Download Understanding Human Suffering: W.H. Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts and the Old Masters and more Schemes and Mind Maps Poetry in PDF only on Docsity!
Musee des Beaux Arts W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Musée des Beaux Arts (1940) By W.H. Auden
About the poet
Wystan Hugh Auden was an English-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues", poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles", poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety , and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being".
W.H.Auden and Musee des Beaux Arts
Musee des Beaux Arts is a poem that focuses on human suffering, tragedy and pain by contrasting the lives of those who suffer and those who do not. The vehicle by which this is achieved is the world of painting, in particular the work of the old masters. Auden is philosophical and conversational, combining close observation with nonchalant musings. Written in 1938, just before the start of WW2, it signaled an important change in Auden's way of life and expression. He left behind his political persona and began to develop one that was more spiritual in nature. At the sametime he emigrated to the USA, abandoning England and Europe. Much of his poetry relates to the state of the human heart, history, social trends and world affairs. He embraced both traditional and modern forms of verse; Musee des Beaux Arts (Museum of Fine Arts) incorporates elements of both.
It’s worth analysing the individual details Auden mentions, many of which can be found in specific paintings by Brueghel or by other artists of the period. In the first stanza, the onlookers and bystanders given the most attention are the children and the dogs and horses. Children and animals are often oblivious to human suffering because they do not understand it, and so we understand why they may be ignorant of the ‘dreadful’ or ‘miraculous’ events occurring within earshot (or eyeshot). But in the second stanza, we move away from this world of innocence: we leave, if you will, the ‘innocent behind’ (sorry, there had to be a pun to be got out of that phrase, and at least we didn’t hit rock bottom). Instead, in the second stanza, Auden brings in the adult world while focusing on the fall of Icarus. Indeed, we might go further than this: the tables are turned. Icarus is the child here, ‘a boy falling out of the sky’, whereas the people inhabiting the surroundings are no longer children or animals but adults: a ploughman, an ‘expensive delicate ship’ (full of merchants or even important personages) that, we must assume, is full of people, sentient adult people, who ‘must have seen’ what has taken place. The one non-human observer mentioned in this second stanza (if we read the ship metonymically as a reference to the people on board) is the sun, and the sun, it’s worth recalling, was the very thing that caused Icarus’ fall: after he flew too close to it, the heat of the sun melted the wax holding his wings together, and he fell into the Aegean.
What is the meaning of this subtle shift? It signals a move
from ignorance to indifference , but the move is gradual. The ‘ploughman may ’ have heard Icarus falling into the sea, but he may have been entirely ignorant of what was taking place. But the people on the ship ‘ must have seen ’ what happened. We knew the children and animals were not to blame for their innocence in the first stanza. We cannot say the same about the ship’s crew. We now know what Auden could not: that the painting he discusses in ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus , almost certainly isn’t by Brueghel at all. Recent detective work reveals that it was
probably a copy of a lost original, and was painted by some other (unknown) artist. Whoever painted it, it nevertheless chimes with Auden’s statement about the ‘Old Masters’. For Philip Larkin, suffering may have been exact; but those who are nearby when it happens have their own lives to lead.
