Analysis of the poem “Musee des Beaux Arts”

Reading the title the intelligent reader may be curios to find out why it is in French and what’s the main argument of the poem with this title, would it be about a physical or abstract museum with a lot of arts? would it speaks of all kinds of art?, these questions pushes the reader to start reading the poem with a lot of interest. The most stressed words are musee and arts, that may be key words of the poem.

The poem is organized into two stanzas, the first of thirteen lines and the second of eight lines, thas the poem is in the free verse and hasn’t a regular pattern. The poem hasn’t rhymes and as the reader looks the poem on the page, he /she notice the fourth, the eleventh and the thirteenth lines are longer than the other.

The first stanza speaks about suffering, that, as said by some masters, is a human place, something that characterizes mankind. These masters said also that while somebody is suffering painfully, somebody else it’s quiet, as if he were indifferent to your pain, like when an aged is waiting the miraculous birth but a child doesn’t want it. So, “the dreadful martyrdom”, as said by the speaking voice, will go on and anyhow the world will encircle its course, don’t stopping for the pain of anyone. In the second stanza is presented a picture, the Brueghel’s Icarus, that perfectly represents what told in the previous stanza.Indeed, in this picture while Icarus is falling from the sky, crying, the farmer and the shepherd continue their jobs, indifferent, without even turning their eyes.

The poem is organized into two stanzas, the first that presents the core argument of the poem and the role of the second stanza is to exemplify what is said in the first taking the example of the Brueghel’s Icarus.

The title is in French maybe it’s a language of art, that reinforce the meaning of the title, because it actually refers to an art, that of being unprotected, that so characterizes the behaviour of man .In the poem is used an informal register, neutral, that is not specific to any discipline, not even art, as expected from the title. The poem, when read, seems a text in prose, because of the absence of rhymes, sound effects typical of poetry and the use of enjambement, therefore produces an advancement effect, similar to a narrative.