W.H. Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts and Pieter Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus

W.H. Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts and Pieter Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus

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.”

“The Fall of Icarus”, the only one of Bruegel’s paintings mentioned by name in Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts”, concludes the final octet of the poem. The plowman in the foreground, not the splashing legs of Icarus, is what the canvas is centered on. Bruegel’s focus on the sim...

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Works Cited

Bible, King James Version. Luke 1-5. 12 Dec. 2005 .

Auden, W. H. ""Musee Des Beaux Arts"" The Longman Anthology. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Longman, 2003. 2789-2790.

"Daedalus in Greek Mythology." Mythography: The Legend of Daedelus in Myth and Art. Loggia. 12 Dec. 2005 .

Kinney, Arthur F. "Auden, Bruegel, and 'Musee des Beaux Arts'" 7: 529-531. EBSCOhost. Homer Babbidge Library, Storrs. 11 Dec. 2005. Keywords: Auden + Musee Des Beaux Arts.

"Musee des Beaux Arts." 2003. Poetry Pages. 12 Dec. 2005 .

Pieter, Bruegel. The Fall of Icarus. Musee des Beaux Arts. Pieter Bruegel Oil Paintings. 12 Dec. 2005 .

Pieter, Bruegel. The Massacre of Innocents. Musee des Beaux Arts. Pieter Bruegel Oil Paintings. 12 Dec. 2005 .

Pieter, Bruegel. The Numbering at Bethlehem. Musee des Beaux Arts. Pieter Bruegel Oil Paintings. 12 Dec. 2005 .