Upon reading this poem by W.H. Auden, I found that the theme of apathy towards the suffering of others resonated for me, and I wanted to explore the concepts and details he presents in this piece to further my understanding.
I looked up the significance of the title, and it is taken from his visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1938. Art is also explored within the poem itself, in the second line when he refers to "the Old Masters," or the Renaissance painters who often depicted human suffering in their works. During his visit to the museum, he viewed the painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. He goes on to reference this painting in the fourteenth line of the poem.
The story of Icarus is a Greek cautionary tale, in which Icarus' father Daedalus, an Athenian craftsman, built a labrynth for King Minos to trap the Minotaur. Daedalus and Icarus were exiled by King Minos, and Daedalus made two sets of wings for himself and his son to escape the island. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, as the wings were fashioned from feathers and wax and would melt if they got too hot, but Icarus got caught up in the exhilaration of flight and didn't heed his father's warning. His wings melted and he dropped from the sky into the sea.
The imagery of Brueghel's painting depicts Icarus falling into the sea as everyone else in the landscape goes on with their day to day business. This idea of nonchalance and ambivalence towards suffering and extraordinary events (like witnessing a person falling out of the sky) is the essence of the poem, and is illustrated in the careful images Auden chooses.
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The image of Icarus falling out of the sky was, for me, the strongest of the poem. Nice work researching Auden's inspiration for that part. I do have one question, what is a cautionary tale?
ReplyDeleteI realize now that I can probably wiki this shit in two seconds, so I won't wait around for a reply.
Anyways, nice interpretation, and thanks for the background info.
I take a cautionary tale as something that begins with someone being told to either do something or refrain from doing something, and when they choose to ignore this advice, the result is disastrous. The boy who cried wolf could be another example of this. This is definitely my own definition, and a pretty broad one at that, but hopefully it helps!
ReplyDeleteI think that this idea of following caution also applies to the natural instincts that we get as people. The sudden information that we get when something just doesn't or does seem right and our inability to follow what we feel is the right decision…
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