Comparing Museacutee des Beaux Arts and Life Cycle of Common Man

1486 Words3 Pages

Comparing Musée des Beaux Arts and Life Cycle of Common Man

"Musée des Beaux Arts" and "Life Cycle of Common Man" share a common theme, though the imagery they use to express it is quite different. Both poems have the theme of life goes on or life stops for no one. The difference in imagery is the difference between the general and the specific. I believe that the theme of both poems lies in the same vein, but they take different paths to its development. Auden speaks more about society in general; then, he gives an interpretation of a painting as an example. On the other hand, Nemerov expresses the theme through the "life cycle" of one man, but is this one man--everyman? The "they" of Auden's poem?

In the first thirteen lines of Auden's poem, he is not speaking about how life goes on for any one person, but how it does not stop for any one. At first he speaks of the Old Masters: "The Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place. . . ." The Old Masters were a group of painters in Belgium in the 1500s that were known for their paintings of the every day, ordinary average life. This was a radical change for the time, directing art away from royalty and the church, and into the everyday that people could relate to. The human position he is speaking of is how we are situated in the world in the most fundamental of ways. These are not our moments of triumph or failure but just our day-to-day life. We are all really in the same position. Life itself, not its quality, is the same for everyone; we are all equal participants in the human experience. It continues on relentlessly for everyone: "While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

. . ." H...

... middle of paper ...

...cipants no matter what way of life we choose. However for me, it does not take courage to choose the path of the common man. This, in Nietzsche's terms, is a "no-saying" to life, and not the "yes-saying" to life of Icarus. That is saying yes to the whole of life and not being content with the mundane cyclicity that some accept for life. These poems could be seen as a reminder that we have the choice to be an Icarus or a plowman. Through the imagery of "Musée des Beaux Arts" and "Life Cycle of Common Man," we see an expression of this idea that life goes on. While Auden uses the art and myth of a different era, Nemerov uses concrete descriptions to show us that life is a continuum; it stops for no one. Whether we choose to try and fly to the sun, or to become John Q. Public, life will go on, and the only thing we can change about that is how we experience it.

Open Document