In the Musee Des Beaux Arts Auden What Do People

Andrew has a swell involvement in all aspects of poetry and writes extensively on the subject. His poems are published online and in print.

West.H.Auden

Due west.H.Auden And A Summary of Musee des Beaux Arts

Musee des Beaux Arts is a verse form that focuses on man suffering, tragedy and pain by contrasting the lives of those who suffer and those who do non. The vehicle by which this is achieved is the world of painting, in detail the work of the old masters.

Auden is philosophical and conversational, combining close observation with nonchalant musings.

Written in 1938, only before the start of WW2, it signalled an important change in Auden'southward way of life and expression. He left behind his political persona and began to develop one that was more spiritual in nature. At the same fourth dimension he emigrated to the USA, abandoning England and Europe.

Much of his poetry relates to the state of the human heart, history, social trends and world diplomacy. He embraced both traditional and modernistic forms of verse; Musee des Beaux Arts (Museum of Fine Arts) incorporates elements of both.

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 only 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 form
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's equus caballus
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns abroad
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
Merely for him it was not an of import failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenish
H2o, 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.

Icarus

The Fall of Icarus is a painting by Flemish creative person Pieter Brueghel (1525-69) and depicts Icarus, the son of Daedalus, falling out of the sky and into the ocean afterward flight as well shut to the Sun with his home-made wax and plume wings.

Farther Analysis of Musee des Beaux Arts

Musee des Beaux Arts is an informal commentary on the bizarre man situations that arise in certain older paintings, notably ane, The Autumn of Icarus, which is at present in the Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels.

Auden creates a speaker who is, to all intents and purposes, delivering an stance on various paintings that bargain with human suffering. The speaker seems knowledgable and gradually comes to a series of mini conclusions regarding the plight of those who suffer and those who don't.

Those who don't are oft bystanders, ordinary members of the public going about their daily business oblivious to what'due south going on behind closed doors or just out of earshot. And if they exercise observe something unusual, they're too busy or distracted to do anything about it.

In the first stanza the speaker makes observations from other paintings by the same artist, Brueghel, namely Numbering at Bethlehem, Wintertime Mural with Skaters and a Bird Trap and Massacre of the Innocents.

These references highlight the strange, contrasting man experiences that are part of the fabric of life - i person suffers terribly, another carries on regardless with some mundane activity.

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The philosophical question that surfaces from such an upshot - Why is it that some can knowingly ignore the cries for help from those experiencing torture and pain? - is partly answered in the poem.

Musee des Beaux Arts - Close Assay

For example, in the first stanza at that place are children who did not want a miraculous birth to happen, despite an older generation passionately waiting for a phenomenon birth. They proceed skating on ice, oblivious to the one-off happening.

The speaker states with a cool detachment how there always must be such a gap between the immature and the old.

And a piffling further on the philosophical, fateful speaker asserts in a tranquility fashion how martyrdom must run its course, no affair how dreadful, in some backwater, away from the hubbub of the crowd.

Nosotros shouldn't forget that the paintings the speaker is studying are equivalent to today's T.V. reportage. How many times have we watched horrific and agonizing images from some remote place in the world, knowing that, not too far away, normal lives are being lived.

The second stanza reinforces the idea of separateness, of people at work, at play, whilst the disaster, the suffering, goes on elsewhere. Is information technology apathy that takes over? Are people consciously looking the other way to avoid involvement?

There is an irony in this and the speaker captures it in a subtle, affair of fact fashion. Every bit Icarus dramatically falls into the sea the consequence for one human being was not an of import failure; information technology made no impression on a passing ship with somewhere to get to; at that place is no reaction.

Auden's poem, through the eyes of an observer of old paintings, explores the idea that, as humans, we knowingly carry on with our familiar and mundane duties as long as nosotros can, fifty-fifty if we know someone may exist suffering.

We demand routine, nosotros fearfulness lark. We don't like existence shocked out of our petty lives besides often. Suffering will always happen and there'south not much the boilerplate person tin do about it.

Assay of Musee Des Beaux Arts

A poem of 21 lines in total, split into two stanzas with varying line length and rhythm. Note the utilize of end rhymes throughout the poem, for example:

Line 1/Line 4 - incorrect/along

Line ii/Line viii - understood/woods

Line 5/Line 7 - waiting/skating

Line 6/Line xiii - be/tree

Line 9/Line 11- forgot/spot

Line 10/Line 12- course/equus caballus

Lines 14-21 also are end rhymed.

This rhyming is varied and has no established design then the rhyme becomes well-nigh incidental, an echo of what it should be in a tighter rhyme scheme. All of this suggests tradition with a twist, a loosening and stretching of reality.

Line length plays an important role in this verse form. Long clauses, with cleverly placed punctuation, assistance measure the steady conversational tone of the speaker.

Annotation that at that place is only i period (full stop) in the whole body of the poem, at the terminate of the first stanza. Commas, colons and semi-colons play a crucial office in the syntax by assuasive the sense to build up, as in an argument or debate. Enjambment also lets the menses continue from one line into the side by side.

Sources

Norton Anthology, Norton, 2005

www.poetryfoundation.org

100 essential Mod Poems, Ivan Dee, Joseph Parisi, 2005

© 2016 Andrew Spacey

gonzalezwhadming1966.blogspot.com

Source: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Musee-des-Beaux-Arts-by-WHAuden

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