Do we spare a thought for suffering or sail calmly on?
March 6, 2022 8:06 AM   Subscribe

A visual and sound essay on WH Auden's poem Musee de Beaux Arts and Breughel's painting, Landscape with The Fall of Icarus. "The message seems simple enough, but the poem is full of riches, hidden details that you might miss if, like a farmer with his head down — or a distracted museumgoer — you weren’t looking at the edges."

"...'In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
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,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.'"
posted by storybored (23 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Tip: Use the Page Up / Page Down keys rather than the scroll wheel; it's just too long of a 'page' to wheel through.

If you can abide the sometimes jarring zooms and transitions, there is actually a pretty good narrative through it all.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:48 AM on March 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


Thank you for posting this! One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets.
posted by basalganglia at 8:59 AM on March 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


I don't know Ukrainian poetry, but a quick search turned up this, which did speak to me about the current situation.

[So I’ll talk about it]
Written by Serhiy Zhadan and translated by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin

So I’ll talk about it:

about the green eye of a demon in the colorful sky.

An eye that watches from the sidelines of a child’s sleep.

...
posted by emmet at 9:23 AM on March 6, 2022


This is a really wonderful explication of a poem. I appreciated how personal it was; I didn't feel like the NYT author was Pronouncing the Meaning so much as just explaining her own relationship with the poem. (Her very well informed, detailed relationship.) I had poetry ruined for me by bad high school experiences, it's nice to be able to enjoy this now.

Here's a recording of Auden reading the poem.
posted by Nelson at 9:26 AM on March 6, 2022 [3 favorites]


I love a close reading, makes me very nostalgic about certain college classes I took.

The poem I've been stuck on recently is Arnold's Dover Beach, those last lines...

".... for the world,
which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams,
so various, so beautiful, so new,
has really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,
and we are here as on a darkling plain,
swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight,
where ignorant armies clash by night."

Here, too, there are clear limitations to the consolations found in art and nature.

Of course, in these times, one might prefer something a bit more actionable. "We must love another or die." Interesting that Auden disavowed that one later. Sure, it doesn't entirely follow. We must love another (Polish parents leaving strollers at the train stations for their neighbours fleeing with their babies) or die (we die anyway, the other babies, drowned, washing up at our beaches). Maybe in times of war, any call to action becomes a sort of propaganda? But is that a bad thing? Isn't it at least a start?

Arnold's poem actually contains a call to action too. The first line of the last stanza, the one I left out in my quote.
"Ah love, let us us be true to another....." True as in loyal, faithful? Or true as in no lies?

No certitude, that much is certain.
posted by sohalt at 9:28 AM on March 6, 2022 [3 favorites]


And still so many remain willfully blind to the plight of innocent animals that are eaten daily. Don’t look away from their suffering either.
posted by I will not be Heiled at 9:52 AM on March 6, 2022


There are two Twitter accounts I follow that post up close images of tiny details contained in paintings by Breughel (@breugelbot and yes, that's how it's spelled) and Hieronymus Bosch (@boschbot). Both are revelatory.
posted by carmicha at 10:24 AM on March 6, 2022


I never regret clicking through on these close reads. I wish the NYT had them more often.
posted by potrzebie at 11:06 AM on March 6, 2022


I loved reading this, thank you for posting. Auden's poem and Elisa Gabbert's brilliant, subtle reading certainly resonate with current events.

I don't know Ukrainian poetry

Perhaps you'd like to read this poem by Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky - it's been making the rounds recently and also speaks to the limits of human attention to suffering:

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.
posted by rabbitbookworm at 12:06 PM on March 6, 2022 [4 favorites]


Thank you for sharing this! I love this poem and painting, and this gave me a chance to discover lots of new things about them.
posted by chaiyai at 1:06 PM on March 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is fun! I am reading my kids Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire right now — from Jim Kay's illustrated edition. And I was just using the poem (and the Breughel painting) to show how artists can reference other art in their work, specifically because of this image from the books.
posted by heyitsgogi at 1:25 PM on March 6, 2022 [2 favorites]


Eye opening, timely proof of the importance of art. Thank you.
posted by blue shadows at 2:34 PM on March 6, 2022




A lovely, meditative little article, thanks for posting!

"...the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."


Gabbart cites these lines as evidence that Auden believes "moral absolution is available," though we rarely pursue it in favor of our own petty interests (if I'm correctly understanding her implication). "Had somewhere to get to," in Gabbart's reading, is a droll condemnation of the ship's misplaced priorities. A ship properly navigating toward moral absolution would turn itself around and effect some daring maritime rescue.

