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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Where was Auden when he wrote this poem?
In Brussels, in December 1938, staying with Christopher Isherwood.
And what does the title mean?
Museum of Fine Arts. It is the museum where he saw Bruegel's paintings.
Which painting matters most for the poem?
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, where Icarus is just a pair of legs in the sea.
Right. Experts now think it is an early copy of Bruegel's lost original, but Auden treats it as Bruegel's Icarus.
Who was Icarus?
The son of Daedalus, who made wings of feathers and wax so they could escape from Crete.
What went wrong?
Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell into the sea.
In Ovid, how do the ploughman, shepherd and angler react?
They look up in amazement and think the flyers are gods.
And in Bruegel's painting?
They ignore it completely. That reversal is what Auden noticed.
What was happening in Europe in late 1938?
The Munich Agreement in September and Kristallnacht in November, with war coming.
Does the poem mention any of this?
No. It only talks about paintings and suffering in general.
So why might the timing matter?
Because people were looking away from suffering then too, just like the ploughman.
written in Brussels in December 1938, shortly before Auden and Isherwood sailed for New York in January 1939.
first printed as "Palais des beaux arts" in New Writing (spring 1939), then collected in Another Time (1940).
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, long attributed to Bruegel and now usually seen as an early copy of his lost original.
Icarus ignored his father's warning, flew too near the sun and fell into the sea; Bruegel shows almost no one noticing.
the poem interprets paintings to make a general claim about suffering and indifference.
Munich and Kristallnacht in late 1938 give the theme of looking away a special force.
Using biographical context: Auden wrote the poem in December 1938 after visiting the Brussels museum, so its examples are drawn from the Bruegel paintings he had just seen there.
Using the myth: in Ovid the onlookers gaze up in wonder, but in the painting Auden describes they carry on working, and the poem builds its argument on that reversal.
Using art history: knowing that Icarus appears only as two small legs in the corner of the painting explains why the poem stresses how easily the disaster is overlooked.
Using historical context: written between the Munich Agreement and the outbreak of war, the poem's calm account of the world turning away from suffering gains an unsettling relevance.
In Brussels town in thirty-eight, Auden saw a boy's sad fate; legs in the sea, a plough, a ship, and no one stopped to watch him slip.
A visitor stands before a huge landscape and admires the ploughman, the ship and the sunlit sea. Only when a guide points to a tiny pair of legs in the water does she realise the painting is about a tragedy, and that she, too, had looked straight past it.
Brussels, Bruegel, Boy, Book: the city, the painter, Icarus, and Another Time.
M.O.V.E. - Museum in Brussels, Ovid's myth, Visual art made into poetry (ekphrasis), Europe on the edge of war
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When and where did Auden write "Musée des Beaux-Arts"?
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What does the title mean?
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Which painting is described in the second stanza?
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How does Bruegel's painting differ from Ovid's version of the myth?
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What is ekphrasis?
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Name two events of late 1938 that form the poem's background.
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French for Museum of Fine Arts; here the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.
The great European painters working before about 1800, such as Bruegel, Titian and Rembrandt.
A sixteenth-century Flemish painter (died 1569) known for landscapes and scenes of peasant life.
In Greek myth, the son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the sun on wings of wax and feathers and fell into the sea.
A Roman poet whose Metamorphoses tells the story of Daedalus and Icarus.
A literary work that describes or responds to a work of visual art.
The September 1938 settlement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.
The magazine, edited by John Lehmann, in which the poem first appeared in 1939.
This lesson sets W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux-Arts" in context: his visit to the fine arts museum in Brussels in December 1938, the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder he saw there, the Greek myth of Icarus, the tradition of poems about paintings, and the troubled Europe of 1938.
