Percy Shelley - Ozymandias - The Frankenstein Poetry Supplement - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

Percy Shelley - Ozymandius - The Frankenstein Poetry Supplement

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver.

 

I am Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  We just finished talking through the much adored classic Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and we went everywhere in our discussion of that book.  I know I said this pretty much every episode but I stayed amazed the entire time about how many layers of meaning she had going on and she was only 18.  We talked about politics, gender-politics, religion, psychology, philosophy, chemistry, the natural sciences, drug addiction and geography- talk about  “no stone uncovered”.

 

True- and although I spent about four episodes disparaging Percy, today I am going to turn an about face- and talk about what was good and yes- perhaps even great- about the other Shelley- Percy Shelley, the less famous of the two- I’m pretty sure- ironically, although I’m really not sure if that’s true.  But, in fairness, Percy is truly a great writer of lyric poetry and definitely worthy of study- so today we want to highlight one- at least one- I’d kind of like to do more honestly, but maybe another day- of his most famous works- there were a couple to choose from, but I decided to go with the sonnet- Ozymandias,  And yes, as much as I hate to admit it, there is much that was indeed very positive about this brilliant yet troubled young man- and yes, he will always be young, because sadly he died at age 29.

 

 Well, there’s a spoiler for you….I think Mary Shelley would be the first to tell you that people are most often not all good or all bad, although she did create some pretty perfect people in her fiction, but that’s fiction- we in real life-  are just people- complicated, messy, passionate,  sometimes misguided, sometimes good and yes- sometimes even evil- but it’s never just one thing. To make everything or anyone all one thing or all another is what we call splitting and is a sign of childlike thinking.  And we have to look at everyone like that, but for him, perhaps it’s more obvious.

 

Not one thing- is a wonderful way of looking at people, especially Percy Shelley.  He’s so interesting albeit infuriating at times.  So, let’s lay it out there- and make our case for the greatness of this guy.

 

Sure- although I will say, one thing I did find interesting as I started reading a little about him is that he hasn’t always been really well-received by his county men or even his family- and that persisted  well into the twentieth century for a lot of different reasons.  In fact, I found some really terrible things people said about his work,  not just his personal life.  T.S. Eliot said he was humorless and pedantic.  I saw where one contemporary critic called his work “driveling prose run mad” or worse, “the production of a fiend, and calculated for the entertainment of devils in hell”.

 

HAHAHA!  Dang- tell us how you really feel.   Shelley’s experience in the poetry world was different than that of his wife or even some of his closest friends, Shelley was never really able to monetize his poetry.  It wasn’t popular when he wrote it, and it didn’t  sell- which is sad because he never knew how utterly famous he would be 200 years after his death.   But on the flip side, honestly, he was one poet, unlike some of those others, that didn’t really need his poetry to make money- well he certainly shouldn’t have needed it.  He was a country gentleman of the best sort- born in 1792, his father was a member of parliament and had lots of money, so Shelley’s life growing up was one of great privilege.  He was raised learning to ride fancy horses, to shoot, and do all the things English gentlemen grew up doing, basically all the things we see portrayed in all the different Julian Fellows series.  And he loved all of those things.

 

True, and in that financial sense, he was very lucky.  But that didn’t mean he was without his problems.  He had quite a few- albeit he created several of them.  We should start with the fact that He attended Eton, of course.

 

Of course.

 

But Eton, I’m getting the impression, can be a rough place, at least for writers.  We’ve had more than one struggle there.  And Shelley is in that club.  Other students there were cruel to him.  Apparently he was smaller, perhaps shy, and older boys literally chased  him with mud balls and called him “mad shelley”.

 

That’s horrible and truly inexcusable.  But, let me play the devils advocate- and I want to say that I never excuse bullying of any kind for any reason under any circumstance.  But I have to wonder what was his experience there really like-  Shelley was not a conformist and I wonder if this made it difficult for him to conform to what are specific protocols and social norms.  I saw in on letter he wrote at the age of 11 where he was inviting some kids over to play and he signed it, “NOT your obedient servant”- and of course the proper and common way for a proper gentleman to end letters was “your obedient servant”.  It gives you an indiction, although a bit of a playful one, that had this penchant for taking the opposite view- whatever that was.  It’s one of those things that can be cute and funny for us in the 21st century, but his natural tendency to defy social norms was a plague that really caused him a lot of problems.

 

Well, there is no wondering about how his antagonistic views got him into terrible trouble at Oxford.  At Oxford, during this time period, every student had to sign a statement of belief agreeing to the basic tenants of the church of England.  Well, it just wasn’t in Shelley to sign it and let it go- especially if he didn’t believe it.  What he did was co-write and distribute a pamplete called ‘The Necessity of Atheism” and not only he did he pass it around campus, but he very boldly mailed to various bishops of the church.  And not unexpectedly, he got the pushback you would anticipate.  He was immediately kicked out of school and the girl he was engaged to, a girl. Named Harriet Grove, broke off her engagement to him and instead married a clergyman her parents set her up with.

 

Well, what’s funny about that is that her rejection didn’t seem to upset him too much.  

 

He was already into free love at this point, and another thing he was into- which today isn’t all that unusual, but it was for that time period it made him look like quite the oddity was that- he was a vegetarian- and he was a vegetarian for health reasons- so progessive- I must say.  So, this as much as the free love commitment really had him labeled a radical.

 

I will refrain on commenting my opinion on this next part, but there’s no other way but to let the facts speak for themselves- listen to what happened next. So, not long after the broken engagement  he eloped with a 16 year old girl ALSO named Harriet, a Harriet Westbrook, one of his sister’s good friends and somewhat quickly had two children with her.  This elopement made his father very upset, and this relationship with his father wasn’t good for quite some time- actually I’m not sure it every recovered…because Percy kept doing bad things.  It is almost like he couldn’t help it.  Honestly, my impression from what I read about him- he kind of reminds me of Queen, the singer- just so full of feeling and emotion- sincere but sometimes off the rail- AND the turbulence in his private life doesn’t mean he doesn’t write strong work, by 1813, he was bored with Harriet and on to a new love interest named Elizabeth who inspired his first really famous piece of writing- a piece called Queen Mab- and in his piece, which, I will say, gets mixed reviews- he talks about ideals that are beautiful, a utopian world.  There is a strong sense of him wanting the world to be a better place.  He believes people can be better people.  He has a lot of faith and a lot of hope.  And this is attractive.  But for me, such a contradiction in terms to a lot of his personal choices.  And I don’t know what to make of it. 

 

Well, inside his head, he does dream big dreams, think great thoughts- fix a lot of the world’s problems but outside inside his head, he keeps doing things to get him in trouble- the next being falling in love with, seducing and running away with mary shelley and her sister, who were both underage- never mind the fact that he’s married and has two children.  In fact, Harriet’s second child and Mary’s first with Percy are only three months apart.  And you may recall from our discussion of this very incident when talking about mary’s life, Mary Shelley’s father was not very happy about any of this.  He had really admired Percy, but this was too much; however, his convictions didn’t leave him so upset to stop percy from financially supporting him, which Shelley did for quite some time.

 

Yes- but even that was a problem- it seems that if you embarrass your family so much, which he obviously did, things can happen- and it seems he provoked his father to cutting off the old allowance.  Oops!  Now what? Percy can’t support his lifestyle with no money and this is a problem- because he’s from a rich family- lots of creditors are willing to lend him cash, he- but he can’t pay it back so he has to run away (like good old victor in Frankenstein)-the stress of all this self-inflicted stress results in him getting very very very sick- again like Victor.  He actually was told he had consumption.  And by the time of that famous summer where mary shelley dreamed up Frankenstein, he was back in better financial shape (his grandfather had died and left him some money apparently), and his health seemed to be improving, although he does chose to live in more milder climates for the rest of his life. 

 

Well, he was in better shape, but that wasn’t the case for the other people in mary and percy’s lives- I guess you can say- just like Victor- but differently since there’s monster.   His ex-wife, Harriet killed herself, and Mary’s half-sister killed herself.  Mary’s sisters death seemed to really upset Mary, but Percy, from what I can tell, didn’t seem too distressed about Harriet, he fairly quickly marries Mary and tries to get his kids back (Harriet had sued him for custody) (which he doesn’t get- the courts consider him a unfit father- probably wisely)- and the grandparents get the kids.

 

And again, they have to run away- and for the next four years, they live mostly in Italy.  And all scholars agree, that this is where he came into his own and really wrote his best stuff.  He did write a lot of different things, we’ve talked about Prometheus Unbound in the previous episodes. But he wrote a beautiful Elegy on the death of John Keats, the poet who wrote ‘ode on an ancient urn” but honestly, what he’s most remembered for are his lyric poems. 

 

And I do want to take a moment to discuss what that means,  Because as you know, I’m on a lifelong crusade to get people to understand and revisit the idea of poetry- it’s somewhat fallen out of favor- at least in the classical sense.  Lyric poetry, just like lyrics in songs- does not tell a story- when we read it, we aren’t looking for a sequence of events or analyzing a character and this throws people off, When we read -generally speaking and because we’re trained from our early childhood story books- we look for the story- and in a lyric poem it’s so much more intangible.  And for most of us- that makes us tired and maybe bored.  We have the thought- well, what’s the point- there wasn’t a story.

 

But this doesn’t have to be frustrating.  It can be refreshing- in the way that something like fly-fishing is.  Yesterday, and this tangent won’t be long, I was in a zoom meeting (a wonderful mark of quarantine life)- with a friend of mine who was talking about how wonderful fly fishing is, and I asked her- what makes it better than regular fishing (which I find dull, to be honest), and she said this.  Fly fishing completely engulfs you.  It engages all of your senses and your mind.  You have to look at the current, feel the wind, other stuff too that I didn’t know what she was talking about- but what struck me and how it is analogous to this is she said something to the effect of this- it completely relieves stress because when you are engaged in fly-fishing you are NOT worried about anything else in your life- you don’t have the mental place for it- it honestly doesn’t even matter if you ever catch anything- in fact, my friend catches and releases. 

 

And poetry- specifically lyric poetry works the same way.  It doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING really- which I know is a strange thing to say.  Unless you want it to. And although that sounds like that would make it unimportant- actually, historically, it has made it very important.  Because when when you do find meaning- because you found it, because you participated so to speak in the art of it- you accept it with an uncritical or at least an open mind- even if the idea- presented in another way would turn you off completely.

 

Let me put it this way- when you say something in a poetic form- and there are several- you can get away with saying anything- things that would be totally socially inappropriate in any other context.  Let me give you an quick and dirty example example, -take rap music- which I’m not trying to disparage- because that’s not the point- rap artists really are the closest thing we have today to a popular version of lyric poetry, but rap artists have freedom that other people don’t have to say anything they want with very few social repercussions.  There are raps that talk about raping and brutalizing women, drug use and all sorts of  things no one would ever let you say if you just tried to print them in the paper- but if you say it in poetic form- somehow it flies under the radar.  And- I’m not passing judgement on that.  In fact, I’m saying this is NOT a modern function of poetry.  Poetry has always done that.  Thomas Hardy, the British novelist, famously commented that if Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition may have left him alone.  It’s really an interesting idea- and something to think about.   

 

Well, interesting you should bring that up because rock and roll has worked the exact same way….

 

I don’t know why that is really- except that we all understand, at least intuitively, that poetry isn’t meant to communicate things that are necessarily factual or even true- and we don’t hold it to that standard.  It deliberately creates a gap between what the writer says and what the reader hears and so the reader must fill the gap.  This buy- in changes the dynamnic of the relationship between reader and listener to reader and participant. 

 

Of course the other side of that is that can also say a poem can pretty much mean whatever you want it to- and that’s okay- there is no other form of communication that works like this.

 

I heard a lecture once from the famous Scottish poet, Don Patterson, who talked about this very idea. He did this funny thing where he put a line of verse through a computer translating program and translated it from English to antoher language, back to English to a different language, back to English and so forth- and as you can imagine- by the end it was totally different- and why was that the case- well, his point was that meaning in poetry is NOT what the writer says as much as what reader hears- and that is NOT the same thing- not even for a computer- much less for a living human.

 

What I say, often is not what you hear- every married person knows that!!!  But for a lyric poem- And what makes a lyric poem brilliant is when a poet can say something ambiguous enough to where you can find yourself- and your life- in the words- not the poets- it’s original enough that you can latch on to it- and adaptable enough that the words can be more than what they were to the writer- but not so vague and broad that they can mean anything to anyone and its total nonsense.  Does that even make sense?

 

Yes and back to rock and roll has worked exactly the same way as well….talk about that more

 

Now- that brings us back to Shelley- because what he is most famous for are his lyric poems and I will make the case it’s because they do exactly what we’re talking about. And ironically enough, Shelley, although seems to live his life quite selfishly, was not a selfish poet.  He didn’t write about himself hardly at all, less than 10% of his poems are in the first person (which is unusual).  His poems are ambiguous enough to not communicate anything really clearly, but clear enough to where when we do the fly-fishing thing and emerse ourselves into the language- we cannot only find our own meaning but we can be charmed by the language, the turn of phrase, the metaphor in and of itself.

 

Let’s take a look at this poem Ozymandias- and then we’ll tackle it,  Can you read it for us.

 

Read the poem.

 

Okay- are you confused?  It’s a very short poem.  In fact, it’s a sonnet- fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter.  Sonnets are almost always love poems.  So, it’s a strange form to write in for a poem like this- so why did he do it. Well, reason one Very straightforward reason- he wrote this poem in another writing competition with a friend where the object was to write a poem about Ozymandias.  So, that’s kind of funny.   But, there’s another reason- and this is where Poetry turns into fly-fishing and you have to pay attention.

 

So, if you know something about sonnets- and it’s okay if you don’t- there are really two types.  The first guy who made them famous is this guy named Petrarch- who wrote 360 something sonnets for this girl named Laura who did love him.  Anyway, he made sonnets famous and for hundreds of years people copied his style- all the way til Shakespeare.  Now Shakespeare took the sonnet form, the fourteen lines, but he changed it up a bit- he changed the rhyme scheme- but not just the rhyme Petrarch had used the this pattern that the first eight lines would present a problem, and the last six would solve it- well, Shakespeare didn’t do that.  He did this new thing- ababcdcdefefgg- and it was different.  The volta- or think of it as like the key to unlock the sonnet came at the end.  Now you might say- why do we care. 

 

Well, it’s what makes thinking about these sort of things interesting, if you’re so inclined- Shelley, who obviously knows both methods of sonnets- in typical- I’m not your obedient servant- made up his own rhyme scheme- but he didn’t exactly make a totally different one up- he just combined them. 

 

So, what does it mean.  Well, we don’t know.  That’s the thing about poetry- and especially structure- it’s a bit of a puzzle.  Why did he do that is always the question to ask.   I can tell you this for a fact, the answer is not because he didn’t know how to rhyme words.  He did it for some reason that connects to meaning- structure always supports meaning, and we are suppose t make up in our minds what that reason could possibly be- WE make the meaning.  WE collaborate with the author- and that’s what lyric poetry is all about.  So, let’s do it with this one. 

 

Garry, what can see in this poem?

 

 

Well, he’s obviously met a traveler who told him about a statue he’d seen in the desert that was all broken up.  He describes the statue, the face is grumpy and cold and there are words at the bottom that say, ‘my name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty and despair. 

