Recently (May 22ⁿᵈ, in fact), I wrote about my way of learning… how difficult I find it to just memorize something… how I actually have to learn it and understand it. And the flipside of that… how if I actually manage to memorize anything, it sticks with me forever…. I suppose because of the way I learned it; to some extent, I understand it… it’s not just a jumble of words.
Such is the case with my favourite poem of all time, one I learned over 35 years ago. A classic and a favourite, written about by countless students over the years. I learned it back then, I and I still know it… and next time we’re having a coffee or a beer or whatever, call me on it… I’ll be happy to recite it for you. And if you want a far better version, check out Bryan Cranston’s reading of it on YouTube. It’s incredible.
“Ozymandias” – by Percy Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
OK… great poem. Fantastic imagery. You can totally see it… and the symbolism and message is pretty clear. Some very powerful king, thousands of years ago (it’s understood this was Ramses II, who was Pharaoh around 3,300 years ago) built these colossal cities, huge monumental cities that will survive forever. And in the middle of it, a huge statue of himself, proclaiming to the world how great he is, fear him, worship him, etc. And… today, it’s all gone, except, ironically, for this shattered remnant of all that boasting. Look around at all my awesomeness… but there’s nothing to see. It’s all been swallowed up by the desert.
The conventional analysis has to do with us, 3,300 years later, softly chuckling to ourselves at the colossal ego of this guy, thinking his stuff would last forever. Ha Ha, silly pharaoh, don’t you get it, nothing lasts forever, ha ha, you narcissistic, pretentious ego-maniac. If you read my report, and those of my fellow students… and those of thousands of others who’ve had to analyze this poem, that’s what you’ll get. Every variation on that theme; the poem is about hubris, period.
I learned this poem when I was a kid. I thought about it when I started my first job, about how I was building a colossal city… for someone else. I thought about it a lot over the years, building my own cities, knowing full well that I’ll get to enjoy them while I’m alive and so will my kids and close friends and all that, but, of course, one day it’ll all be gone, or, better put — transformed into something else. Ozymandias’ empire crumbled to literal dust — the very sand from which it emerged. I’m now wondering about the present-day versions of that. What will become of these words… things that barely exist… ones and zeroes, which, in the right order — mean a lot, but scramble them a bit and you have nothing. And stuff… the house, the cars, whatever. All transient. Just stuff. And it made me realize something recently, after 35 years of thinking about this poem. That maybe Ozymandias wasn’t such a short-sighted inward-facing fool after all. Maybe what he’s proclaiming to the world is the opposite… it’s like, look around — all of you — everything you are doing today — for what? It’s all going to crumble. Look at me, and everything I built! Gone! All gone! Now there is something to despair about. He wasn’t throwing into our faces how awesome he was and how immortal he was… he was saying… jeez, people… look… if I can’t build something that’ll last forever, what chance do you have? None! It’s all for nothing. That is what you should despair about.
I wish I could go back to grade 10 and present that. Get a serious “wow” look from the teacher, who I would hope would see the genius in that interpretation and give it the A+ is deserves. As opposed to the C I got because, you know, “Mr. Kemeny, I find your effort lacking”.
What’s also lacking in effort, and arguably missing in action, is leadership south of the border. I’ve been bashing Donald Trump, and his response to this pandemic, for a while now. With good reason, in my opinion. I had thought it’d be the crisis that would define his failure as president. That’s going to be a smaller part of the story, as it turns out. Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, he perhaps could have had some redemption in the proper handling of what now, no doubt, will become the defining issue of his presidency.
The masterful reading of that poem by Bryan Cranston is him speaking in relation to his character, Walter White. If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad — you’re lucky, because now you get to experience what’s arguably the best TV series ever made. Queue it up. Go watch it. Walter White starts off as a pretty normal high-school teacher. Then, you could say, he gets into drugs. And, over the next few years, things change dramatically. And, no spoilers, but… you could say, things don’t end well. Things crumble.
Donald Trump has literally built the sort of empire that’s meant to crumble. Towers, casinos, golf courses. Similar to those towers and ski hills and fake islands in Dubai… all will be swallowed up by the sand one day. And none of that matters. Nor should it. History will not judge him on how awesome his (now bankrupt) casinos were. It’s everything else. I look upon his mighty present-day works and despair. Fortunately, one day, every aspect of what’s defining this presidency will crumble, and the U.S. will come out of it in better shape than how things were when it all started… not because of this particular president, but in spite of him. And the students of the future will have plenty to discuss.
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The poem could be a warning about the futile worry of legacy. Proudly thinking of the approval and awe of people who you’ll never meet because they aren’t born yet seems a pretty poor use of time. And of course, no one knows how future people will view anything or anyone in present time. Statues don’t just erode, they get ripped down when looked back on.
Quebec really seems to be pulling out of this.
Ahh! So good. This actually made me cry. I don’t even know why exactly. Because … Life. So fortunate to have known you all these years, and so glad we are reconnecting. The best. Salve for my poor bruised, intellectual, romantic poet-loving soul.
