The Old and the New Masters (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Randall Jarrell
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Art or artists, Poetry or poets, Pain, Aesthetics
The Poem
In order to understand Randall Jarrell’s “The Old and the New Masters,” one must look first to English poet W. H. Auden’s “Musée de Beaux Arts,” which begins: “About suffering they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters.” Auden’s poem claims that the master painters—his primary exemplar is mid-sixteenth century Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel—recognized and depicted humankind’s callous indifference to the suffering of others. Their depictions are endorsed by Auden, not as the way things should be but as the way they are, and the title implies that...
[The entire page is 1531 words long]
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