My Analysis of W.H. Auden’s , Musee des Beaux Arts…

   In my first reading of W.H. Auden’s poem, Musee des Beaux Arts I was completely confused and had no idea what the poet was talking about. I had no Idea that the stories the poet spoke of within the poem are some of the same biblical stories that I read as a child.  The setting of the poem takes place in The Museum of the Fine Arts, in Brussels. This large museum in Belgium contains the paintings expressed in this poem. It wasn’t until my 5th reading of the poem that I finally started to notice the mythological, biblical and artistic genre thorough out the poem.

   The overall narrative of the poem is that people are blind to others suffering .The painting of Icarus is a direct metaphor of this which I will discuss later in the blog. While strolling through the Museum Auden looks at other art works and kind of rambles along with virtually no pattern and tons of run-on sentences the poem seems to have no particular structure at all.

   In the first 1-4 lines of  Auden’s poem displays a loss of syntax , his lack of structure is intriguing and makes you want to keep reading .The “Old Masters” that he is referring to symbolizes the great artists he is witnessing while he strolls through the museum in Belgium. In the first 4 lines the poet begins to speak about a crowd, “how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”. He picks everyday things that people do on a daily basis to describe the crowd.

   In lines 5-8 Auden paints the picture of a newborns anticipated arrival and sibling that is not too excited about the new edition to the family, “How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth…Children who did not specially want it to happen”. The poet paints two pictures one of older adults happily anticipating a birth and second of children on the other hand that are less than thrilled. This shows that as happy as the adults are for the baby the children are not and the adults are completely oblivious.

  In lines 9-14 Auden references the painting,” Massacre of innocence”. When the poet says, “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. “This quote says to me that no matter bad someone is being tortured people can still be completely oblivious or completely ignore the situation all together . In the Massacre of the innocence Herod sent his men to kill all boys two and under, even though the army of Herod probably had doubts the still went through with the unspeakable cruelty that was inflicted on the young boys. 

   In the last lines of the poem Auden focuses on one painting Landscape with the fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel. In this Greek mythological painting, Daedalus’ son drowns in the sea because the peasants plowing were too busy with their own tasks to notice the drowning Icarus. In the end of the poem Auden pulls everything together with the overall concept of this poem .People can be getting killed, tortured and even drowning and people can be completely oblivious to others suffering.