Musee Des Beaux Arts (actual college work)
Am I just rambling or do I have somewhere to go with this? You decide.
In Auden’s poem “Musee Des Beaux Arts,” The themes presented are suffering and apathy. There’s inflicted suffering, and how most people hardly know that it’s happening. “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along,” (Auden 4) suggests that the majority of people have an “ignorance is bliss” relationship with the suffering of others. There’s intentional apathy as well, and how children would rather go skating on a pond than wait for a religious experience, or “miraculous birth” to happen (5-8). There is also inflicted suffering, or torture. “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse/Scratches its innocent behind on a tree,” (12-13) shows how animals seem to look the other way even though the owner (a torturer) goes on about his business of inflicting suffering. When it’s said that the “Old Masters” understood the human position of suffering, (1-3), it’s suggested that people like Brueghel were trying to say something with their art. Brueghel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” shows a case of accidental suffering, in which Icarus is drowning in the water offshore, but no one is going out of their way to help him. The people of the landscape all turned the other way: “The ploughman may/Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,” (15-16) and the “ship that must have seen/Something amazing,” both cases illustrate how humans, as well as animals, may or may not acknowledge a form of suffering and still decide to remain apathetic. It could be under the guise of having “somewhere to get to,” (21) or simply because it’s easier on humans to just ignore the suffering of others.
In Auden’s poem “Musee Des Beaux Arts,” The themes presented are suffering and apathy. There’s inflicted suffering, and how most people hardly know that it’s happening. “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along,” (Auden 4) suggests that the majority of people have an “ignorance is bliss” relationship with the suffering of others. There’s intentional apathy as well, and how children would rather go skating on a pond than wait for a religious experience, or “miraculous birth” to happen (5-8). There is also inflicted suffering, or torture. “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse/Scratches its innocent behind on a tree,” (12-13) shows how animals seem to look the other way even though the owner (a torturer) goes on about his business of inflicting suffering. When it’s said that the “Old Masters” understood the human position of suffering, (1-3), it’s suggested that people like Brueghel were trying to say something with their art. Brueghel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” shows a case of accidental suffering, in which Icarus is drowning in the water offshore, but no one is going out of their way to help him. The people of the landscape all turned the other way: “The ploughman may/Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,” (15-16) and the “ship that must have seen/Something amazing,” both cases illustrate how humans, as well as animals, may or may not acknowledge a form of suffering and still decide to remain apathetic. It could be under the guise of having “somewhere to get to,” (21) or simply because it’s easier on humans to just ignore the suffering of others.