32 Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden
Musee Des Beaux Arts
According to the ancient legend, Daedalus, an architect, was held captive on the isle of Crete with his son, Icarus. To escape, Daedalus made them wings of wax, warning his boy not to fly too near the sun. Yet Icarus, exhilarated, forgot his father’s warning and flew so high that the sun melted his wings. He fell into the ocean and drowned.
This catastrophe is the subject of a painting by an Old Master, Pieter Bruegel, called “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” In the well-known poem reproduced below, Auden considers the lessons about suffering to be found in Bruegel’s depiction of the tragedy.
The “human position” of suffering, writes Auden, is that it takes place within and alongside the ordinary flow of humdrum life. Tragedy occurs, but those involved do not stop for it. The tragic coexists with the trivial. For the ploughman, who may have noticed Icarus’s fall is “not an important failure” ; the ship “must have seen,” but had somewhere to go; the sun went on shining, “as it had to.” The name of Bruegel’s painting tells the same story as the poem; it is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” and not the other way around. – Leon Kass
Musee des Beaux Arts
by W. H. Auden
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 ploughman 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.
Pieter Bruegel I. (c. 1555-58). Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Licensed for use through ArtStor.
Visit the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, as well as this site: for more background about the image Bruegel’s Icarus and the Perils of Flight
Visit Khan Academy for an explanation of how art historians approach an analysis of the painting done by Goya in his Third of May, 1808. It demonstrates how a formal analysis can help reveal the message of a work of art. Using the techniques discussed during the formal analysis and subject matter portions of the video (through 7:24), show how the formal properties of Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus support Auden’s interpretation of the work: “tragedy occurs, but those not involved do not stop for it.”
Take a look at this graphic novelesque take on the Icarus story.
Consider this:
- Why might Auden call this the “human position” of suffering? Has it another position?
- How ought one respond to the truth Auden has identified? Is it reassuring or distressing? Does our recognition of this truth impose any obligation on us, beyond our “sailing calmly on” ?
