Power of Art

Ozymandias

Ozymandias wants to be remembered forever and was memorialised in a sculpture. As long as the art remains in good condition, it will be successful in its intent:

  • ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert’
  • ‘Half sunk, a shattered visage lies’
  • ‘frown, And a wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’
  • ‘Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive’
  • ‘survive, stamped on these lifeless things’
  • ‘on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ ’
  • ‘Round the decay Of that colossal wreck’

My Last Duchess

The Duke wants to control his wife, therefore he keeps the painting of her behind a curtain:

  • ‘painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive’
  • ‘Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day’
  • ‘The depth and passion of its earnest glance’
  • ‘Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat’
  • ‘Calling up that spot of joy’
  • _‘There she stands As if alive. _

Tissue

The whole world is made up of different types of art; books, buildings and humans:

  • ‘well-used books’
  • ‘buildings were paper’
  • ‘An architect, could use all this, place layer over layer’
  • ‘luminous script over numbers over line’
  • ‘a grand design //with living tissue’