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The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by S
by spodek 13y ago
The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless)
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".
EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.
- jmduke 13y agoThere's something particularly ironic about calling Ozymandias timeless.
- derefr 13y agoIt's a bit of a "the king is dead; long live the King!" thing. There will always be an Ozymandias.
- mjburgess 13y agoThe poem is itself ironic... it's about Ramses III who rule c. 1000 BC and yet was famous enough that poetry would be inspired by him 3000 years later.
- mturmon 13y agoI agree. When I was younger, I only got the obvious message about the transience of material accomplishment. The poem is more multifaceted than that. One starting place is to think about the layers of interpretation (Ramses -> sculptor -> traveler -> narrator). Everyone concerned is still talking, in different ways, about the memory of Ramses. As long as we're on the topic, here's one of my favorite expressions of parallels between us and people in the past: https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q This bench sits behind the library at Cornell University.
- bloaf 13y agoLacking belief in an afterlife, many early civilizations instead strove to achieve immortality in "kleos": the fame that does not decay.
- themckman 13y agoCertainly relevant, but, Breaking Bad fan?
- mburns 13y agoNo, the Breaking Bad writers are fans of Ozymandius.
- hvs 13y agoI first thought of "Watchmen" by Alan Moore.
- potatolicious 13y agoOr "Civilization IV", which had this narrated by Leonard Nimoy :)
- 205guy 13y agoAm I the only one around here... Who was not educated by pop culture references, But actually remembers reading this in school? Yeah, yeah, I get it, it's fun when we find subtle references to pop culture in the greater world around us. But it just seems wrong when the pop reference replace the actual culture (or maybe the irony is so subtle as to seem non-ironic, ironically--or something). Somebody should update the wikipedia page with a "References in Pop Culture" section.
- jlgreco 13y agoEh, I suspect there were people who thought the same as you when Shakespeare packaged up Greek mythology and fart jokes for the unwashed masses.
- 205guy 13y agoRight, but since then, we've attempted to give everyone a liberal arts education. But many are resistant to that and prefer the teat of the entertainment industry. Nothing wrong with hearing about something on TV and googling it (Wikipedia has revolutionized instant knowledge in this way). It's the people who don't dig deeper and don't realize the prior reference and deeper meaning to begin with. And so it seems like they're missing the subtle reference to the real world in the TV show.
- L_Rahman 13y agoBryan Cranston of this to promote the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad. It's set to some beautiful shots of the New Mexico desert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE
- dev_jim 13y agoJeez man, Breaking Bad was just last week. Show a little originality in your postings.
- graeme 13y agoIt's a poem that had great meaning before Breaking Bad, and a poem that will retain it's meaning long after Breaking Bad is forgotten. I never saw that show, and the poem seemed quite relevant to me.
- absherwin 13y agoKipling's The Palace is also fitting perhaps even more so for those building today's successful platforms: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm. WHEN I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan - Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran - Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known. Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread; Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart. As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride, They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside. They said - "The end is forbidden." They said - "Thy use is fulfilled. "Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s - the spoil of a King who shall build." I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers. All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."