Musée des Beaux Arts

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1939

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Paintings in the Museum

The artwork in Auden’s poem symbolizes humanity’s attempts to make sense of the world. A painting involves the ability to perceive, to recreate and to express thoughts and emotions. It freezes a moment in time and allows for the fluidity of interpretation. The Old Masters can understand suffering because they work with it and acknowledge it. Paintings express that understanding and can speak to viewers across the ages. The paintings thus symbolize connection and communication—a means to bridge the distance that enables indifference.

The Actions of the Animals

Auden’s poem focuses on the human response to human suffering. The poem’s animals, in contrast, symbolize innocence.

The animals are just as indifferent as humans to suffering. During the massacre, animals occupy “a corner, some untidy spot” (Line 11). They are removed from the primary conflict. There, the “dogs go on with their doggy life” (Line 12). The tone is droll, but it does important work: The dogs’ lives are valuable, to be sure, but it is made clear they are not human lives.

Animals are innocent and exist outside human standards. The dogs are untouched by the violence. The “torturer’s horse” (Line 12) isn’t guilty of its owner’s atrocities and doesn’t participate in the massacre. Instead, it “[s]cratches its innocent behind on a tree” (Line 13). The comedic touch adds lightness while simultaneously placing more weight on humans. There’s no real excuse for a person to either cause or ignore suffering.

The Margins and Periphery

The speaker describes elements of three Breughel paintings. They are busy works, packed with details. The margins and periphery in the poem symbolize the overlooked, unseen, and ignored—that which is out of focus. Human suffering occupies this kind of space.

When the speaker says traditional painters knew suffering happens when “someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” (Line 4), the focus shifts between the named acts and unspecified pain.

Momentous things happen in the middle of the action, too. Mary and Joseph wait in line at the census while the “aged are reverently, passionately waiting / For the miraculous birth” (Lines 5-6). They don’t seem to notice any more than the young people “who did not specially want it to happen, skating / On a pond at the edge of the wood” (Lines 7-8). A viewer’s eye may not know what to rest on. A spectator may not understand the spectacle.

The Old Masters, though, “never forgot / That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course / Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot” (Lines 9-11). Suffering can also be pushed outside of immediate awareness and into the margins.

The death of Icarus is represented in the painting by “the white legs disappearing into the green / Water” (Lines 18-19). The ploughman, the ship, the sun, and the water all occupy the spotlight. They pull focus away from the titular event of the painting.