Talk about coincidences. One of the questions in my upcoming assignment is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called "Ozymandias", which happened to be the very first poem I was tested on during upper secondary Literature lessons. Luckily I still have my Literature text, so all the notes can still be used! Never heard of Percy Shelley? Surely many would have heard of his wife, Mary Shelley, the author of "Frankenstein"? She was his second wife after his first wife committed suicide after he left her. Anyway, those famous authors seemed to lead rather colourful lives.
Ozymandias (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 a sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand which 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.
Incientally, I came across this extract from The Week (13th January 2007, page 16) that puts it so aptly why poetry (especially Shakespeare) should be appreciated :
"Wrestling with Shakespeare, Chaucer and Woodsworth has a beneficial effect on the mind, says the Sunday Telegraph. Neuro-scientists have discovered that the unusual sentence structures and obscure words contained in the words of classical writers challenge the brain, causing it to light up with electrical activity. By contrast, reading ordinary, modern text causes only normal levels of electrical activity. Brain imaging techniques showed that Shakespearean text also sparks activity across a wider area of the brain than plain text. 'The jump in activity is caused by the brain re-evaluating what it is reading,' said brain imaging expert Professor Neil Roberts. 'With a Shakespearean sentence, the brain sees it as grammatically difficult but tolerates it as making sense. It perhaps acts as a cue to the brain that there is something there that had more meaning than one meaning'."
So the conclusion? Shakespeare boosts the brain! I knew it! So I am going to start re-reading all his works again!
Fare thee well, my sweet! Thou shalt read thy works till the morrow!
Ozymandias (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 a sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand which 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.
Incientally, I came across this extract from The Week (13th January 2007, page 16) that puts it so aptly why poetry (especially Shakespeare) should be appreciated :
"Wrestling with Shakespeare, Chaucer and Woodsworth has a beneficial effect on the mind, says the Sunday Telegraph. Neuro-scientists have discovered that the unusual sentence structures and obscure words contained in the words of classical writers challenge the brain, causing it to light up with electrical activity. By contrast, reading ordinary, modern text causes only normal levels of electrical activity. Brain imaging techniques showed that Shakespearean text also sparks activity across a wider area of the brain than plain text. 'The jump in activity is caused by the brain re-evaluating what it is reading,' said brain imaging expert Professor Neil Roberts. 'With a Shakespearean sentence, the brain sees it as grammatically difficult but tolerates it as making sense. It perhaps acts as a cue to the brain that there is something there that had more meaning than one meaning'."
So the conclusion? Shakespeare boosts the brain! I knew it! So I am going to start re-reading all his works again!
Fare thee well, my sweet! Thou shalt read thy works till the morrow!
0 comments:
Post a Comment