 

Great- so the first question I have is why the heck is Ozymandias.  It’s the title of the poem- and titles are always important.  They give us meaning.

 

Well, historically, Ozymandias is the Greek name for Rameses the Great, or Ramses the second of Egypt.  In Memphis we love this guy because for many years his statue was in front of the biggest landmark in Memphis as you look across the Mississippi river- the Memphis pyramid.  Since Bass pro took up residence in the pyramid Rameses has moved to the university of Memphis, but we can still visit him.  The real Ramses, not the one here,  is widely considered to be one of the greatest if not THE greatest of the pharaohs, although a lot of modern scholars think he was the greatest of all propagandists amongst the pharaohs.  He definitely stands out as being the most famous even today of all the Pharoahs.  He lived to be 96 years old and his reign truly was long, peaceful- for the most part after several important conquests, but very prosperous.  Because Yul Brenner played Rameses in the famous movie The Ten Commandments a lot of people associate him with the Exodus story in the Bible as being the pharaoh of the Biblical account, but there’s no real physical evidence if that’s true.  In fact, it’s likely not true.

 

So, we know who Ozymandias was in real life.  We’ve noticed the form of the poem and made note of some oddities in terms of structure, so now it’s time to reread the whole thing again- this time looking at the details.  Again, think of it as a fly-fishing expedition- allow your brain to focus and observe- what do you see.  What do you HEAR?  Remember, poems are to be read outloud. 

 

The first thing I notice is that the whole thing is one long sentence and then three short ones- it’s hard to break up the first one- so you’re not supposed to.  You must read poems not according to the lines, but according to the breaks in the punctuation.   It’s to be read a little fast.  But it’s full of commas, there’s a colon.  There’s an exclamation point- and all of these point out things to us.

 

Okay, garry- read the first sentence.  Do you hear anything?  Was there something you noticed in terms of tone- any kinds of attitudes?

 

Well, when I read it outloud, I first noticed all the s sounds- s-s-s-s- and then I hit these hard c sounds. 

 

The next thing I noticed is that at first- the tone seemed to be neutral or apathetic- ‘I met a traveler’- so kind of like- this is not me- this other guy said all this.  

 

And then the last thing was where I got to the sculptor- I got a little confused as to who he was talking about- whose hand, whose heart- at first I thought he was talking about Ozymandias then I thought – no he’s talking about the artist. 

 

Exactly, and did you see the tone shift- the attitude of the artist is not the same attitude as the traveler or even the ‘I” whoever that is.  That artist did not Ramses.  And I think that’s what those sounds have to do with- that k-k-k- sound is cacophonous- not a harsh mean sound in English- cold command stands out against all the s sounds.  The s sounds like of makes you feel all the sand in your ear and then get land on the harsh cold statue.

 

And back to what I mean by the reader making meaning- look at all the interpretation I just did.  That’s what goes in MY mind as I read all that.  I made up the picture of the desert- I see the mean face.

 

Okay – finish out the rest and then let’s talk about meaning.

 

Garry reads the second sentence

Notice anything?

 

Well, the obvious thing is the tone changes again.  It’s sarcastic.  I notice the phrase “king of kings” which is a Bible term used for God and Jesus in the Christian New Testament.  There’s the random capital letter of Mighty that isn’t grammatically correct.  There’s some alliteration boundless and bare then lone and level then sands stretch.

 

Great- now to make meaning.  Clearly he’s making fun of Ozymandias- he’s not God- he’s not the king of kings.  He’s not Mighty- it’s incorrect to capitalize that word- like it’s incorrect to capitalize him.  Wreck and remains and round also alliterate- btw- because even though they are not side by side to each other- they are close enough to where you ear catches the r sounds and puts them together.  I think that’s important because Ramses is a round wreck!!!  Boundless and bare- highlight the emptiness not just of the landscape but of the statue.  Lone and level as well as sands and stretch also support this same idea- like it’s saying it three times.  He really wants you to know this guy is out in a vast sea of nothing and is a total nothing.

