Ozymandias

Shelley’s identification with Romanticism, an artistic and literary movement, is observable both in his literary contributions (including “Ozymandias”) and the biographical details of his life. Romanticism originated in France and Britain in the early 1800s, and its adherents emphasized ideals such as the power of the imagination, the importance of emotion, and the power of nature.

“Ozymandias” reflects all of these ideals. The poem’s imagery contrasts descriptions of the desert, where the statue exists, with the concrete example of the manmade statue; the placement of the statue against this landscape highlights the superiority of nature, which, slowly but surely, is overpowering the monumental efforts of one man to be immortalized and defy the passage of time.

The sheer size of the statue hints at another Romantic notion, that of the sublime; the word “sublime” describes a moment in which an individual experiences emotional overwhelm as a result of confronting the majesty of nature, and the image of the ruined statue in the desert invites such a response. More impressive than the statue, according to the Romantic notion of the sublime, is the seemingly endless expanse of desert that appears to consume the statue’s ruins as the natural stone wears down into grains of sand, returning the monument, a testimony to human power, to its earthbound origins.