Suffering occurs all around us and it is a part of the human condition. Suffering does not have a set time or place and as a result of acceptance, we do nothing to help. Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden is an assertion on the way human comprehension is applied to observe and disengage from human suffering. Through the analysis of the poem, the poet clarifies how apathetic humanity is towards suffering. He proves his concept of suffering by utilizing artwork that examines human thoughts, and integrates ordinary images with those of suffering and tragedy. This poem is separated into 2 different parts. The lines in the first stanza supply the reader with an introduction to the universal indifference to human misfortune. The opening line "About Suffering, they were never wrong" provides us with a general overview that suffering is all around us. …show more content…
We can accumulate that tragedy and sorrow gets ignored as “..dogs go on with their doggy life”, entailing that life continues on with its routine course even in the presence of suffering somewhere. The second half of the poem, adverts to a painting by Peter Brueghel of Icarus, it provides an example of apathy towards an individual calamity. When viewing Brueghel’s painting we depict that “the plowman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him, it was not an important failure,” as he continues on with his mundane activities without paying attention to the dramatized event of Icarus's fall. The painting represents the fall of Icarus with a barely noticeable single leg appearing out of the sea positioned in the bottom right-hand corner. The main emphasis of the painting is on the surroundings such as the trees and the hustle of the working plowman and shepherd. However, the significance of the boy is
and that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves. In this I essay I have shown how successful the poet was in making me share this view by using his thoughtful and intense language, word-choice and imagery techniques.
The fall of Icarus often comes as a cautionary tale about pride and ambition. However, W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams took inspiration from Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus in their respective poems Musee des Beaux Arts and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus to tell a new tale. The poems use imagery, form, repetition, and alliteration to convey the apathy of the world in the face of personal tragedy.
...e of this poem might be to make the reader empathize with the suffering that he/she sees in the world and try to find a way around it by reducing it. This extract teaches us that life contains suffering and suffering is due to earthly objects as the people who cared for the dead man were attached to him and this caused them to suffer. The only way out of this suffering and samsara is nirvana and this can be attained by following Buddha’s eightfold path – right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration (McHugh).
This famous, enduring poem is thus seen as a balance of joys and sorrows from beginning to end.
A work of art seeks to fulfill various functions hence, the poem gives me a critical and rational outlook; elicits various emotions and the danger brought by lack of strength and hope while striving for humanity.
W.H. Auden and Pieter Bruegel were both keen observers of the ordinary. In Bruegel’s painting “The Fall of Icarus”, he is able to look past the tragedy of the death of Icarus and focus on the simple scene surrounding the event. Auden’s poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts”, has the same qualities: it glazes over the nature of tragedy, and chooses to instead examine the fact that life goes on while disaster occurs. Arthur F. Kinney highlights this idea of calm in the face of tragedy in a critical essay entitled “Auden, Bruegel, and Musee des Beaux Arts”. Kinney explores Auden’s inspiration for the theme of the poem. The theme, Kinney explains, is not merely generated by “The Fall of Icarus”, but also two other Bruegel pieces. “The Numbering at Bethlehem” portays Joseph and Mary arriving at Bethlehem, while “The Massacre of the Innocents” shows a torturer and his horse in a town square. Both pieces convey the same main theme as “Musee des Beaux Arts”: the complex nature of a substantial event, contrasted with the simplicity of every day life. Each of the paintings reflects on human nature, in the context of apathy amidst tragedy. In his critical article “Auden, Bruegel, and Musee des Beaux Arts” Kinney asserts that “the same statement [is] made by two art forms”, and that Bruegel’s painting and the poem it inspired, “Musee des Beaux Arts”, “juxtapose the unique and the commonplace.”
Without pain, there would be a dramatic lack of sincerity among the people of the world and without pain the world would be unable to clearly see the beauty among the ashes. Art and poetry close the massive gap between pain and beauty and allow the distraught human heart to more easily see the beauty in the dark mist at dusk. President John F. Kennedy once spoke about Robert Frost and His Poetry when he stated: “And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair.” (John F. Kennedy) This statement exemplifies the overwhelming power of art and the affect it has on the human spirit. Also, it gives a clear example of how art gives the individual the power in which to overcome despair. This all leads to the question: How do the poems “Beowulf” and “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” enable the broken, the beaten, and the bruised to see beauty and the wonders of life in a world that is regularly filled with pain, suffering, and torment?
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
Since its emergence over 30,000 years ago, one of visual art’s main purposes has been to act as an instrument of personal expression and catharsis. Through the mastery of paint, pencil, clay, and other mediums, artists can articulate and make sense of their current situation or past experiences, by portraying their complex, abstract emotions in a concrete form. The act of creation gives the artist a feeling of authority or control over these situations and emotions. Seen in the work of Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and others, artists’ cathartic use of visual art is universal, giving it symbolic value in literature. In Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
The meaning behind the myth of Icarus is universal, but due to the wild and ancient nature of the myth, it can be hard to relate to. The way the Fields places the myth in a contemporary setting through the use of point of view, truly modern diction, and ubiquitous imagery makes the meaning of the poem more relatable to a modern audience. This poem shows how universal the aspiration for greatness is while portraying the crushing effect of the fall from its
Adversity is the forerunner to kindness: a progenitor that encompasses the suffering of the raw, human experience. With the understanding of tribulations comes a greater empathy to share with others: the commonality among all living things that surpasses appearance and material. The renowned journalist William Allen White once stated, “If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and remorse as his own…how much kinder, how much gentler he would be”. This tragic lesson is apparent in both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying: liberation is only available to those who seek beyond the surface of a “monster” or “hog”,
Sontag points out that it is much different to have a piece of art which shows a made up cruelty as apposed to a photograph which shows the close up of an actual person in the middle of a painful event. She says, "perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it." She is saying that unless we have a way to stop the sufferi...
In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of life.
This lack of action continuously emphasizes the lack of empathy and care of the narrators and highlights to the reader the importance of acting differently from them. Through both of these poems the reader is shown that everyone faces struggles and how important it is to help others in their times of need because they too will face them at some
Jumping right into the first line of the poem one sees that it begins by stating, “Because I could not stop for Death”. Since this line was selected for the title of the piece, it can be inferred that it must hold some strong significance. Over the course of this poem the reader is drawn to the concl...