I don't read this as condemnation but take Auden to be adopting the broader perspective of the Breughel painting in his moral analysis. Icarus is simply not the main figure in this painting; our personal tragedies, so cataclysmic to us, are just more events, no different than "eating, or opening a window." There's no saving Icarus. The ship will quite naturally and rightly concern itself with shippy matters just as the dog lives its doggy life. It's enough for us to live our own little lives, and try to get the plowing done, and sail calmly on.
posted by crosley at 10:26 PM on March 6, 2022


Gabbart cites these lines as evidence that Auden believes "moral absolution is available," though we rarely pursue it in favor of our own petty interests (if I'm correctly understanding her implication).

Absolution is when you're absolved for your sins. A ship turning around to help Icarus doesn't need moral absolution, because it's doing the moral thing in the first place. So the moral absolution presented as available by the poem is not an alternative to, but a justification of the pursuit of our own petty interests. People are morally absolved for being indifferent to other people's suffering, because they've got their own peoply business to go about, and there's, as you say, presumably no saving Icarus anyway.

This for me, raises some questions.... should one avail oneself of something just because it's available? Is there a value in bearing witness?
posted by sohalt at 10:43 PM on March 6, 2022


I think that's the two different possible readings mentioned, implied condemnation for not being more concerned but also the reality of everyone having their own issues and lives. I sure hope anyway that it's more than just a narrow excusing of being too busy, having our problems petty or serious, even of course as life must go on and there are limits to what we can do.

Although it's not mentioned in the presentation, the younger ones skating around the edge of the pond where the ice can be thinnest might have significance as well.
posted by blue shadows at 10:51 PM on March 6, 2022


Randall Jarrell has a poem in response to Auden’s. Bit bleak and existentially-fraught for our current day, but it’s there.
posted by lorddimwit at 4:08 AM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Of course, in these times, one might prefer something a bit more actionable. "We must love another or die." Interesting that Auden disavowed that one later. Sure, it doesn't entirely follow. We must love another (Polish parents leaving strollers at the train stations for their neighbours fleeing with their babies) or die (we die anyway, the other babies, drowned, washing up at our beaches). Maybe in times of war, any call to action becomes a sort of propaganda? But is that a bad thing? Isn't it at least a start?

See, that line isn't even the last line in the poem, and I think that the final stanza kind of contextualizes and helps it.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The whole thing is about this question - how are you going to react when everything is going to shit - and while that "We must love one another or die" is a little naive, that last stanza sounds more like an admission that "yeah, that's corny, and one person ain't going to fix everything on their own, but dammit I would still rather conduct myself that way than not do so."

...September 1, 1939 is one of my own favorite Auden poems, but largely because of an outside circumstance. I first heard it sometime in 2001, one early September morning; it was a few days after the World Trade Center attacks, and I was listening to NPR keeping track of the news and undergoing that whole maelstrom of emotions. And somewhere, in between announcing different news stories or giving various updates, Scott Simon simply recited it, without any introduction (or maybe he just said who it was by), and then went on to the next bit. It was the first time I'd heard it; it summed everything I was thinking and feeling up, and it was a blessed pause in the barrage of news.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:22 AM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


I'm not going to let this discussion go without linking to this, which uses the poem to analyze . . um . . an episode of The X-Files. (In this case, I insist you read the comments.)
posted by dannyboybell at 5:22 AM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


This was very cool and interesting. And somehow I missed the whole "close read" thing in the NYT, so I'm going to be spending some more time with the rest of them.

A friend and I have been meeting every two weeks to discuss poetry. We each bring a poem in and then spend a few hours discussing them. We are also in a writing group together, and I've noticed that we are both really improving in our own work.

I also very much want to know what other four poems of his Auden considered "trash."
posted by FencingGal at 6:53 AM on March 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh - it's right there in the photo of the book: Sir, No Man's Enemy; A Communist to Others; To a Writer on His Birthday; and Spain.
posted by FencingGal at 6:56 AM on March 7, 2022


@emollick: "here is a 🧵 on Auden, his poems, & the 'Hardest Class in History,' his 1941 two credit poetry class at Michigan."
posted by kliuless at 10:32 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


lol, kliuless: "The class required 6,000 pages of reading (syllabus 👇). Auden felt you needed to really immerse yourself in poetry so you were required to memorize long poems, such as at least 8 cantos of Dante, plus you had to translate a poem from a language YOU DIDN'T KNOW to English"

OMG
posted by storybored at 5:30 PM on March 8, 2022


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