 

So, what might be the theme?

 

Well, it’s obvious that he’s criticizing Ozymandias, so I guess we can say he’s criticizing all rulers who think they are so powerful.  If Even Rameses the great can be a nothing in the desert- how much more for lesser rulers.

 

I think so too.  And let’s go back to the form- this is in the form of a sonnet- which is a love form.  Obviously, Ozymandias loves Ozymandias- but maybe that is all who loved him.  The artist doesn’t seem to.  And the traveler doesn’t even seem to know him.

 

But let’s take our interpretation to the next level.  During Percy Shelley’s life- and remember, he’s a political radical- the king on the throne is King George. Garry, give us some history.

 

Well, I don’t want to pretend to be an expert on English history.  I am way outside of my area of expertise, but as an American history teacher, the first thing that immediately comes to mind is that King George is the king during the revolutionary war with the colonies.  He’s also the king when England is at war with France, which of course, played into the American experience.

 

Exactly- and I don’t think we need to get much deeper than that, although I’m sure we could, but we can easily get the point.  Remember, percy is a pacifist.  He’s against violence.  And look at King George- trying to conquer the world, sacrificing lots of British young men in the process.  So, it’s easy to see that this poem could be metaphorical- and perhaps an English audience at the time would KNOW that’s who he’s talking about.  Saying, something like, our king thinks he’s the KING of KINGs, - he thinks he’s God, but just like Ramses- he’s a few years away from being a broken statue in the desert.

 

And no doubt- of course, this poem could be about any king- any political leader, even a present day leader that you might think is arrogant – I suspect there’s a long list of qualifying individuals from around the globe- depending on what country you live in.

 

Precisely- and this again- is how poems are personal- WE create meaning.  I do want to make one more point before we close out because I think it’s an important one- in a poem- all things have to fit towards your interpretation- and we are stuck with the unusual strcutue that we can’t explain.  How does that support our interpretation?  I think we should take one more look to see if there’s something else we should focus on= and I think there is=

 

If you at the 8th line in the poem- which by the way is at the smack dab middle of of the poem we see the word “mocked”- and in this case- it’s interesting because it’s a pun- a word that has a double meaning.  And the reason why it stands out is because it’s an obvious strange choice- he says “the hand that mocked”- well, an artist making a sculpture traditionally gets his head lobbed off if he deliberately mocks the ruler- so it means Mocks- like make a mock up- make a design- but the more common way of looking at the word mock is to mean- to make fun of- so in a sense- the artist is making fun of the ruler to his face, but the ruler is kind of too stupid or too egocentric to know it.  Ramses thought he was being portrayed as strong, but it was a mockery- his lip is wrinked and his face is a sneer- maybe because he’s throwing a tantrum- and we look down at those kinds of people.

 

So if you look at the poem in that way- the poem is NOT ONLY about Ozymandias- it’s about the artist- who got the last word.  The Artist’s impression of Ozymandias outlived Ozymandias himself.  The power of art, the power of poetry, the power of the written word always outlives everything- and of course- this brings in the theology that’s kind of a subtext- back to the king of kings.  Of course, we know that Percy was an atheist- he made that clear in college- but we also know he knows his Bible.

 

In the Christian Bible- the Bible says in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word WAS GOD- hmmm….so here’s the mockery- and it’s quite an arrogant statement if you look at it this way, but I think it’s a fair way- Shelley in a sense is saying- you think you’re God, you’re Jesus- you’re the King of Kings- I’m more of a god than you- because I make WORDS- and eternity is in the Word- not in the rock and certainly not in any ruler.

 

Good grief that’s a lot to get out of 14 lines.

 

Isn’t it- and so is the power of lyric poetry.  Very often, if you put the work in to study it, it pays out- and think this little poem is a fantastic example of this very thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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