Musee des Beaux Arts

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.

Sulla sofferenza non si sbagliavano mai,
The Old Masters : quanto bene capivano la
sua posizione umana; come avviene
Mentre qualcun altro sta mangiando o aprendo una finestra o semplicemente
camminando sordo;
Come, quando gli anziani aspettano con riverenza, appassionatamente
la nascita miracolosa, devono esserci sempre
bambini che non volevano particolarmente che accadesse, pattinando
su uno stagno ai margini del bosco:
non hanno mai dimenticato
che anche il terribile martirio deve correre il suo corso
Comunque in un angolo, un posto disordinato
dove i cani continuano la loro
vita da cani e il cavallo del torturatore si
gratta il dietro innocente su un albero.

In Icaro di Breughel , ad esempio: come tutto si allontana
abbastanza tranquillamente dal disastro; il contadino potrebbe
aver sentito il tonfo, il grido abbandonato,
ma per lui non fu un fallimento importante; il sole splendeva
Come doveva sulle gambe bianche scomparendo
nell'Acqua verde ; e la costosa nave delicata che doveva aver visto
Qualcosa di straordinario, un ragazzo che cadeva dal cielo,
aveva un posto dove andare e navigava con calma.

ANALYSIS

Musee des Beaux Arts is a poem that focuses on human suffering, tragedy and pain by contrasting (mettendo a confront) the lives of those who suffer (soffrono) and those who do not. The vehicle (il veicolo) by which this is achieved is the world of painting, in particular the work of the old masters.

The themes are: Human Suffering, Daily Business, War, Old Masters, Art and Truth, Martyrdom, Icarus (martirio).

The poet creates a speaker voice who is delivering an opinion on various paintings that deal with human suffering. The speaker voice seems know led gable and gradually comes to a series of mini conclusions regarding the plight (soffrono) of those who suffer and those who don't.

In the first stanza the speaker voice makes observations from other paintings by the same artist, Brueghel, namely Numbering at Bethlehem, Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap and Massacre of the Innocents.

These references highlight the strange, contrasting human experiences that are part of the fabric of life - one person suffers terribly, another carries on regardless with some mundane activity.

For example, in the first stanza there are children who did not want a miraculous birth to happen, despite an older generation passionately waiting for a miracle birth. They continue skating on ice, oblivious to the one-off happening.

The second stanza reinforces the idea of separateness, of people at work, at play, whilst the disaster, the suffering, goes on elsewhere. Is it apathy that takes over? Are people consciously looking the other way to avoid involvement?

There is an irony in this and the speaker voice captures it in a subtle, matter of fact fashion. As Icarus dramatically falls into the sea the event for one man was not an important failure; it made no impression on a passing ship with somewhere to get to; there is no reaction.

Auden's poem, through the eyes of an observer of old paintings, explores the idea that, as humans, we knowingly carry on with our familiar and mundane duties as long as we can, even if we know someone may be suffering.

We need routine, we fear distraction. We don't like being shocked out of our little lives too often. Suffering will always happen and there's not much the average person can do about it.

The poem is organized into 21 lines, split into two stanzas with varying line length and rhythm. Note the use of end rhymes throughout the poem, for example: in the lines 1 and 4 “wrong/along” or in the lines 2 and 8 “understood/wood”.

This rhyming is varied and has no established pattern so the rhyme becomes almost incidental, an echo of what it should be in a tighter rhyme scheme. All of this suggests tradition with a twist, a loosening and stretching of reality.

Line length plays an important role in this poem. Long clauses, with cleverly placed punctuation, help measure the steady conversational tone of the speaker.

Note that there is only one period (full stop) in the whole body of the poem, at the end of the first stanza. Commas, colons and semi-colons play a crucial role in the syntax by allowing the sense to build up, as in an argument or debate. Enjambment also lets the flow continue from one line into the next.