W. H. Auden wrote “Musée des Beaux Arts” in December 1938 following a visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (a.k.a. Belgium's Royal Museums of Fine Arts). The poem's speaker walks through a gallery, contemplating various paintings and admiring their ability to convey the “human position” towards suffering—that is, indifference. The poem is an example of ekphrasis: the speaker coolly describes the paintings, calling attention to figures carrying on with their lives in the face of violence and disaster. The speaker focuses specifically on Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, in which Icarus, the mythical figure famous for flying too close to the sun and then drowning, appears only in the corner of the painting as a pair of legs sticking out from the water’s surface.

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• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Summary

• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Themes

  • 

    Human Indifference to Suffering

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-21

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Musée des Beaux Arts”

  • Lines 1-4

    About suffering they ...
    ... walking dully along;

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 5-8

    How, when the ...
    ... of the wood:

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 9-13

    They never forgot ...
    ... on a tree.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 14-17

    In Breughel's Icarus, ...
    ... an important failure;

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 17-21

    the sun shone ...
    ... sailed calmly on.

    

    

    

    

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• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Allusion

    

    

    

    

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    Where allusion appears in the poem:

    • Lines 4-8
    • Lines 10-13
    • Lines 14-21

  • Caesura

    

    

    

    

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    Where caesura appears in the poem:

    • Line 2: “Masters: how”
    • Line 3: “position: how”
    • Line 5: “reverently, passionately”
    • Line 6: “birth, there”
    • Line 7: “happen, skating”
    • Line 11: “corner, some”
    • Line 14: “Icarus, for instance: how”
    • Line 15: “disaster; the”
    • Line 16: “splash, the”
    • Line 17: “failure; the”
    • Line 19: “Water, and”
    • Line 20: “amazing, a”

  • Consonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where consonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 3: “takes place”
    • Line 4: “While,” “someone else,” “just,” “dully along”
    • Line 5: “reverently, passionately”
    • Line 11: “some,” “spot”
    • Line 14: “Icarus,” “instance”
    • Line 16: “splash,” “forsaken cry”
    • Line 19: “expensive delicate ship,” “must,” “seen”
    • Line 20: “Something,” “sky”
    • Line 21: “somewhere,” “sailed calmly”

  • Enjambment

    

    

    

    

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    Where enjambment appears in the poem:

    • Lines 2-3: “understood / Its”
    • Lines 3-4: “place / While”
    • Lines 5-6: “waiting / For”
    • Lines 6-7: “be / Children”
    • Lines 7-8: “skating / On”
    • Lines 9-10: “forgot / That”
    • Lines 10-11: “course / Anyhow”
    • Lines 11-12: “spot / Where”
    • Lines 12-13: “horse / Scratches”
    • Lines 14-15: “away / Quite”
    • Lines 15-16: “may / Have”
    • Lines 17-18: “shone / As”
    • Lines 18-19: “green / Water”
    • Lines 19-20: “seen / Something”

  • Juxtaposition

    

    

    

    

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    Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:

    • Lines 3-4
    • Lines 5-8
    • Lines 10-13
    • Lines 15-17
    • Lines 17-19
    • Lines 19-21

  • Personification

    

    

    

    

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    Where personification appears in the poem:

    • Lines 19-21: “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”

  • Parallelism

    

    

    

    

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    Where parallelism appears in the poem:

    • Line 2: “how”
    • Line 3: “how”
    • Line 4: “or,” “or”
    • Line 5: “How”
    • Line 14: “how”

  • Understatement

    

    

    

    

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    Where understatement appears in the poem:

    • Lines 10-11: “the dreadful martyrdom must run its course / Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot”
    • Line 15: “the disaster”
    • Line 17: “not an important failure”
    • Line 20: “Something amazing”

• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Musée des Beaux Arts
  • The Old Masters
  • Position
  • Dully
  • Reverently
  • Miraculous Birth
  • Specially
  • Wood
  • Martyrdom
  • Breughel’s Icarus
  • Leisurely
  • Ploughman
  • Forsaken
  • Shone
  • Amazing
  • (Location in poem: )

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Musée des Beaux Arts”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Speaker

• “Musée des Beaux Arts” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Musée des Beaux Arts”

• More “Musée des Beaux Arts” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Brueghel and Auden — A blog post from Harper's Magazine provides a more detailed look at the paintings described, in the context of Auden's poem.

    • Biography of Auden — A detailed account of Auden's life and work from the Poetry Foundation.

    • Analysis of "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" — A close, multi-media analysis of Brueghel's famous painting from Google Arts and Culture.

    • Archival Auden Material — Scans of primary sources related to Auden's work, including letters, photographs, and books that are relevant to the poem.

    • The Story of Icarus — A retelling of the famous Greek myth from TED-Ed.

    • Pieter Breughel the Elder — A broad overview of the painter's works, including a discussion of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

    • Auden Reads "Musée des Beaux Arts" — Listen to a recording of the author reading the poem.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by W. H. Auden

    • As I Walked Out One Evening

    • Epitaph on a Tyrant

    • Funeral Blues (Stop all the clocks)

    • In Memory of W. B. Yeats

    • Lullaby

    • Partition

    • Refugee Blues

    • September 1, 1939

    • The Capital

    • The More Loving One

    • The Shield of Achilles

    • The Unknown Citizen

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