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

1. “Musee des Beaux Arts”“Museum of Fine Arts” Poem by W.H. Auden Eric McDonough

2. Background of W.H. Auden • Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973); published as W.H. Auden • Born and grew up in Birmingham, England in a professional middle-class family • Strong Christian (Anglicanism) • Growing up he believed he was of Icelandic descent • Attended Christ Church, Oxford school where he earned a degree in English language and literature • Sailed with Christopher Isherwood to the United States in 1939 and becomes a U.S. citizen in 1946 • Considered an Anglo-American poet • Also wrote prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays and other forms of performance • Regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century

3. Pieter Breughel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”

4. Background to Icarus • Greek Mythological character • Son of Daedalus, a great architect • Imprisoned on the island of Crete • Daedalus tells his son Icarus to escape by flying away • Makes artificial wings out of wax for Icarus • Warns Icarus to not fly too close to the sun or his wings will melt • Icarus disobeys and flies too close to the sun • The sun melts the wings and Icarus falls to his death in the sea

5. Explication of “Musee des Beaux Arts” • Auden’s Text • “About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood” • “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” • “That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course” • Explication • The Old Masters refer to 18th century European painters who portrayed human suffering in their paintings • People going on with their daily activities and routines • The elderly are waiting for the birth of Jesus Christ • Allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the persecution of Christians

6. Explication Continued • Auden’s Text • “In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance” • “How everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster” • “Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry” • “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. • Explication • Auden discusses Pieter Brueghel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus • The farmer turns away and ignores Icarus drowning in the sea. The farmer goes on with his plowing of the fields • The forsaken cry is an allusion to Jesus’ cry from the cross • The sailing ship refers to society and how we as humans lack concern for other people and events, but just go on with our daily lives

7. Literary Terms • “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 Brueghel’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.” • Allusion • Enjambment • Personification • Onomatopoeia • Imagery

8. Personal Analysis • Human suffering is all around us • Lack of concern (human apathy) for the sufferings and anguish of others • Encouragement by Auden to have concern and compassion for these sufferings

9. Critical Analysis • “The plowman in the picture may have heard Icarus’s cry. But he is indifferent to it, caring only for what affects him personally as the ‘important failure’ of crops. The ship, traditionally symbolic of society, ‘must have seen’ Icarus’s fall but “sailed calmly on” (Perillo). • “In a culture designed to tell you that the individual person does not really matter, Auden addresses readers as individuals and takes as his central concern their ‘moral relation’ with one another” (Mendelson). • “In Musee des Beaux Arts, which takes for its subject Brueghel’s painting of the fall of Icarus, in which Icarus is a tiny figure, just a pair of legs really, whose splash goes unnoticed by the other people in the painting” (Dilworth).

10. Works Cited • Google images • Dilworth, T. (1991). Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts. The Explicator, 49(3), 181-181. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216775404?accoutid=41092 • Klein, J. M. (2007,Feb 20). A Cultural Conversation/withEdward Mendelson: He’s Honored W.H. Auden with a Lifetime of Devotion. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/398967242?accountid=41092 • Perillo, L. (2002). W. H. Auden’s 9/1/39. The American Poetry Review, 31, 28-29. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220652339?accountid=41092