Musée des Beaux Arts

“Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

We have been studying a poem called “Musée des Beaux Arts” for the past 3 weeks, it is a poem about Icarus falling from the sky. These next six questions give us an insight into the meaning of the poem.
In this poem by W. H. Auden there are six subjects being talked about, the suffering, The Old Masters, human position, miraculous birth, the Martyrdom and the disaster, these all refer to something that is happening in the “Fall of Icarus” painting by Breughel. The suffering is relating to an experience, something bad weather that be physical or mental, I believe it is both, because Icarus is falling from the sky, and he must have hit the water at great speed, so he is suffering from physical pain where as his father Daedalus must be suffering a sense of mental pain from knowing that his son is about to die. The Old Masters are referring to old painters and the human position is where you are in relation to everyone else in the world, why nobody stopped to help Icarus, they must’ve felt like they had no need to stop for him as they had other things to do, he is only one person with whom they had probably never met before, why did they have any need to help Icarus. The miraculous birth is believed to be that when you die you will go somewhere you deserve to go, might that be heaven or other beliefs, this is referring to Icarus being born into his new life after death. The Martyrdom is one who chooses to suffer from death rather than re-announce or accept a belief or cause. Icarus falling from the sky is the disaster.
To be able to fully understand the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” it is a necessity to understand and be aware of the allusions that occur all the way throughout the poem. The allusions refer to things that we need to understand and fully connect to a new text. The two allusions that are referred to in the poem are ‘Icarus and Daedalus’ they are thought to be gods having their own myth which explains how Icarus fell out the sky, there is a song about the myth of ‘Icarus and Daedalus’ and also lots of stories for young children and adults to learn about the two gods.
The human position is where you are in relation to the rest of the world, how Icarus is so insignificant to the people around him, they see him falling but do nothing about it. How the man on the boat could’ve gone over to see if Icarus was okay instead of letting him drown, but was it worth saving one insignificant person or continue on as if nothing happened.
Two figures of speech used in the poem are, pronouns and personification, personification is used in lines 19-21 “... and the expensive delicate ship that must have see something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” The ship is being personified, ships cannot see because they don’t have eyes, but the ship can see that the boy is falling out of the sky, and ships don’t have anywhere to go, the people on ships do though, so they are also personifying the ship to want and need to go somewhere. Pronouns have been used throughout the poem using they, its, it, their and him.
In lines 19, 20 and 21, “...something amazing...’ was referring to Icarus falling out of the sky, how it was thought to be impossible. This situation is disastrous for Icarus because he is so insignificant and nobody really notices him even though he did fall out of the sky.
The poem refers to the children in line 7, and it explains that the children did want the miraculous birth to happen “’...for the miraculous birth, there always must be children who did not specially want it to happen...” because the miraculous birth means you die but are born in a new life.