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Modern Memnon
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Chapter 6 starts with the accidental silencing of the statue in the early third century CE, and jumps ahead to its rediscovery in Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, travelers reported seeing a huge statue with poems etched on its surface. Later, Napoleon’s surveyors brought back drawings scribbled down in their free time. The nineteenth century saw a craze for all things Egyptian: Hegel mentioned the colossus; Keats and Wordsworth turned Memnon into a Romantic hero. Memnon functioned as an alter ego for the poet himself, broken in body yet still striving to sing in the harsh environment of the real world. Just as he had in the imperial period, Memnon also represented something strange and inexplicable. The striking voice of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is also heard only in the context of fragmentation and decay. The status of these statues as fragments, as colossal wrecks, allows for the magic of the voice.
Title: Modern Memnon
Description:
Chapter 6 starts with the accidental silencing of the statue in the early third century CE, and jumps ahead to its rediscovery in Europe.
In the mid-eighteenth century, travelers reported seeing a huge statue with poems etched on its surface.
Later, Napoleon’s surveyors brought back drawings scribbled down in their free time.
The nineteenth century saw a craze for all things Egyptian: Hegel mentioned the colossus; Keats and Wordsworth turned Memnon into a Romantic hero.
Memnon functioned as an alter ego for the poet himself, broken in body yet still striving to sing in the harsh environment of the real world.
Just as he had in the imperial period, Memnon also represented something strange and inexplicable.
The striking voice of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is also heard only in the context of fragmentation and decay.
The status of these statues as fragments, as colossal wrecks, allows for the magic of the voice.
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