The Test of Time
Suppose you’re a creator. Among architecture, sculpture, music, and literature, which do you think offers the most promise of an enduring monument? Explain your answer. Among all these arts, I choose architecture, for once music can be easily forgotten or out of time, not everyone enjoys and understands literature, sculpture’s are sometimes difficult to understand as well, so you cannot go wrong with architecture. Architecture is the art I respect the most, mostly because once someone has done anything architectonic is going to be seen and judge more likely than any of the others, also it has to be functioning. To do this kind of work is very brave for me and a job well done will last forever.
Irony is the discrepancy between expectations and reality. Explain the fundamental irony in the sonnet. The traveler is describing his view of the sculpture, saying that something so lively is surviving on a desert. “The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed”
Discuss what you think is the speaker’s message about pride -and whether it also applies to artists. The speaker’s message is clear. He says that the sculpture he is seeing is still alive, after so many years it still portrays a message of pride, how something done with such emotion is still persevering its purpose now. This applies to artists because it encourages them to perform better, giving a clear example of something of art that still fulfills the same way years later.
Could this poem apply to any contemporary figures who wield political power? Explain. It may apply to a political figure because if they do remarkable work, it may endure like the sculpture. It could also apply because the traveler says that he stands beside something lifeless which yet survives; a political figure, once removed from the power is “lifeless” so to speak.
