Titanic: A lot like Ozymandias

In this dog-eat-dog world, even the high and mighty are one day reduced to hamburger.



Look... and despair! (Photo by Hajor)

Percy Bysshe Shelley gave this a poetic nod in his 1818 sonnet Ozymandias.  Ozymandias, aka Ramesses the Great – famous Egyptian pharoah, was considered to be a god after the first 30 years of his reign.  He went on to complete 66 years as pharaoh - and is credited with bringing peace, prosperity, and power to Egypt.  Ramesses had a penchant for building monuments – and lots of them.  The bigger the better…

He hadn’t yet realized the harsh reality of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”  – an egoic ignorance revealed by his added inscription to the east side of the already-renowned Heliopolis obelisk:  …Ramses (II), who has made his monuments like the stars of heaven, whose works mingle with the sky, rejoicing over which Re rises in his house of millions of years…

If the Egyptian sun-god Re is, indeed, rejoicing over Ramesses’ work – the monuments haven’t reflected this for a good long while.  Although they were supposedly made “like the stars of heaven,” they certainly haven’t lasted as long.  Chunks of them can be found in the British Museum, which is where Shelley is said to have gotten his inspiration for the poem.

Shelley’s poem mocks the arrogance of such self-glorification, and highlights the fleeting nature of all temporal things.  In more recent times, the Titanic was thought to be another indestructible monument.  Not only has it long ago also fallen, but its remains are now being eaten by the very lowest of the food chain -  a newly-discovered, rust-eating bacterium appropriately dubbed Halomonas titanicae.

Resources



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1336542/Halomonas-titanicae-New-rust-eating-bacteria-destroying-wreck-Titanic.html

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1904.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

http://books.google.com/books?id=7xVyAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=ramses+statue+inscription&source=bl&ots=LUcwdJpZoF&sig=43d8CZH-K5pD_lo3rhYvh215jpI&hl=en&ei=rhIETaWoJ8H_lgfE5tz4CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=ramses%20statue%20inscription&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_(ancient)

Copyright December 12, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved