The Poem from “To Rome With Love”

Posted on June 29, 2012 at 3:50 pm

In Woody Allen’s new film, To Rome With Love, characters describe an “Ozymandian melancholy.”  That is a reference to the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  It is the story of a man who describes an enormous ancient statue that is all broken and decayed.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of years before, an arrogant king had the statue erected to show that his power and fame would never die.  But today, he is not even remembered.  The “Ozymandian melancholy” refers to the sense that all accomplishment, all happiness, all existence is fleeting.  Setting the film in a city that is filled with ancient artifacts underscores this theme.

 

I met a traveler 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.

Related Tags:

 

Writers

4 Replies to “The Poem from “To Rome With Love””

  1. Its good to know about it, now I barely understood it. I love Ozymandias for a name, I just wonder how to pronounce it.

    Rica

Comments are closed.

THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik