Ozymandias詩的中文：
奧茲曼迪亞斯（楊絳 譯）
雪萊
我遇見壹位來自古國的旅人
他說：有兩條巨大的石腿
半掩於沙漠之間
近旁的沙土中，有壹張破碎的石臉
抿著嘴，蹙著眉，面孔依舊威嚴
想那雕刻者，必定深諳其人情感
那神態還留在石頭上
而斯人已逝，化作塵煙
看那石座上刻著字句：
“我是萬王之王,奧茲曼斯迪亞斯
功業蓋物,強者折服”
此外，蕩然無物
廢墟四周，唯余黃沙莽莽
寂寞荒涼，伸展四方
Ozymandias詩的英文賞析如下：
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:
The Poems of Shelley,II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]:311
Trans. C.H,Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 33 [Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I 47
Reiman, Donald H and Sharon B.Powers. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Norton 1977.ISBN 0-393-09164-3
André, Maurois. Ariel Ou La Vie Shelly ISBN 7308121836
擴展連接：
珀西·比希·雪萊（英文原名：Percy Bysshe Shelley，公元1792年8月4日—公元1822年7月8日），英國著名作家、浪漫主義詩人，被認為是歷史上最出色的英語詩人之壹。英國浪漫主義民主詩人、第壹位社會主義詩人、小說家、哲學家、散文隨筆和政論作家、改革家、柏拉圖主義者和理想主義者，受空想社會主義思想影響頗深。
雪萊生於英格蘭薩塞克斯郡霍舍姆附近的沃恩漢，12歲進入伊頓公學，1810年進入牛津大學，1811年3月25日由於散發《無神論的必然》，入學不足壹年就被牛津大學開除。1813年11月完成敘事長詩《麥布女王》，1818年至1819年完成了兩部重要的長詩《解放了的普羅米修斯》和《倩契》，以及其不朽的名作《西風頌》。1822年7月8日逝世。恩格斯稱他是“天才預言家”。
“Ozymandias” 是英國浪漫主義詩人雪萊（Percy Bysshe Shelley）寫的壹首十四行詩，首次發表於1818年1月11日的 The Examiner。第二年，它被收入了Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems?（1819年）以及他在1826年出版的詩歌的遺作。“Ozymandias”是雪萊最著名的作品，經常被選集。
雪萊在與他的朋友兼詩人霍拉斯史密斯（1779-1849）的友好競爭中寫下了這首詩，史密斯也同樣以“Ozymandias”寫了壹首十四行詩，並且在在雪萊的十四行詩之後幾周，史密斯的詩也被發表在?The Examiner上。這兩首詩都探索了歷史的命運和時間的蹂躪：即使是最偉大的人和他們偽造的帝國也是無常的，他們的遺產決定於衰敗。
在古代，Ozymandias（?συμανδ?α?）是埃及法老拉美西斯二世的希臘名字。雪萊於1817年開始寫他的詩，不久之後大英博物館宣布從公元前13世紀收購了拉美西斯二世雕像的壹大片，導致壹些學者相信雪萊的靈感來自於此。雕像頭部和軀幹的7.25噸碎片於1816年被意大利冒險家喬瓦尼巴蒂斯塔貝爾佐尼從底比斯的拉美西斯太平間寺廟中移除。預計它將於1818年抵達倫敦，但直到1821年才到達。
參考資料：
Ozymandias-Wikipedia（維基百科）
珀西·比希·雪萊-百度百科