Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
 
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.
 
 

If this poem sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is one of Auden’s most anthologized and most taught poems. It’s often on the syllabus for English 101! And no wonder, since Auden brilliantly and humorously captures the juxtaposition of the big moments of life with the humdrum of daily existence.
 
The poem was written in December, 1938, when Auden was visiting Brussels and paid a visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique—the museum referred to in the title of the poem.
 
The poem, written in free verse, gives us a glimpse into Auden’s thoughts as he wanders through a gallery of paintings by the old Masters. “About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters,” the poem begins. From that opening, we might expect Auden to talk about a magnificent painting of the crucifixion. Instead, he goes in quite a different direction: “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.” What the Old Masters understood about suffering was that time does not stop when it happens. Suffering takes place in a “human position”—in other words, life goes on around it.
 
At Christmas, when “the miraculous birth” happens, “there always must be / Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating / One a pond at the edge of the wood.” Notice those words: “there always must be.” This isn’t just sometimes; this is how things are—how they always are. And it is not just other humans who “did not specially want it to happen.” The old Masters “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.” Neither humans nor animals stop what they are doing, even when the most wonderful or the most terrible things are happening.
 
In the second stanza, Auden pauses in front of one particular painting, The Fall of Icarus by Breughel. In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of Daedalus, a great inventor, who crafts wings so that he and his son can fly. Icarus, intoxicated with his newfound power, forgets his father’s injunction not to fly too close to the sun. The heat melts the wax which holds the wings together, and he falls into the sea.
 
In Breughel’s painting, Auden notices, “everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster.” It is not that they don’t notice Icarus. In fact, “the ploughman may / Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, / But for him it was not an important failure.” And the people on that “expensive delicate ship… must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,” but they don’t stop. They “had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” As for the sun, it simply kept on shining “as it had to” on the legs of Icarus as he sinks into the water.
 
Auden’s poem is full of ironic contrasts between the sublime and the ordinary, the meaningful and the seemingly meaningless. It is a poem that is certainly open to dark readings—when extraordinary things happen, the poem seems to say, people don’t notice or don’t particularly care. But I think there is another way to read the poem. Auden kept his eyes open as he walked through the Musée des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and his poem can serve as a reminder to us to keep our eyes open. In the midst of the ordinary and the everyday, extraordinary things are happening—beginnings and endings—suffering and joy.
 
Have a great summer! See you in September.