces.

On the other hand, Smith's "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" is told from Smith's personal point-of-view and aims to provide the reader with his impressions of the statue. Unlike Shelley (1818) who sets out to tell a story, Smith (1818) intends to describe the statue as it is and contemplate how someone would interpret a monument like it in London in the future. Smith begins by describing the crumbled monument in simple terms: "In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,/Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws/The only shadow that the Desert knows" (Smith, 1818, 1-3). Smith (1818) then proceeds to dictate the statue's inscription and then comment on how this broken statue are all that remain of Ozymandias's vast city. Smith (1818) writes, " "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,/"King of Kings: this might city shows/The wonders of my hand." / The city's gone!/Naught but the leg remaining to disclose/The sight of that forgotten Babylon" (4-8). The last four lines of the poem show a shift in attitude as Smith (1818) transitions from paying attention to the statue to contemplating how someone would interpret a similar object in the future. He writes, "We wonder, and some hunter may express/Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness/Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,/He met some fragment huge, and stops to guess/What wonderful, but unrecorded race/Once dwelt in that annihilated place" (Smith, 1818, 9-14). Through the introduction of this possibility, Smith allows the reader to see that he perceives London to be the equivalent of Ozymandias's Babylon, which consequently emphasizes his fear that London may suffer the same fate as Ozymandias's crumbled kingdom.