Musée des Beaux Arts (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: W. H. Auden
- First Published: 1939
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Suffering, Mythology or myths, Death or dying, Painting or painters, Flight, Disasters, Martyrs or martyrdom, Meditation, Aesthetics, Museums
The Poem
“Musée des Beaux Arts,” which is French for “museum of fine arts,” is a poem about the universal indifference to human misfortune. Following a series of reflections on how inattentive most people are to the sufferings of others, the poet focuses on a particular rendition of his theme: a sixteenth century painting by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, called The Fall of Icarus.
W. H. Auden spent the winter of 1938 in Brussels, where he visited the Bruegel alcove of the city’s Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts. “Musée des Beaux Arts”...
[The entire page is 1567 words long]
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