Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an ancient country· said:
huge, without trunk, two legs of stone stand in the desert ...
Near them, straight in the sand immersed, a crushed face·
the skythrwpa of lips, tucked in a cold smile supremacy,
they say the sculptor that read correctly these passions
still living etched in this inanimate things –
hand the heart and laughed off the ' threpse.
And over at kripidi these words achnofainontai:
' Ozymandias ' my name, the King of Kings,
look at my works, strong and despair!’’
Else nothing left. Around wearing
the colossal ruins, vast, naked,
alone in the desert, and flat, stretching away.
Percy Mpys Shelley (PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 1792-1822)
Translation: Katerina Schina
Xeimwniatiko afternoon of 1817. In the large library a pleasant House, located on the outskirts of town Marlowe, a banker from London, named Horace Smith, enjoys quiet his book. The host of, a young man, a week now studies Gibbwna, Mpoyrkcharnt and the works of Count Swsmpef de Bolne· the has captivated his last work "Ruins, or Reflections on the destiny of the Empires ' and exchange with the banker some related thoughts. His wife sits silent side to fire, reading Tacitus. Her first novel is already in the printer. Title of, "Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus". Our banker reads Diodorus. Thinking to write a thoughtful sonnet: It has inspired the description of a ruined monument he encountered among the hundreds of pages of historic. Before 3.300 years, about, the greatest Pharaohs in Egypt's history, the Ramses II ", commissioned a statue and built the city of Thebes. Had a height of twenty feet, weighing a thousand tons and at the base of the bore the inscription: "I'm the Oyser-Ma-Ra, the King of Kings, Ruler of upper and lower Egypt ... more Anyone who wishes to get to know my greatness, Behold I, Let's try to exceed what was». Six hundred years later, the Greek traveler Hecataeus visited Egypt and created a statue of Ramses description, trying to be more precise as could. But did mistake in transcription of the name. The Oyser-Ma-Ra was Ozymandyas (Ozy-man-Jupiter) a word more familiar to the Greek ear. The book of lost, but Diodorus it included this description in world history who wrote the season of August and which extended to forty entire volumes. The inscription at the base of the statue had been transferred as follows: "The King of Kings am I Ozymandyas. Anyone who wants to know how big I am and where lie, Let's exceed my actions, If you can». So, While the winter sun was setting, in the weak light of a candle, the stylist-banker Horace Smith wrote: In Egypt's Sandy silence / stands a giant foot that scatters / the only shadow that the desert knows». Before he could complete the turn, the host of the approaching. He proposes to write a sonnet on the same topic. And writes: "I met a traveller from an ancient country. /Said: huge, without trunk, two feet of stone / rising in the desert ... Near them, straight in the sand / immersed, a crushed face· the skythrwpa of / lips, tucked in "a cold smile supremacy, / they say the sculptor that read correctly these passions / still living etched f "this inanimate things / hand the heart and laughed off the "threpse. / And over at kripidi these words achnofainontai: / "My name is Ozymandias" t, the King of Kings, / look at my works,strong, and despair! » / Else nothing stays. Around wearing / the colossal ruins, vast, naked, / alone in the desert, and flat, stretching away». It took ten minutes (or about) to write the Shelley one of the masterpieces of the English poetry. They were assisted by a Pharaoh, a group of historical, explorers and travelers and the forgotten today Horace Smith. Genius means, as a well-known critic has written, being in the right place at the right time, ready to adraxeis the moment. Horace Smith and Percy B. Shelley wrote the Sonnets to a newspaper, which published both. The honest and fastidious Smith titloforise the poem "on a whopping granite foot, who discovered to only istatai in the desert of Egypt, with the relevant inscription etched on the base ". The Shelley named his own «Ozymandyas». Genius might mean and to know how to titloforiseis a poem.
Haris Vlavianos (TA NEA, 2000)
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