The Musee De Beaux Arts Essay Research

  • Просмотров 216
  • Скачиваний 5
  • Размер файла 15
    Кб

The Musee De Beaux Arts Essay, Research Paper The poem is about the death of hope. Auden is distraught over the deaths in WWII. The soldiers of WWII were teenagers. To have 55 million children dead is an act of pure genocide. To Auden the fact that people let this happen means that the world is an ugly place. Art is a thing of beauty and humans don’t deserve it because of the ugly things we do. Auden uses The Fall of Icarus to describe the way people behave. Everyone sees that Icarus has fallen but they turn their heads instead of helping Icarus. That is how WWII was everyone knew that massive amounts of people would die but they just turned their heads. This poem contains an approach to its subject different from many other poems. The subjects of many other poems -love,

war, etc.- are recognized and commented on by the poets. This is not the case here, for Auden shows art’s importance by his initial comment that “About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters,” then investigates how the Old Masters show that they were never wrong. The Old Masters don’t exactly have to represent people but I believe Auden is referring to the chorus of Oedipus. The chorus knows all about suffering and they know it shouldn’t be. This poem is also written poorly because people don’t deserve a well written poem. People don’t notice the problems because people don’t care. They don’t get the point to the story about The Fall of Icarus because they don’t care. Last a whole generation died in WWII because people don’t care. In the painting

The Fall of Icarus the “ploughman” and the “delicate ship” did not just happen to be there; they were placed in the painting by the artist for a specific purpose – with the result that to Auden the true nature of suffering is shown. The necessity for recognition is Auden’s comment on the reaction of people toward suffering in general. Certainly, the person who is being tortured realizes what suffering is, and certainly Icarus, his wings melted by the sun, knows suffering when he plunges toward the ocean. But what about the rest of humanity who are opening windows or “just walking dully along”? Even if they see forms of suffering, do they recognize it as such and feel anything? If you don’t recognize suffering and try to prevent it are you truly human? The people

that walked past Icarus are the same people that closed their eyes to WWII. For Auden if no one is paying any attention to important things such as death what do they need art for. It is just like A Farewell to Arms all the people outside of war don’t feel the suffering so they don’t care. The world is terrible because everyone is so wrapped up in their on ideas they can’t help the fellow man. When the army had the huge retreat in Farewell to Arms nobody stopped to help the injured they took machines and things that were useful to them. There was such a big rush that people trampled on each other and killed each other just to save their own lives. Soldiers are supposed to give their lives to serve others but not in the twisted world we live in. The fact that we can’t help

each other means to Auden that we probably couldn’t even see the art that we could be shown. This is a rather complex poem because what may appear to be the subject actually is not. Artists are rarely satisfied just to comment on life; instead their approach is to try to design, mold, or create some artifact (the work of art, a painting, a poem, or a piece of prose) which actually improves on life. Because many artists feel that life itself is haphazard and misleading, they attempt to make an artifact that is real and honest, without the frills and trivialities of everyday existence. In order to realize that you can do nothing about a particular human condition, you must first see it and then make up your mind. You cannot, for example, know that an accident victim is beyond all