write a critical appreciation of poem by P B shelly
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
The poem Ozymandias is a satiric poem intended to convey the message that power and pride are vain and temporary possessions that make human beings arrogant and egotistical but time will treat everything and everyone equally. The situation of the poem is one in which the speaker is narrating to us what a "traveler from an antique land" had told him.
The poem develops only logically as the writer turns and twists the narration, satirizing the tyrant, specifically, and also suggesting the general theme of the vanity of power and pride. As the traveler had told this speaker, there were two "vast and trunkless legs of stone" in the midst of a desert. As the other details clearly reveal, the legs belonged to a statue of some ancient tyrant who had an empire with its capital at this place. Here was one of his enormous statues under which he had ordered the artist to write the words: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings… Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair". This suggests that the tyrant used to take it for granted that his name would be immortal in an everlasting empire of his, and therefore, the people would look at the statue and his "works" - whatever it means - and 'despair' out of awe, amazement and fear. In the letters carved on the pedestal, he has also addressed to "ye Mighty", meaning 'powerful' kings of the future; all of whom he had supposed would be much inferior to him. But the traveler looked around and saw nothing other than an endless stretch of sand, nothing of the "my works" at which even the mighty was supposed to look and despair!
The choice of words has played almost all the tricks discussed above. The traveler being from an "antique" or the ancient land suggests that the empire was an old one. In fact, we do not know the name Ozymandias as a popular one - we don't really care, if it is not the name of a "human" and 'proper' human being! The word vast suggests that the statue was really big, because even the legs without the main trunk are vast. They are being made of stone tells us that even a stone is perishable, not to mention fragile human beings, be they 'great' barbaric tyrants or small common people. The remaining are just a shattered 'visage' (or face) and the "passions" (or feelings) that can be interpreted even now. It is ironical that the signs of inhumanity survive when almost everything else for which he expressed his pride are gone. The traveler is like Eiron in Greek dramas in the way he uses tearing understatement. After reading the words on the pedestal, he looks around as if he believed the tyrant's words that presume the continuity of his empire, his name, his deeds and misdeeds, and his status. But nothing is seen, besides the wreckage of the statue. The "level sands" is a symbol of equality of treatment of everything and everyone by time, and the laws of nature. Nothing is immortal, not the least corporeal possessions and power. If at all, bad name and loathing remains if one has given pain and injustice to others.
The order of words in this poem suggests that the poem is fairly old. The poet has also changed the order of words for the sake of rhyming. Besides, he has changed word order for putting certain words at the end for throwing them into prominence, as in: "frown and… tell that its sculptor well those passions read", instead of the normal order as: "tell that its sculptor read well those passions". There is the usual iambic meter suitable for narration, but with a lot of variations and irregularities that match the turns and twists the course of the narration. The rhyming scheme is: ababb cdced cfef. But the imperfect or feminine rhyming as is sand/command, stone/frown, appear/despair are clear indications of the irony in the poem. Moreover, these misrhymngs come at the right times when the vanity of the tyrant is to be exposed
One of the unique techniques employed by this poem is its "not quite telling the attitude" but projecting the meanings in the images and other details selected to the intended defect. The present reporter never explicitly tells us what he means, but he makes it clear from the images. The humility with which the objective details are presented also satirizes the tyrant even more. This is a sonnet because there are fourteen lines and a certain pattern of rhyme. But the rhyming scheme is original, neither like in Shakespearean sonnet nor like in the original Italian sonnet. Like in a sonnet the first part consisting of eight lines (octave) presents the description and the next six lines present the thematic satiric materials.
The poem is a P.B. Shelley’s famous sonnet, one in which the revolutionary Romantic poet has expressed his hatred of tyranny, and this is related to the humanistic revolutionary theory of Shelley. But the poem is understandable and 'great' enough in its expression, theme and artistry.
hope it helps
mark as brainliest plzz!!