Love this!
Breaking Bad is absolutely among the very best TV watching experiences of all time. I stopped after three or four exposides, and I think the word is … appalled at my choices in entertainment. But then I went back. And I am so very glad I did. Has, definitely, the top two scenes EVER.
I recall that in The Crown, because Elizabeth had not been groomed to be Queen, a guy called Quintin Hogg was given the job of educating the Queen. He explained to her the difference between the monarchy and a monarch , the institution and the individual. She went on to become the personification of the monarchy in my view. To the south we have the presidency and the president. Donald Trump has dragged the institution through the dirt, he is a disgrace to the office.
Thank you!!!
Breaking Bad, best series ever.
I remember just after my dad died (…going there), holy, it was the weirdest thing. Almost immediately… I’d be looking around at the Stuff, matter, objects, etc, dusty USB memory sticks, cardboard boxes too long on the floor, the mini jug of milk still in the fridge waiting for tomorrow, and it really looked like, right in front of me, that everything was actually disintegrating before my eyes. I kept feeling, I guess in my imagination, sand slipping through my fingers. One moment, I was one way, and within I don’t know, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, I was another. It’s all going to pass. For sure. One moment a high school student failing to memorize a poem, the next moment … Oh, now I really get the poem. Ever since I’ve been rebuilding a relationship with Stuff. I like stuff! But it’s going. It’s all going. Back to where it came from. Amen. Om. The Lord is One.
Under Trump (before the BS of Covid)) – no wars, record employment including for blacks, latinos, veterans and more, finally dealing with China trade issues and WINNING, cutting red tape, meaningful southern border, justices who uphold laws, allies paying their share of defending the world, lower insulin cost for Medicaid users, FEWER black deaths by cop shooting, falling US crime rates, and so on.
By almost any measure better than Old Bush, Clinton, Young Bush and Obama yet OPPOSED by all 4 (3 now) for threatening the political establishment.
If Trump were to lose, how would Joe Biden (44 years in Senate and VP with ZERO accomplishments) make anything better?
I knew what poem you were referring to before you said it, and I remember the class. But other than the one line, I don’t remember the rest of the poem. I give your interpretation an A.
Yes Breaking Bad is one of the best TV shows ever, but it’s still terrible. I mean, it’s television, so that’s expected. The Twilight Zone is one of the best shows ever but there are still plenty of dud episodes. But Breaking Bad has all kinds of problems. With the amount of meth they were supposedly moving only in Albuquerque in the beginning, the entire city should have been a wreck. That’s what they should have, and failed to capitalize on: the horrible effects that meth has on society. But no, the show was too myopic to tackle that. Instead it’s a long-drawn out character drama that goes nowhere fast. The first two seasons were very good, and it turns out it wasn’t even supposed to last more than three seasons, AMC demanded it continue even though the actor who played Tuco had signed up only for three years, so they had to off him and bring in the lamest character ever, Gus Fring. We never get to find out what atrocities Gus committed as a member of the Chilean military, even though that is the premise behind his initial capitalist success. Why anyone owning a multi-franchise fast-food business would have any interest in getting involved in international drug shenannigans is anyone’s guess, but hey, the shoehorn is the Breaking Bad script-writer’s greatest weapon next to deus ex machina. Halfway through the series the whole thing takes a major dive, ironically right when Johnathan Banks joins the cast. He remains the only good thing about the show for the rest of it’s run. They drag the show on for years with every ludicrous time waster they can think of, from a train robbery to a house-cleaning company doubling as a meth lab. Eventually they begin torturing the audience with episodes like the one where Walt spends an entire hour trying to smash a fly. The plot-holes abound, but I’m just going to take a deeper dive into one: When Hank takes a photo of a fake barrel of Walt’s cash in the desert, prompting Walt to rush over there to get arrested (which ultimately isn’t what happens, but anyway). What is the logic in Walt doing that? He thinks Hank already found the cash, so what is the purpose of rushing out there, other than to fall into Hank’s trap as the script called for? Before I finish this barely-surface-scraping critique, I have to touch on the ridiculous McGyver ending, where Walt builds a McGyver-esque trunk-firing machine-gun which he uses to obliterate the redneck gang’s hideout by remote-control, WHILE HE’S INSIDE THE HIDEOUT! He just clicks his key fob, the trunk opens, he jumps on Jesse to take him to the floor, and the bad guys just stand there to get mowed down by the oscillating machine-gun. Not one of them apparently gets the idea of hitting the floor like they just saw Walt do, so they all die except for the creepy kid (who is a massive deus ex machina in himself – don’t get me started!).
The moral of this story is that YOU could probably make a better show than this, easily. I’m not kidding. Do a deep dive on the tvtropes website, pick a few tropes, add standard characters and archetypes, given them a mcguffin to chase and you’re laffin all the way to the emmys