雪莱诗作Ozymandias 赏析
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.
奥兹曼迪亚斯（杨绛 译）
我遇见一位来自古国的旅人
他说：有两条巨大的石腿
半掩于沙漠之间
近旁的沙土中，有一张破碎的石脸
抿着嘴，蹙着眉，面孔依旧威严
想那雕刻者，必定深谙其人情感
那神态还留在石头上
而斯人已逝，化作尘烟
看那石座上刻着字句：
“我是万王之王,奥兹曼斯迪亚斯
功业盖物,强者折服”
此外，荡然无物
废墟四周，唯余黄沙莽莽
寂寞荒凉，伸展四方
Before reading Ozymandias, I glanced at the writer’s name, Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major Romantic poets, whom is not unfamiliar to me. When it comes to Shelley, a famous sentence flashed upon my mind, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
Personally speaking, I really admire Shelley because of his romantic life experience. Also, William Wordsworth appraise Shelley as “One of the best artists of us all”, and Lord Byron, Shelley’s close friend once said of him “Without exception the best and least selfish man I ever knew”.
From the French writer André Maurois’s Biography of Shelley, Shelley is regarded as a character who has strongly tragic fate, he is a rebel by nature, he will not fit into any environment, but his works still concerns the reality.
From all of the lectures, Ozymandias is the poem whom I really admire. When I first read this poem, I seem to enter into a totally different world. It is a scene of utter desolation, only a bust of Ozymandias on a pedestal among the bleak desert. By means of imagination, I seemed like to stand in the desert, watching the colossal, it is a great masterpiece, still reveals the vigor and strength when Ozymandias ruled his country. The stone must have witnessed many dynasty changes in the course of history. Meanwhile, this historical impression extensively expresses some description which are highly capable of creating mental pictures.
Then I heard the sound, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Might, and despair!” the voice whistled through the fierce wind, and makes a person shiver. There is no doubt that the monologue brings out the arrogant and overconfident side of Ozymandias. Ozymandias, who was the king of kings before, was obsessed by power. Even now he became a stone and would be impossible to move, he still remembered his own brilliant merits.
Besides the strong images and imagination, there are also some reason why I like Ozymandias. To some degree, the theme of this poem is ambiguous, which covers many dimensions, and that is why I really admire Ozymandias.
Firstly, this poem can be regarded as the satire aimed at magnates. The king who had absolute power inevitably was in his last throes, and his country drew on rapidly towards destruction in the end, “Nothing beside remains”, “The lone and level sands stretch far away”. At the same time, I think that Shelley wrote this poem for the sake of mocking people who were in authority. As I know, “Ozymandias” was written in 1818, at which time Shelley may be forced to Italy with Mary and Clare Claremont, the cast off lover of Byron, showing a total disregard to other people and their feelings. On the one hand, Shelley hated so-called conservative rules. On the other hand, he considered that this prejudice was bound to fade away. However, Shelley was able to only represent it to readers by metaphors. In this poetry the king’s voice was a metaphor for the attack. Similarly, these kind of rules and bondage would wear down in the end.
Secondly, this poem reflects that art and beauty can not be everlasting. The sculpture of Ozymandias, as a symbol of beauty, was hard to bear the exposure of rain and wind day after day, only leaving the broken and lifeless debris. By the way, how long could the Ozymandias existed in the desert, and who knew? Faced with the power of time, every perfect thing would become imperfect, time is so strong that can ruin everything.
Thirdly, this poem demonstrates that only time is perpetual, everything including power, artistic beauty even human beings, as time goes by will all be gone. Time is so powerful that it destroys everyone’s brilliant victories. But eventually, no one will escape the fate. No one has the capacity to transcend time.
As the proverb goes: There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes.
There are just three of the ambiguous themes that I have came up with. As for other themes, I do think that Ozymandias likes a highlight, throw off many different aspects which give readers space of imagination to fill in the gap.
Reading some reference materials, I realized that Ozymandias was a Greek name for the Egyptian king Ramesses II (1304-1237 BC.) Records the inscription on the pedestal of his statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of Nile river from Luxor ) as “King of kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works”.
Horace Smith once also wrote a poem describing Ozymandias. Someone considered that they took the same subject, told the same story, even made the same moral point. But from my own perspective, Shelley’s sonnet is more refined than Smith’s. There were different voices appeared in Shelley’s poem. For instance, the king’s voice was high, representing he took charge of power; the sculptor said nothing but he may discern everything; the traveller told the narrator the whole story, and the narrator witnessed the story. To some degree, it's also a suggestive story of people facing an uncertain future, and of a country searching for a new sense of patriotic identity.
Work Cited:
① The Poems of Shelley,II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]:311
② Trans. C.H,Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 33 [Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I 47
③ Reiman, Donald H and Sharon B.Powers. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Norton 1977.ISBN 0-393-09164-3
④ André, Maurois. Ariel Ou La Vie Shelly ISBN 7308121836
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.
