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“Musee des Beaux Arts” (Museum of Fine Arts)

“Musee des Beaux Arts” (Museum of Fine Arts). By: Tevin Hearn Mrs. Johnson English IV. W.H. Auden.

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“Musee des Beaux Arts” (Museum of Fine Arts)

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  1. “Musee des Beaux Arts” (Museum of Fine Arts) By: Tevin Hearn Mrs. Johnson English IV

  2. W.H. Auden • Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, was regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

  3. Musée des Beaux Arts • Musée des Beaux Arts" (French for "Museum of Fine Arts") is a poem composed by W. H. Auden in 1938. The poem's title refers to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, which holds the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, thought until recently to be by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and now believed to be based on a lost original of his. • The painting portrays several men and a ship peacefully performing daily activities in a charming landscape. While this occurs, Icarus is visible in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, his legs splayed at absurd angles, drowning in the water.

  4. Summary • This thought-provoking poem is best read with a representation of the painting to which it refers in view (the painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel, is reproduced in On Doctoring). Auden considers the nature of human suffering: "how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking / dully along . . . . " For each individual life affected by personal catastrophe (in the painting, Icarus falling from the sky into the ocean), there is the rest of humankind which must go about its daily business, either oblivious or unable to assist (in the painting, Icarus might almost be overlooked, flailing in the lower corner of the picture while the ploughman in the foreground has his back turned). Life, and death go on although the sufferer, and sometimes those who are paying attention, find this inconceivable. And what about the ship "that must have seen / Something amazing" but "had somewhere to get to"? What is the context in which suffering is noticed, what obligations exist, what can and cannot be remedied?

  5. Analysis • “Musée des Beaux Arts,” which is French for “museum of fine arts,” is a poem about the universal indifference to human misfortune. Following a series of reflections on how inattentive most people are to the sufferings of others, the poet focuses on a particular rendition of his theme: a sixteenth century painting by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, called The Fall of Icarus.

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