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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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How would you describe the poem's language?
Very casual. Phrases like doggy life and for instance sound like ordinary speech.
Why use casual language for martyrdom and death?
Because the poem is about how ordinary life surrounds suffering. The casual words are part of that ordinariness.
And what happens when the torturer's horse scratches itself next to a martyrdom?
It is bathos, a comic drop. Life refuses to pause for tragedy.
Exactly. Style and theme are working together.
What does the ploughman think of Icarus's fall?
That it was not an important failure.
Name the device.
Understatement. A boy's death becomes a minor setback in someone else's day.
And the forsaken cry?
A transferred epithet. The boy is forsaken, but the adjective is given to his cry.
Good. One adjective compresses his whole abandonment into a sound.
Does this poem rhyme?
It does, but the rhymes are so far apart that I did not notice at first.
Why might Auden hide his rhymes?
Maybe because the poem is about things we fail to notice, like Icarus in the painting.
And how is the poem structured?
A general claim with several examples, then one detailed example in the second stanza.
From general to particular, like an argument. Form serves meaning throughout.
the poem interprets Bruegel's paintings and alludes to the Nativity, martyrdom and the Icarus myth.
the extraordinary is placed beside the ordinary, sometimes with a deliberate comic drop.
colloquial phrases make the voice calm and reasonable and mirror the ordinariness around suffering.
a boy's death becomes an unimportant failure to the ploughman, and the ship sails on.
the forsaken cry, the innocent horse, the sun that must shine and the ship with a destination.
two unequal stanzas move from general to particular, with long lines, run-on sentences and hidden rhymes.
Identifying bathos: the shift from a dreadful martyrdom to the torturer's horse rubbing its rump against a tree is bathos, which mimics the way ordinary life refuses to pause for tragedy.
Explaining a transferred epithet: calling the boy's cry forsaken transfers his abandonment to the sound itself, so a single adjective captures his loneliness at the moment of death.
Linking form to theme: the rhymes are so irregular and widely spaced that they are easily missed, just as the suffering in Bruegel's paintings is easily overlooked.
Analysing understatement: for the ploughman the fall is not an important failure; the restrained phrasing makes the world's indifference more chilling than any outburst could.
A painting, a myth, a horse and a ship; plain words, a cry, and a casual slip; rhymes hidden away like a boy in the sea: that is the craft of Auden's ekphrasis for me.
An art student copies Bruegel's Icarus and paints the legs so small that her teacher misses them. When she points them out, he laughs and says she has understood the painting better than he did. Auden's devices work the same way: they hide in plain sight.
Every Artist Juggles Colours, Unless They Paint Faces stands for Ekphrasis, Allusion, Juxtaposition, Colloquial diction, Understatement, Transferred epithet, Personification, Form.
B.R.U.E.G.E.L. - Bathos, Rhyme hidden, Understatement, Ekphrasis, General to particular, Everyday diction, Legs in the sea (imagery)
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Why is the poem called ekphrastic?
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Give an example of bathos in the poem.
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What is the transferred epithet in the Icarus stanza?
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What is the effect of the colloquial diction?
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How is the poem structured?
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Why might the rhymes be hidden?
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A literary work that describes or responds to a work of visual art.
A reference to a well-known person, story, artwork or event.
Placing contrasting things side by side for effect.
A sudden, often comic, drop from the serious or elevated to the trivial.
Presenting something as less important than it really is.
An adjective applied to a noun other than the one it logically describes, such as a forsaken cry.
The running on of a sentence from one line to the next without a pause.
Informal, everyday language.
This lesson examines the literary devices in W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux-Arts": ekphrasis and allusion, juxtaposition and bathos, conversational diction, irony and understatement, transferred epithets, personification, vivid colour imagery, and a loose form of long lines, run-on sentences and scattered rhyme.
"Musée des Beaux-Arts" sounds almost casual, like a thoughtful visitor talking in a gallery, but its effects are carefully made. The whole poem is ekphrastic, built on paintings associated with Bruegel, and it is full of allusions to the Nativity, to martyrdom and to the Greek myth of Icarus. Auden places the extraordinary beside the ordinary (juxtaposition), sometimes with a comic drop (bathos). He uses everyday words, irony and understatement to show how lightly the world treats suffering, transferred epithets that shift feeling from a person to an object, personification of the sun and the ship, and a striking image of white and green. His long, uneven lines, run-on sentences and widely spaced rhymes make the verse feel like natural speech, so that its patterns, like the suffering in the paintings, are easy to miss. This lesson explains each device with its effect and shows how to write about them.