"Musée des Beaux-Arts" was written in December 1938, while Auden was staying in Brussels with Christopher Isherwood, shortly before the two writers left Europe for New York. In the city's Royal Museums of Fine Arts he saw works associated with the sixteenth-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, including Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, in which the boy who flew too close to the sun drops into the sea almost unnoticed. The poem first appeared in the magazine New Writing in spring 1939 and was collected in Another Time (1940). This lesson explains the museum and its paintings, the myth of Daedalus and Icarus as Ovid tells it, the meaning of "Old Masters", the tradition of ekphrasis, and the historical moment of late 1938, when Europe was drifting towards war. Knowing this background makes the poem's quiet reflections on suffering and indifference far clearer.
By 1938 W. H. Auden (1907–1973) was the best-known English poet of his generation. He had been to Spain during the Civil War in 1937, and in 1938 he spent six months in China with Christopher Isherwood, reporting on the war with Japan for their book Journey to a War (1939). In December 1938 the two friends stayed in Brussels, and it was there that Auden wrote "Musée des Beaux-Arts". In January 1939 they sailed for New York, and Auden settled in the United States.
The poem first appeared under the title "Palais des beaux arts" in the spring 1939 issue of New Writing, a magazine edited by John Lehmann. It was then collected in Another Time (1940), the volume that also contains "The Unknown Citizen", "September 1, 1939" and "In Memory of W. B. Yeats". Its changing titles come from the names used for the Brussels museum. The title simply means "Museum of Fine Arts".
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels hold an important group of works connected with Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30–1569), the Flemish painter famous for crowded landscapes and scenes of peasant life, who spent his last years in Brussels. The most famous of these, for readers of the poem, is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Experts now usually regard the Brussels canvas as a good early copy, probably from the 1560s, of a lost original by Bruegel, but it has long been known as "Bruegel's Icarus", and Auden treats it as such. The museum also holds Bruegel's The Census at Bethlehem (1566), a snowy village scene with children playing on the ice. Critics have linked the first stanza's images, the old waiting for a miraculous birth while children skate, and a martyrdom happening in a corner, with paintings in the same museum, such as Bruegel's The Census at Bethlehem and a copy of The Massacre of the Innocents by Bruegel's son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger. The poem's first stanza therefore draws on several paintings, while the second stanza focuses on one.
Daedalus was a brilliant craftsman who built the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete. When Minos imprisoned him and his son Icarus, Daedalus made wings of feathers held together with wax. He warned Icarus to fly a middle course: not too low, where spray would soak the feathers, and not too high, where the sun would melt the wax. Icarus, thrilled by flight, soared towards the sun; the wax melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. The sea there came to be called the Icarian Sea. The Roman poet Ovid tells the story in Book 8 of his Metamorphoses, where an angler, a shepherd and a ploughman look up in wonder and take the flying figures for gods. Bruegel's painting reverses this: the ploughman, the shepherd and the angler carry on with their work, and Icarus is shown only as a pair of legs splashing into the water near a passing ship.
"Old Masters" is a term for the great European painters working before about 1800, such as Bruegel, Titian and Rembrandt. Auden opens his poem by praising their understanding of suffering: they knew, he says, that it happens in the middle of ordinary life.
A poem that responds to a work of visual art is called an ekphrastic poem. The tradition goes back to Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad and includes John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Auden's poem is one of the best-known modern examples, and the same painting later inspired William Carlos Williams's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (1962). Ekphrasis does not simply describe a picture; it interprets it, and Auden uses the painting to make a general claim about human life.
The poem was written at a dark moment. In September 1938 the Munich Agreement allowed Hitler to take over part of Czechoslovakia; in November the violence of Kristallnacht was unleashed against Jews in Germany; the Spanish Civil War and the war in China were still raging. Much of the world was going about its business while others suffered. The poem never mentions politics, but many readers feel that its theme, the indifference of ordinary life to individual suffering, had a special force at the end of 1938.
The background explains the poem's setting (a museum), its examples (Bruegel's paintings), its central story (Icarus), its method (ekphrasis) and its mood (calm reflection written on the eve of catastrophe). With this context, the poem's conversational opening and its quiet final image of a ship sailing on become much richer.