Musee Des Beaux Arts Poem and Pieter Brueghels Painting of Icarus Differences

"Musée des Beaux Arts" (French for "Museum of Fine Arts") is a poem written by W. H. Auden in Dec 1938 while he was staying in Brussels, Belgium, with Christopher Isherwood.^[one] It was start published nether the title "Palais des beaux arts" (Palace of Fine Arts) in the Spring 1939 consequence of New Writing, a modernist magazine edited past John Lehmann.^[two] Information technology next appeared in the collected volume of poetry Some other Time (New York: Random House, 1940), which was followed iv months later by the English edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1940).^[3] The poem'south title derives from the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, famous for its drove of Early Netherlandish painting. Auden visited the Musée and would have seen a number of works by the "Old Masters" of his 2nd line, including Pieter Bruegel the Elderberry.

Synopsis [edit]

"Musee des Beaux Arts" by Westward.H. Auden describes, through the use of one specific artwork, the touch on of suffering on humankind.^[4]

Auden's free verse poem is divided into ii parts, the first of which describes scenes of "suffering" and "dreadful martyrdom" which rarely break into our quotidian routines: "While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully / forth." The second half of the poem refers, through the poetic device of ekphrasis, to the painting Mural with the Autumn of Icarus (c. 1560s), at the fourth dimension thought to be by Bruegel, but now usually regarded as an early copy of a lost work. Auden's description allows u.s.a. to visualize this specific moment and instance of the indifference of others to a distant individual's suffering, inconsequent to them, "how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster ... the white legs disappearing into the dark-green." The disaster in question is the fall of Icarus, caused by his flight besides close to the sunday and melting his waxen wings.

Auden achieves much in the poem, not just with his long and irregular lines, rhythms, and vernacular phrasing ("dogs go on with their doggy life"), but also with this residuum between what appear to be general examples "About suffering" and a specific instance of a mythical boy'south autumn into the sea. Auden scholars and fine art historians accept suggested that the get-go part of the poem also relies on at least two additional paintings by Bruegel which Auden would have seen in the same 2nd-floor gallery of the museum.^[v] These identifications are based on a not quite exact, but nonetheless evocative, series of correspondences between details in the paintings and Auden's language. Withal, none show a "martyrdom" in the usual sense, suggesting that other works are too evoked. The Bruegels are presented below in the gild in which they appear to chronicle to Auden's lines.

Bruegel'southward influence [edit]

lines three–8 :

Bruegel's The Census at Bethlehem (catalogued at the Musée as "Le dénombrement de Bethléem")^{[half dozen]} of 1566 was acquired by the Musée in 1902. Scott Horton noted that it would be a mistake to only look to the Icarus painting when explaining Auden'south poem, for "The bulk of the poem is clearly about a dissimilar painting, in fact it's the museum's prize possession: The Census at Bethlehem."^[7] The painting depicts Mary and Joseph center correct, she on a ass bundled up for the snow of Bruegel'southward Flanders, and he leading with a red lid and long carpenter'due south saw over his shoulder. They are surrounded by many other people: "someone else ... eating or opening a window or simply walking dully / along."^[8] And there are children "On a pond at the edge of the wood" spinning tops and lacing on their skates.

lines 9–thirteen :

The Massacre of the Innocents (catalogued at the Musée every bit "Le Massacre des Innocents")^[ix] is a copy by Pieter Bruegel the Younger (1565–1636) of his father'due south original dated to 1565–vii (illustrated). The Musée acquired it in 1830. The scene depicted, again in a wintry Flanders landscape, is recounted in Matthew two:sixteen–18: Herod the Slap-up, when told that a male monarch would exist born to the Jews, ordered the Magi to alarm him when the king was found. The Magi, warned past an affections, did not so, "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted past the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were ii years quondam and under." In relation to the Census painting and so we can see why the children of Auden's poem "did non specially want information technology [the miraculous birth] to happen."

