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Ozymandias & History

00:00 Sun 05 Jul 1998. Updated: 17:38 11 Jan 2007
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Ozymandias & History

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In December 1817, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias, one of the greatest poems in the English language. His poem was inspired by seeing a guest of his, Horace Smith, write a poem on a similar topic. This picture has both poems, side by side, including Horace’s wonderful title…

This was a more ambitious venture for me, trying to get away from black backgrounds and into further use of colour. I’m happy with the background, which evokes exactly what I wanted. The whole things is a little crowded, but I resigned myself to that when I decided to put two sonnets in one image. On the other hand, the crowding effectively gets across the idea that Shelley’s poem overshadows Smith’s.

An essay on this topic is contained in Guy Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination.

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