A literary device is a technique a poet uses to create meaning or effect. In an examination answer it is not enough to name a device: you must locate it, explain its effect, and link it to the poem's meaning. Each device below is presented in that way.
The whole poem responds to works of visual art seen in the Brussels Museum of Fine Arts. This is ekphrasis. Auden does not simply describe the paintings; he interprets them, drawing from their composition a general truth about suffering. The device shapes the poem's structure, since the first stanza draws on several paintings and the second focuses on one.
The poem alludes to the Old Masters, the great European painters before about 1800; to scenes from Christian story, such as the miraculous birth (the Nativity) and a martyrdom; and to the Greek myth of Icarus, as told by Ovid and painted in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. These allusions give the poem great range, from the sacred to the mythical, while its argument stays down to earth.
Auden repeatedly places the extraordinary beside the ordinary: a miraculous birth beside children skating, a martyrdom beside dogs and a horse, a boy falling from the sky beside a ploughman at work. The effect is to show, rather than state, that suffering happens in the middle of everyday life. Sometimes the contrast creates bathos, a sudden drop from the serious to the trivial, as when the dreadful martyrdom gives way to the torturer's horse rubbing its rump against a tree. The comic deflation is deliberate: it mimics how life refuses to pause for tragedy.
The poem's language is plain and colloquial. Phrases such as "doggy life", the casual "for instance" that introduces Bruegel's painting, and words meaning "somehow or other" and "untidy" make the speaker sound like someone thinking aloud in a gallery. This informal register contrasts with the grandeur of the subjects (miracles, martyrdom, myth), reinforcing the theme that great events are surrounded by ordinariness. It also gives the poem a calm, reasonable voice that makes its observations persuasive.
For the ploughman, Icarus's fall is "not an important failure". The understatement is chilling: a boy's death is reduced to a minor setback in someone else's day. The fine, costly ship, whose crew must have witnessed something astonishing, simply has a destination to reach. The gap between the event and the reaction is ironic, and Auden lets the irony speak without comment.
A transferred epithet attaches an adjective to the wrong noun, shifting a quality from a person to a thing. The boy's cry is described as forsaken, though it is really Icarus who has been forsaken; the horse's behind is called innocent, though it is the horse that is innocent. The effect is compressed and subtle: the forsaken cry concentrates the boy's abandonment into a single sound, and the innocent horse reminds us that animals bear no blame for human cruelty.
The sun shines on the drowning boy because it has to, as if obeying a law it cannot break, and the ship is given a purpose of its own, somewhere it must get to. These touches of personification suggest that both nature and human enterprise follow their own necessities, indifferent to the individual.
The most vivid image in the poem is visual: pale legs vanishing into green water under a shining sun. The bright, almost cheerful colours contrast with the death they show, which makes the moment more poignant. Sound imagery, the splash and the cry, adds to the sense that the disaster was perceptible, and that ignoring it was a choice.
In the first stanza the word "how" recurs as Auden lists what the Old Masters understood, giving the stanza the rhythm of a thoughtful explanation. The device organises a series of examples into a single argument.
The poem has two stanzas of unequal length: the first (thirteen lines) makes a general claim and supports it with several examples; the second (eight lines) focuses on one painting. The movement from general to particular gives the poem the shape of an argument. The lines are long and irregular, and sentences run on across line breaks; at one point a line ends on the colour of the sea and the next begins with the water itself. The second stanza unfolds as one long sentence linked by semicolons, so that, like the ship, it keeps moving past the disaster. The poem does rhyme, but the rhymes are irregular and often far apart, so readers barely notice them. It is possible to see a link here: the poem's patterns, like the suffering in the paintings, are present but easy to overlook.
Use the sequence name, locate, explain, link: name the device, locate it in your own words, explain its effect on the reader, and link it to a theme such as indifference or the human position of suffering.