Musée des Beaux Arts (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

The first section develops a general observation: that the Renaissance master painters understood the modest place of agony in the scale of experience. In deceptively casual lines, Auden suggests the utter apathy of most people toward the dramatic events of history. Significant happenings tend to occur in obscurity, while most humans are preoccupied with their own petty affairs.

The second section applies this general thesis to the specific case of Brueghel’s ICARUS. That painting depicts the moment in Greek myth when Icarus, the son of Daedalus, plunges into the sea after having flown too close to the sun with the wax wings fashioned for him by his father. The poet notes that, though the fall of Icarus is something very special, Brueghel, like the characters in his painting, treats it as a minor background detail.

The poem consists of two unequal stanzas, the first of 13 lines and the second of 8. The meter is irregular, the lines are of varying length, rarely end-stopped, and the style is conversational—consistent with the poem’s theme of nonchalance toward the spectacular.

Written during the early stages of a devastating world war, the poem uses colloquialisms such as “anyhow” and “behind” (as an anatomical noun) to reinforce the sense of universal ingenuousness, of widespread ignorance of and indifference to the cunning forces of history.