Musee des Beaux Arts by WH Auden

 Modern Poetry by Famous Modern Poets:

Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H Auden

(The Museum of Fine Arts)

                        Short Summary & Critical Analysis

This modern poem is about a Renaissance painting. The translation of Musee des Beaux Arts is The Museum of Fine Arts. Auden visited this museum and he was particularly enchanted by this painting "The Fall of Icarus". It is a Renaissance painting and was painted in 16th century by an Italian Renaissance painter. This painting particularly intrigued Auden and he tried to relate his present society to the idea or message he found in that painting.

·       About suffering…they understood.

The word they in the first line is for the Old Masters because he is looking at their painting. These Old Masters are the great painters of the past especially the Renaissance time e.g. Michael Angelo, Mona Lisa, The Sculpturist etc.

So the poet is looking at the paintings of the Old Masters and the first thing that he comes up with is suffering. The Old Masters painted suffering in their paintings and they were never wrong because they always picked up the right thing.

·       Its human position.. dully along.

Here its is for suffering. He wants to convey this idea that suffering is such an essential part of human existence and it is there in the midst of every day life in everything. Someone is eating, opening a window or walking dully along, all these activities are very common and he may be killed during these activities by an accident. Anything can happen while there is harmless everyday activity going on.

·       How, when the... of the wood.

Here the poet talks about the kind of generation gap between the old and the young people. The aged people have their feelings for religion and they wait for the miraculous birth, means the Christmas. And the children probably are not as religious and they keep skating on the pond at the edge of the forest. So they keep their games on and only the aged  reverently wait for the time when Jesus Christ was born in order to worship.

·       They never.... it's course.

Dreadful martyrdom means someone who was very brave. The children never forget that even someone who is a great warrior, must run its course, means his life will also come to an end.

·       Anyhow in a . . . on a tree.

Anywhere all streets are visited in time by death. Anything can happen anywhere even at a place which is untidy and where just dogs go for relieving themselves or where the horse scratches himself behind the tree. These lines clearly show the certainty of death.

·       In Breughel's Icarus.... sailed calmly on.

Breughel is the name of the painter who painted this painting "The fall of Icarus". Everything turns away means everything is ignorant or just moves away carelessly from the disaster. The disaster is the fall of Icarus, the drowning of a young boy into the water.

The ploughman, the shepherd, the sailor, everybody just moves ignorantly from this disaster. They don't even notice that a young life has been lost. He is drowning and his legs are visible, and nobody even notices him. The poet says that when Icarus must have fall, the ploughman may have heard his cry or saw the splash in water but it did not disturb the ploughman. For the ploughman it wasn't an important failure. We are very careless about others failures. And the people who were in the ship, they must have seen the fall of this young man. They must have entertained themselves by seeing such a phenomenon but they never stopped their journey. The ship goes on continuing to its journey. All the people must have seen the splashes in water, must have seen the boy falling from the sky, but they seemed ignorant. This is the bitter reality of our society. People are not mindful of the suffering that happens around anywhere to anyone. The poem is not just a description of a painting by the poet   rather it is an experience of the poet about the painting. He looks at the painting and relates it with the social conditions prevailing in the society.