"nothing beside remains"

January 19, 2024 8:08 PM

'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley. (slyt. 2:23) via: a kid with a camera
posted by clavdivs (32 comments total)

Have always loved this.
posted by Czjewel at 8:22 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

The narrator is Tom Bedlam

I am in awe and envy of Mr. Bedlam.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:25 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]

A poem that has come to my mind of late. And in a moody artful reading.
All u wd wnt n an slyt.
posted by y2karl at 8:39 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]

It's a hard piece. It shouldn't be mumbled but maybe full-on Tom O'Bedlam, Richard Attenborough or John Gielgud or Vincent Price doing I am an Ac Tor is too much. Better when Eleanor Bron dials it down a bit?
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:03 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

I always find an irony in the fact that Shelley was 26 when this was first published. Like what do you know about the passage of time, peach fuzz?
posted by Literaryhero at 10:57 PM on January 19 [10 favorites]

Huh. Pretty, but I don't understand the combination of the bleakness of Ozymandias with what's depicted in the images.

Egypt under el-Sisi has its problems, such as rampant overdevelopment that is erasing the country's amazing legacy. But the people and living creatures I see in the video seem to be living out lives that are likely full and meaningful. This despite the clamor of Western capital coming in and doing what it does best, which is to corrupt and distort.

Beware of the common Western cognitive frame of "oh they're in decline and isn't it SOOOO sad" when applied to Muslim nations, and that goes for the entire global South. It's largely a lie.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 11:20 PM on January 19 [9 favorites]

Yeah, this is a poem with such a precise and concrete set of images, which need to be understood exactly for the idea of the poem to get across, that I find pairing it with B-roll moody footage of Egypt to be merely interference.
posted by argybarg at 11:53 PM on January 19 [12 favorites]

They should have just copped a couple minutes of footage from The Last and First Men. And also gotten Tilda Swinton to read. That dude just couldn't quite punch through the music.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:19 AM on January 20 [2 favorites]

Not to lower the tone, but Bryan Cranston's reading is excellent.
posted by Klipspringer at 2:21 AM on January 20 [8 favorites]

I'm not crazy about the video-- the reading is rather slow and drab., but the images could be making a legitimate point. No matter now arrogantly smug a dictator is, ordinary life goes on and the dictator fades into the past. Even the lone and level sands get built over.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:52 AM on January 20 [9 favorites]

Like what do you know about the passage of time, peach fuzz?

When you're 26, six months - whether a job, or a relationship, or an apartment lease - feels like forever. Scheduling your next dental cleaning seems like the pyramids will crumble to dust and the mountains will fall before then, which is why you put a reminder in your phone.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:29 AM on January 20 [1 favorite]

The "ancient" Egyptians had their own kind of archeologists digging up, uncovering and re-discovering the even more ancient Egypt. In antiquity, the famous Sphinx was nearly covered in sand until some leader had it unburied and repurposed as a testament of the timeless power of that people. Civilization in Egypt goes so far back in time that it's dizzying to think about*

*I am obviously not an expert, but I have read these things.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:20 AM on January 20 [1 favorite]

The head of Ozymandias (aka Rameses II, aka ‘the younger Memnon’) is of course now in the British Museum.
posted by Phanx at 7:35 AM on January 20 [4 favorites]

You can get a better sense of Shelley's talent if you compare this "Ozymandias" to the version his friend Horace Smith wrote on the same subject, apparently as part of a friendly poetic contest. I think Shelley pretty clearly won.
posted by Bardolph at 8:21 AM on January 20 [4 favorites]

I don't buy these ponderous interpretations of Ozymandias. It's a poem just dripping with irony that thumbs its nose at dictators, empires, and the vainglorious. It's so short it's almost a limerick. Why does everyone reciting it have to sound like they're eulogizing a corpse? Enough of Gravely McVoiceover; let Fozzy Bear take a hack at this.
posted by phooky at 8:40 AM on January 20 [8 favorites]

I like Guy Davenport's account of the writing of the poem (scroll down). Horace Smith features prominently.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:58 AM on January 20 [5 favorites]

I still have a fondness for the Monty Python version (beginning about 1:30)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:06 AM on January 20 [3 favorites]

I always find an irony in the fact that Shelley was 26 when this was first published. Like what do you know about the passage of time, peach fuzz?

I was similarly flummoxed when I found out that one of the great songs about aging and regret was written by Jackson Browne when he was 16.
posted by Crane Shot at 9:35 AM on January 20 [7 favorites]

I've been on a bit of an ancient Egypt bender over the last few years, making copies of Egyptian furniture, reading and listening to podcasts. I was surprised to hear how much repurposing of tomb goods occurred over the course of Ancient Egyptian history. Priests could decide to commandeer royal tomb goods as part of temple operations or during times of social and economic upheaval, a person's 4th great grandmother's coffin might be repainted or broken down to contribute a newer, larger one for the recently deceased. There was robbery too and the Brooklyn Museum has an interesting article explaining why a lot of smaller, private statues had their noses broken - in the course of tomb robbery, they would want to “kill” the statue so it couldn't inform on them and if it was too much work to remove the head, then breaking the nose would suffocate it.
posted by brachiopod at 9:35 AM on January 20 [3 favorites]

it's fair to say that no comment on the delivery of this poem is definitive

I think some of the more negative receptions of the video may come down to mood? I found myself appreciating the choices made
another way to put it: thank you clavdivs, quite enjoyed this
posted by elkevelvet at 10:54 AM on January 20 [3 favorites]

let Fozzy Bear take a hack at this.

