Musée des Beaux Arts

Poetry › W. H. Auden (1938)

“Musée des Beaux Arts” reflects on how human suffering occurs amid the indifference of everyday life. Observing paintings by the Old Masters, Auden suggests that tragedy always unfolds beside ordinary acts of living.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 5 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: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 10 Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 15 Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 20 had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Background and Context

Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Written in December 1938 while Auden was living in Brussels, “Musée des Beaux Arts” takes its title from the city’s fine arts museum, which housed Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. The poem reflects Auden’s late-1930s humanism: its calm, reflective tone contrasts with the mounting crises of Europe before World War II. By juxtaposing mythic suffering with banal human activity, Auden explores moral apathy—the world’s habitual turning away from pain.

The poem is an example of ekphrasis, poetry that meditates on visual art. Auden uses the Bruegel painting not merely as description but as philosophical allegory: the fall of Icarus becomes an emblem of how individual tragedy disappears into the fabric of normal life. The controlled rhythm and conversational tone express both compassion and irony, revealing Auden’s mature skepticism toward the idea of redemptive suffering.

Critics often read the poem as a commentary on modern alienation: art remains morally alert even when society is indifferent. Its final line—“sailed calmly on”—embodies Auden’s insight that human life continues amid suffering, neither heroic nor cruel, simply preoccupied.

Questions for Consideration

1. How does Auden’s tone balance empathy for the suffering with critique of human indifference?
2. What does the speaker mean that the “Old Masters were never wrong”? How is their wisdom moral rather than artistic?
3. How does the ekphrastic description of Bruegel’s Icarus illustrate Auden’s larger philosophical point?
4. What is the significance of the poem’s plain diction and lack of rhyme? How does its conversational rhythm support the theme?
5. How does the poem’s movement—from general statement to specific example—shape our understanding of suffering?
6. In what ways might the poem reflect the political anxieties of 1938 Europe?
7. How do the ordinary details (“dogs,” “horse,” “children skating”) redefine the scale of tragedy?
8. Compare this poem to Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” or Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” How does each poet handle the relation between myth and modern life?
9. What role does art play for Auden—does it offer consolation, critique, or mere observation?
10. How does the poem’s final image (“sailed calmly on”) encapsulate its moral message?

Journal Prompts

1. Write about a moment when you witnessed or learned of suffering that others seemed to ignore. How does Auden’s poem help articulate that experience?
2. Consider a work of visual art that depicts both beauty and pain. How might Auden’s approach to Bruegel guide your interpretation?
3. Reflect on how daily routines persist in the face of tragedy—personal or global. Does that persistence seem cruel, necessary, or both?
4. How does Auden’s calm, almost detached tone affect your emotional response? Try rewriting one stanza with overt emotion and compare.
5. Compare “Musée des Beaux Arts” to Larkin’s “Talking in Bed” in tone and outlook. What do both poets reveal about human distance?
6. Write an ekphrastic poem of your own describing a painting or photograph, focusing on what the image leaves unseen or ignored.
7. Auden suggests that even “dreadful martyrdom” happens in “some untidy spot.” What does that observation reveal about modern realism and moral perspective?
8. How might Auden’s vision of indifference apply to media-saturated culture today?
9. In the poem, art understands what people forget. What responsibility, if any, does the artist have to human suffering?
10. The poem ends not with despair but with acceptance. Is this resignation or wisdom? Explain your interpretation.

Work Cited

• Emig, Ranier (2000). W. H. Auden: Towards a Postmodern Poetics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.