奥兹曼迪亚斯（杨绛 译）
我遇见一位来自古国的旅人
他说：有两条巨大的石腿
半掩于沙漠之间
近旁的沙土中，有一张破碎的石脸
抿着嘴，蹙着眉，面孔依旧威严
想那雕刻者，必定深谙其人情感
那神态还留在石头上
而斯人已逝，化作尘烟
看那石座上刻着字句：
“我是万王之王,奥兹曼斯迪亚斯
功业盖物,强者折服”
此外，荡然无物
废墟四周，唯余黄沙莽莽
寂寞荒凉，伸展四方
Before reading Ozymandias, I glanced at the writer’s name, Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major Romantic poets, whom is not unfamiliar to me. When it comes to Shelley, a famous sentence flashed upon my mind, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
Personally speaking, I really admire Shelley because of his romantic life experience. Also, William Wordsworth appraise Shelley as “One of the best artists of us all”, and Lord Byron, Shelley’s close friend once said of him “Without exception the best and least selfish man I ever knew”.
From the French writer André Maurois’s Biography of Shelley, Shelley is regarded as a character who has strongly tragic fate, he is a rebel by nature, he will not fit into any environment, but his works still concerns the reality.
From all of the lectures, Ozymandias is the poem whom I really admire. When I first read this poem, I seem to enter into a totally different world. It is a scene of utter desolation, only a bust of Ozymandias on a pedestal among the bleak desert. By means of imagination, I seemed like to stand in the desert, watching the colossal, it is a great masterpiece, still reveals the vigor and strength when Ozymandias ruled his country. The stone must have witnessed many dynasty changes in the course of history. Meanwhile, this historical impression extensively expresses some description which are highly capable of creating mental pictures.
Then I heard the sound, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Might, and despair!” the voice whistled through the fierce wind, and makes a person shiver. There is no doubt that the monologue brings out the arrogant and overconfident side of Ozymandias. Ozymandias, who was the king of kings before, was obsessed by power. Even now he became a stone and would be impossible to move, he still remembered his own brilliant merits.
Besides the strong images and imagination, there are also some reason why I like Ozymandias. To some degree, the theme of this poem is ambiguous, which covers many dimensions, and that is why I really admire Ozymandias.
Firstly, this poem can be regarded as the satire aimed at magnates. The king who had absolute power inevitably was in his last throes, and his country drew on rapidly towards destruction in the end, “Nothing beside remains”, “The lone and level sands stretch far away”. At the same time, I think that Shelley wrote this poem for the sake of mocking people who were in authority. As I know, “Ozymandias” was written in 1818, at which time Shelley may be forced to Italy with Mary and Clare Claremont, the cast off lover of Byron, showing a total disregard to other people and their feelings. On the one hand, Shelley hated so-called conservative rules. On the other hand, he considered that this prejudice was bound to fade away. However, Shelley was able to only represent it to readers by metaphors. In this poetry the king’s voice was a metaphor for the attack. Similarly, these kind of rules and bondage would wear down in the end.
Secondly, this poem reflects that art and beauty can not be everlasting. The sculpture of Ozymandias, as a symbol of beauty, was hard to bear the exposure of rain and wind day after day, only leaving the broken and lifeless debris. By the way, how long could the Ozymandias existed in the desert, and who knew? Faced with the power of time, every perfect thing would become imperfect, time is so strong that can ruin everything.
Thirdly, this poem demonstrates that only time is perpetual, everything including power, artistic beauty even human beings, as time goes by will all be gone. Time is so powerful that it destroys everyone’s brilliant victories. But eventually, no one will escape the fate. No one has the capacity to transcend time.
As the proverb goes: There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes.
There are just three of the ambiguous themes that I have came up with. As for other themes, I do think that Ozymandias likes a highlight, throw off many different aspects which give readers space of imagination to fill in the gap.
Reading some reference materials, I realized that Ozymandias was a Greek name for the Egyptian king Ramesses II (1304-1237 BC.) Records the inscription on the pedestal of his statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of Nile river from Luxor ) as “King of kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works”.
Horace Smith once also wrote a poem describing Ozymandias. Someone considered that they took the same subject, told the same story, even made the same moral point. But from my own perspective, Shelley’s sonnet is more refined than Smith’s. There were different voices appeared in Shelley’s poem. For instance, the king’s voice was high, representing he took charge of power; the sculptor said nothing but he may discern everything; the traveller told the narrator the whole story, and the narrator witnessed the story. To some degree, it's also a suggestive story of people facing an uncertain future, and of a country searching for a new sense of patriotic identity.
Work Cited:
① The Poems of Shelley,II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]:311
② Trans. C.H,Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 33 [Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I 47
③ Reiman, Donald H and Sharon B.Powers. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Norton 1977.ISBN 0-393-09164-3
④ André, Maurois. Ariel Ou La Vie Shelly ISBN 7308121836
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语觉道 转发了这篇日记The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. 虽是杨绛，但这句的翻译 我不敢认同，翻译的不咋地
2019-12-26 10:05:28