Both this scene and the before are used by Bruegel to brand a political annotate on the Castilian Habsburg rulers of Flanders at the time (notation the Habsburg coat of arms on the right front of the principal edifice in the Census and the Spanish troops in red in The Massacre arresting peasants and knocking down doors).^{[ citation needed ]} With respect to Auden's linguistic communication we tin run across hither "the dreadful martyrdom must run its course" (the innocent boys of Herod'southward wrath are traditionally considered the first of the Christian martyrs). We tin can see five of those dogs of Auden'due south poem going about their business and an approximation of "the torturer'southward horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree." Kinney says "Only one torturer's equus caballus stands virtually a tree, however, and he is unable to rub against it because another soldier, with a battering ram, is standing between the horse and the tree ... Yet this must be the horse Auden has in mind, since information technology is the just torturer's horse in Bruegel's work, and the just painting with horses near trees."^[10]

lines xiv–21 :

Landscape with the Autumn of Icarus (catalogued at the Musée equally "La Chute d'Icare")^[9] was acquired in 1912. This is the simply known instance of Bruegel'south use of a scene from mythology, and he bases his figures and landscape quite closely on the myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus equally told past Ovid in his Metamorphoses 8, 183–235. The painting which Auden saw was thought until recently to exist by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, though it is still believed to be based on a lost original of his.^[eleven] The painting portrays several men and a ship peacefully performing daily activities in a charming landscape. While this occurs, Icarus is visible in the bottom right mitt corner of the picture, his legs splayed at absurd angles, drowning in the h2o. There is also a Flemish saying (of the sort imaged in other works by Bruegel): "And the farmer continued to plough..." (En de boer ... hij ploegde voort") pointing out the indifference of people to fellow men's suffering.^[12]

Cultural legacy [edit]

Some years after Auden wrote this poem, William Carlos Williams wrote a poem titled "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" about the same painting, and with a similar theme.

This poem and the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus appear side-past-side 22 minutes into the 1976 film, The Man Who Roughshod to World, starring David Bowie.

References [edit]

1. ^ For the chronology of Auden's composition of the verse form see Edward Mendelson, Early Auden, New York: Viking, 1981. pp. 346–eight and pp. 362–four.
2. ^ Encounter Andrew Thacker, "Auden and Little Magazines," in Tony Sharpe (ed.), Due west. H. Auden in Context, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. pp. 337–346, esp. p. 339.
3. ^ For the full bibliography run across B.C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson, Westward. H. Auden, a Bibliography, 1924–1969. second edition. Charlottesville: University Printing of Virginia, 1972. pp. 40–45.
4. ^ Analysis of Musee des Beaux Arts by Westward.H. Auden
5. ^ The get-go patently to note these other works was Kinney, Arthur F. (Apr 1963). "Auden, Bruegel, and 'Musée des Beaux Arts'". College English. 24 (7): 529–531. doi:10.2307/372881. JSTOR 372881.
6. ^ Meet the online catalog of the Musée(search by artiste: Bruegel, or titre: Le dénombrement de Bethléem)
7. ^ Scott Horton, "Auden'due south Musée des Beaux Arts," Harper'due south Magazine, 30 November 2008.
8. ^ See the interesting give-and-take of the painting produced by the BBC as part of their Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece" series.
9. ^ ^{a b} Musée
10. ^ Kinney 1963, p. 530.
11. ^ The Musée itemize reads: "On doute que l'exécution soit de Pieter I Bruegel mais la conception lui est par contre attribuée avec certitude" ("It is hundred-to-one if the execution is by Breugel the Elderberry, but the limerick tin be said with certainty to be his"). Run across also: JSTOR 3780948 Lyckle de Vries, Bruegel's "Autumn of Icarus": Ovid or Solomon?, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. xxx, No. one/two (2003), pp. four–18. And for a scientific study of the canvass see: JSTOR Mark J. Y. Van Strydonck et al., "Radiocarbon Dating of Sail Paintings: Two Case Studies", Studies in Conservation, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1998), pp. 209–214.
12. ^ Hunt, Patrick. "Ekphrasis or Not? Ovid (Met. 8.183–235 ) in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus". Archived from the original on 10 July 2009. Philolog Weblog past Patrick Hunt, posted 9 November 2005.

External links [edit]

• Authorized text of verse form at Emory.edu
• Analysis of poem at PoetryPages
• Musee des Beaux Arts at the British Library

armentroutsull1946.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_des_Beaux_Arts_%28poem%29

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