Ozymandias
Did you watch last night’s Breaking Bad? Wow.
No spoilers here, just a personal statement and a literature reference. First, the statement: That was the most heartbreaking episode of Breaking Bad I’ve watched…
Now the literature reference:
The title of the show, if you bought it on iTunes, is “Ozymandias.” This title makes an English teacher jump up and down and scream, “Allusion!” (My former students will chuckle at my continual obsession with literature terms.)
Anyways, today I thought I’d reread the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelly. (Here’s a fun coincidence: I used this poem during first teaching lesson in my own classroom at Holly High School, in 2003 for World Literature seniors!) It’s a powerful message to anyone believing money or power matter.
* * *
“Ozymandias”
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
* * *
After rereading the poem again today, it was the first time I noticed how Shelley puts distance between us, the readers, and the very statue described. The speaker of the poem is retelling a story from an traveler. It’s not even a statue the speaker witnessed! Even the ruin is simply a telling!
That’s the less obvious Romanticism theme: The most powerful thing in humanity is a story; the sublime is found in passing down of words, as nature continues…
And Breaking Bad sure has its characters, and fans, retelling stories…
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