Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H Auden “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Brueghel
The poem and the painting have similar and dissimilar aspects about them. Looking at the painting a reader can get a sense of what Brueghel was trying to convey. In his own interpretation it can be seen on what Brueghel was focusing on. In the poem Auden sensed despair and unhappiness amongst the people in the face of the rising Masaya.
In the poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts” Auden doesn’t only imagine what feelings should be expressed; he can also communicate his thoughts in the words that he uses. Auden is very in-depth with his readers and he tries to relate to the subject at hand. Auden is almost speaking in a third person, detached and solemn from the world and the subject at hand. Auden speaks of the apathy of humans in the face cynicism and of individual tragedy. He seems to understand and almost sympathizes by the use of his word choices that he imparts us with. He goes on about the suffering of humans and of nature and too the innocents lost in the rising of Christ. In the line “About suffering they were never wrong” he expounds of the fact that suffering is a part of life and that the two go hand in hand and of how the old masters knew of this and had an eerily easy time depicting it. In the part of the poem “how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” shows the reader how what we feel as individuals is often not recognized so it is ignored by the world around us. When pain is a desolate burden it is something we are determined to deal with alone.” The aged are reverently, passionately waiting for the miraculous birth” suggests that it is only the aged, representing the antipathy of continuing social thought and movement, who are waiting for the Immaculate Conception, the one that they desperately hope will start the long progression of purging the earth of sin and the reclamation of mankind itself. “Children who did not especially want it to happen” expresses that they know that this horrid happenstance will have to run its course on earth, a fact that those children did not want nor did they necessarily care about the birth of Christ, to them it was just another day of play amongst one another. “They never forgot that even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course.” It felt as if time stopped for no one, for any reason big or small it continued on without a hiccup. “The dogs go on with their doggy lives” seems as if no matter what happens good or bad it’s not enough to keep them from going on with one’s life, that even the horse that scratches his rear end upon the tree doesn’t care about anything else but relieving his itch. As he goes on to discuss the painting “the Fall of Icarus” within his poem he grabs the reader into wanting to study the painting with an eagle eye. To find all the errors for why Icarus was ignored by all that were around at that time.
The painting, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”, is full of contrast and is quite distracting of its main focus. For one thing the painting’s name “The fall of Icarus” is supposed to be about the boy and his eventual demise, but the focal point is anything but Icarus. We see that the vibrant sun is eye catching as it shines upon the ocean and the surrounding city. Even though an onlooker should be searching for the fall of Icarus they would be easily detoured by the elements going on in the painting. There’s the man on the hill that is painstakingly plowing his field, which is the most prominent and the main focal point of this painting. It shows him going through his daily routine of clearing his field, getting ready to plant this year’s harvest, he is so into what he is doing that nothing else catches his eye, he is solely focused on the job at hand. Yet he stands out like a beacon, but he is not what we should be looking for. Next it is seen, a man who is herding his flock, but he is not even