Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

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Since the 8th century BC, poets have been writing ekphrastic poems in an attempt to amplify, verbalize, and interpret different works of art. These poems form a connection between word and image, and in the process, often expand upon the artist’s original intentions. This is the technique that William Carlos Williams uses in his poem, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, that describes the painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel. The painting depicts a landscape of working laborers who are too occupied to notice Icarus fall into the sea. The poem describes this scene vividly, while emphasizing the apathy shown among tragic demise. William Carlos Williams uses ekphrastic descriptions in his poem “Landscape with the Fall of …show more content…

He purposely uses the prefix “-un” on the word, “unsignificantly”, in an alliteration with “unnoticed” to emphasize the meaningless death that Bruegel depicts. His alliterations are vigilantly used to effectively convey Breugel’s vision of Icarus’s fall. In addition to alliterations, William’s continues the use of careful wording, evident in his syntax. He begins the poem with the stanza, “According to Brueghel / when Icarus fell / it was spring” (1-3), to not only directly credit Breugel for this interpretation, but to introduce Icarus to the scene. Professor Mary Ann Caws suggests, “the distancing of the event at the outset, marks the edge of the text, its entrance, all the more perceptible and significant as it responds to the way in which legend enters the text” (Caws 325). When Icarus enters the text, his fall is immediately revealed. Williams chooses this placement to contrast with the “whole pageantry of the year” (Williams 6-7) that continues to function even after his descent. His fall, the introduction to the poem, is distinctly different from the lively world that Williams describes for the remainder of the poem. This contrast furthers the notion that Icarus’s death was insignificant to the society surrounding

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