Musée des Beaux-Arts
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Musée des Beaux-Arts (French for "Museum of Fine Arts") is the title of a poem by W. H. Auden which laments man's apathy to suffering, primarily by interpreting Landscape With The Fall of Icarus (a well-known painting by Pieter Brueghel). The poem's title derives its name from the location of Brueghel's painting, which is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts gallery in Brussels.
Brueghel's painting portrays several men and a ship peacefully performing daily activities in a charming landscape. While this occurs, Icarus is visible in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, his legs splayed at absurd angles, drowning in the water. On a literal level, the viewer is led towards surprise, as this mythological character is dying devoid of ceremony, or even assistance from his fellow earth dwellers. On a more abstract plane, the fact that his fall is ignored represents a general statement about the human condition: that even when tragedy occurs, our self-contained lives preclude our ability to process it.
Read optimistically, then, the poem is an eloquent expression of life's constancy, even in the face of the suffering and injustice that characterize existence. Read pessimistically, the poem laments the injustice of life — even while suffering occurs, life blithely continues, ignoring the situations of those being hurt. In sum, the poem paints the picture of humans oblivious to the situations of others, regardless of severity.
This poem is also a tribute to the artists of old, as is suggested by the title. Although this is what it may seem to be about on the outside, it also holds deeper themes such as the difference in attitudes towards life in the old and the young (another topic demonstrated by the subject matter of the painting Icarus).
