Art Imitates Life at the Musée des Beaux Arts

In W. H. Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts, the narrator works with various literary devices to derive the meaning of suffering.

One way the narrator conveys the meaning of suffering is through the use of imagery throughout Auden’s poem. Whenever there is mention of a person opening a window or someone walking along, it creates a snapshot in the reader’s head that can create particular literary effects. The old Masters mentioned on the top of the first stanza, for instance, is an example of how specific imagery creates the effect of allusion. By purposely starting with “the old Masters,” the reader can grasp that the line is a reference to a collected group of painters from the past, an allusion to the skilled painters of the Renaissance. The imagery then introduces us to the idea of what we know about suffering today, depicted by the narrator’s ekphrasis on the craft of the old Masters. The idea of the old Masters as skilled artists capable of illustrating the human condition of suffering is mentioned in the lines, “About suffering they were never wrong, the old Masters: how well they understood,” where the narrator is implying that the old Masters’ depiction of suffering resembles the suffering of contemporary life.

The imagery of the old Masters juxtaposed with the description of contemporary life is used to create the meaning of suffering from the perspective of a typical day. The lines, “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along,” is imagery that describes the standard way humans behave. Art is imitating life as the reader can picture themselves in the narrator’s depiction of the ordinary. This juxtaposition between the typical daily tasks and the old Masters’ ideas on suffering insinuates that suffering is apparent all the time, even as we make our way out the door. To elaborate, imagery is purposefully set up in a particular order by the narrator from an intimate space to the outside world. The imagery of contemporary life starts with a snapshot of someone inside eating. The use of imagery becomes less intimate when someone opens up a window, letting in the sounds of the outside world into their private abode. Finally, imagery is least intimate when the narrator mentions the person walking dully along. The description brings us out into the open, illustrating how all our tasks connect us with everyone else around.

The imagery of youth is another way the narrator uses this device to add to the meaning of suffering. In contrast to the dull tasks of contemporary life, the narrator sparks the imagery of children skating on a pond. While child’s play is not commonly used to depict suffering, the lines, “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,” uses divine imagery as an example of the way children view suffering. The children are uninterested in the miraculous birth as they would prefer to engage in the pleasant activity of skating. The following lines, “They never forgot/ That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course,” further emphasizes that all life, however miraculous it may be, must eventually end. The children on skates may not want there to be a miraculous birth if they know that individuals will suffer and die as the old Masters did.

Along with imagery, the narrator uses ekphrasis on a piece of art by one of the old Masters, Bruegel’s The Fall of Icarus. The narrator’s depiction of the painting shows an example of how the old Masters understood human suffering by emphasizing distance and belittling a significant moment in time. The lines, “how everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster,” shows how people distance themselves from the suffering of others. People turn their backs away to distance themselves from the drowning Icarus for the sake of their work and leisure. This distance and belittlement of the boy's death states that while suffering takes place in the background, people still go on with their labor. The lines, “the ploughman may/ Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure,” puts more emphasis on distance. While something as dreadful as a boy suffering in the water takes place, a man who works in the field is disinterested. There is now a sense of detachment between the imagery of the laboring ploughman on land and Icarus in water.

There is even the use of the distance between Icarus and the “expensive delicate” ship. Instead of the narrator describing the closeness between the two subjects, distance is used to further subject the way people belittle suffering. The previous imagery of children skating at the edge of the woods is similar to the imagery of the ship sailing in the background as they share the same purpose in creating meaning. As the children are said not to want miraculous birth, the narrator has the ship disinterested in the superhuman. The lines, “...that must have seen/ Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky/ Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on,” implies that even the suffering of a character from the Greek mythos cannot be attended by those who have somewhere to be. Life goes on as it does in the painting, the poem, and in real life.

The narrator uses imagery and distance to create many literary effects circling the topic of suffering. Imagery is used to contrast the old Master’s interpretation of suffering to how suffering is approached in modern times. Their ideas on suffering rivals the suffering going on in the present moment. As people complete daily tasks, kids skate, dogs walk, suffering is going on in the background. The narrator uses distance to belittle a moment of suffering, as shown between the ploughman and the ship turning away from the drowning Icarus. Auden is trying to convey meaning through these devices to explain that while suffering continues, it is equally as crucial for people to keep on with their life. The ekphrasis on the old Master’s painting is used to illustrate how life imitates art. The suffering depicted in The Fall of Icarus mirrors the plight of contemporary times.

Work Cited:

Auden, W.H. “Musée des Beaux Arts.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction. Poetry, Drama, and Writing, edited by X.J. Kennedy et al., 6th ed., Pearson, 2020, pp. 611