"My name is Fozzy-wozzy-as, king of comedy!
Look on my jokes, ye grumpy, and dis bear!
Wakka wakka wakka!"
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:53 PM on January 20 [10 favorites]

I liked it. I love this poem and any serendipitous opportunity to hear it again is good by me. Also, camels!

I built Ozymandias in Minecraft once, very early on. I was quite proud. 🤣
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:08 PM on January 20 [4 favorites]

Thanks elkevelvet and I agree. I was hesitant to post this, the captions are to light, voice over not strong, some flash cut reel with a message in a work to short to fully address the artists conveyance. I posted this because almost all critique posted, I see as it seems more constructive then destructive despite the nature of the material.

but I don't understand the combination of the bleakness of Ozymandias with what's depicted in the images.

there were a few images that I really didn't understand either. a shot of the two camels could represent many centuries of Western tourism juxtapose that to the two dogs. what I thought was particularly a Deus Ex Machina, pardon the pun, was the quick shot to Egyptian flag at the very end. I think it's rather overreaching and tends to dilute the images that come before.
posted by clavdivs at 2:21 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

Wakka wakka wakka!"

But do you speak wookie.
posted by clavdivs at 2:23 PM on January 20

I'll have to have a wook look in the wookie wiki...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:53 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

I always find an irony in the fact that Shelley was 26 when this was first published. Like what do you know about the passage of time, peach fuzz?

Enough to have his thoughts about it outliving him by centuries, now?
posted by Flunkie at 4:12 PM on January 20

Mozart was five when he realized his sister was getting most of the top billing.
posted by clavdivs at 4:49 PM on January 20

Huh. Pretty, but I don't understand the combination of the bleakness of Ozymandias with what's depicted in the images.

Yeah, me either. Total disassociation. Maybe it's a bit trite, but just showing dunes, sand, ruins would have still worked better. Even moving into more modern buildings, old statues, and deposed monarchs could have been more relevant than just the basic street scenes and people.

I'm pretty meh about Bryan Cranston's voice, but the desert scenes were horribly wrong, wrong, wrong. Ozymandias needs to be filmed in the African or Middle East: Sahara, Kalahari, Namib, or Rub’ al Khali. If you must use Asia, I suppose the Gobi would do. Couldn't finish the video--when I hit the motor home I LOLed and was out.

Oddly enough, I just looked up Ozymandias this morning with my coffee. I was finishing up a re-re-reread on Pratchett's Jingo. Pratchett references legs in the sand, and wanted to re-read the poem.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:07 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

Tom O'Bedlam's reading is excellent, partly because he takes his time to draw out every phrase. Plus his gravelly voice works wonders here.

I learned from my dissertation chair the habit of always returning to Shelley's poetry. What an extraordinary talent.

(And just think of the family he married into! Mary Wollstonecraft, major British feminist. William Godwin, anarchist and author of an early detective/thriller. Mary Shelley, ah, of Frankenstein and The Last Man. If they weren't such a bunch of radicals, atheists, free lovers, and vegetarians they'd be known as the first family of English letters.)
posted by doctornemo at 6:42 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
1:04. shot of statue pointing.
1:08. cutshot to woman in the street.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:

1:13 cut to same, different angle.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
1:22. cut to couple sitting, looking.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
1:29. cut shot to 'cotton' building, cut again to two dogs.
Nothing beside remains

what's interesting is that Shelly never went to Egypt and drew his inspiration upon illustrations and no doubt books and journals on Egypt. Is the poem an interpolation of what he perceives as ancient Egypt, is it dissociative to the fact that Egypt was a thriving country during his time. Shelley's main focus maybe the sands and broken statues but in this day it's living whether it's in the past or present. that's why I believe the filmmaker opened over the large Metropolis. I think the key to me is the woman in the street shopping as this is the most relevant activity I can think of in the entire film.

but just showing dunes, sand, ruins would have still worked better
Amarna.
posted by clavdivs at 7:25 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty meh about Bryan Cranston's voice, but the desert scenes were horribly wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Cranston version isn’t just a random production, it’s a promo for the antepenultimate episode of Breaking Bad from 2013, an episode entitled “Ozymandias”. The imagery naturally would be of the New Mexico desert, of places in Albuquerque. and an RV.
posted by Ranucci at 9:34 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]

My problem with the narration is that it fails to glide over the enjambments. It's really good VO sound and delivery, but I wonder if he's more accustomed to reading end-stop poetry.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:32 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]