Musée des Beaux Arts Lyrics
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.
About
Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
“Musée des Beaux Arts” (French for “Museum of Fine Arts”) was written in 1938. The title refers to Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, where Auden spent some time looking at Old Master paintings, especially Pieter Breughel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
The poet explores the content of the painting, and draws from it the essential moral, that human pain and tragedy exist alongside those who are free from suffering. Stylistically, the poem is conversational and contemplative, while at the same time his observations are sharply perceptive.
Two important developments occurred in Auden’s life and writing at this time, just before the start of WW2. He moved to American and began a transition from political to more spiritual subjects.
This poem combines traditional and modern forms of verse, as the detailed annotations will explore.
Structure
The poem comprises two stanzas of thirteen and eight lines each. The rhyme scheme has no regular pattern, Line lengths are varied, as is syntax, with long and short clauses that imitate the rhythms of conversation. Punctuation is an important aspect of the poem, emphasising pauses and enhancing the sense of thoughtfulness and debate. There is only one full stop at the end, so that the body of the poem is one continuous flow.
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a third person narrator, addressing the reader in the form of a monologue. The tone is philosophical and the observations perceptive.
There are some amusing references, for example the dogs' live a ‘doggy life’, and the horse ‘scratches its innocent behind on a tree’. In the second stanza the depiction of Breughel’s painting is vivid, particularly Icarus’s white legs disappearing in the green sea.
For comparison see William Carlos Williams; Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and The Hunters in the Snow.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- Musée des Beaux Arts