Musee des Beaux Arts

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 Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman 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.

— W. H. Auden

As promised, I’m including a short narrative about this poem. I really like Auden’s poetry because for one thing, it is SO simple. Straightforward English and no crazy rhyming scheme? Bliss. This poem especially touched me because it gets it so right.

“Opening with generalizations and moving to specifics, the poem argues that the image presented by the “Old Masters” of the Renaissance period, that individual human suffering is viewed with apathy by others, is an accurate one. Juxtaposing images of suffering and tragedy with the banal actions of everyday life suggests that individual tragedies are individual burdens as humankind responds with indifference. Auden wrote that “In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.” Auden’s poem seeks to disenchant or deromanticize death, martyrdom and suffering and achieves this through the juxtaposition of “ordinary” events with universally recognized “extraordinary” ones. This comparison, however, forces a reconsideration of these accepted categories, and the poem appears to suggest that those events worthy of celebration are the ordinary, everyday occurrences.”

Its about the typical response to tragedy and human suffering; how in the end it is actually so individual… you know how you can be hurting and heart-broken and the rest of the world just continues along with no single change in pace and you just want to scream and ask, “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!”. How suffering can be devastating one part of the world and the rest of the world just continues along without a care. I mean, just think of the situation in Syria! But suffering is never universal, we might empathise with others but essentially so long as we don’t feel their pain directly, we will always stand at the fringes of their suffering looking in when our suffering permits or lessens, otherwise it is really as Nigerians say, “Every man for himself and God for us all!”

The poem’s title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels which had an alcove containing a number of the painter, Brueghel’s, works including one of Icarus falling from the sky. Dedalus (no not the Harry Potter character:)) and Icarus were a father and son team who according to fables, attached wings to themselves with glue and attempted to fly. They did fly but Icarus the son, couldnt resist the temptation of the sun, flew too close to it causing his wings to melt and him to fall into the sea.

Auden lived at a time where the persecution of Jews and antisemitism was rife. Auden articulates a notion of human nature which the poem
indicates transcends time and space.It is believed that this poem is a reflection of that; that power of people to suffer great tragedies in one part of the world, while the rest of the world looks on with helplessness, indifference or apathy.