Do You See It?

The above painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel, finds itself as the centerpiece of a poem by W. H. Auden:  “Musée des Beaux Arts.”  The speaker of the poem seems as if to be walking through a museum (the title being French for “museum of fine art”), musing on the scenes depicted in the paintings he/she sees, particularly musing on the depictions of human suffering juxtaposed with depictions of ordinary life.  In the second part of the poem the speaker specifically references Bruegel’s painting, mentioning how everything in the landscape surrounding Icarus’ fall continues on as if the tragedy is nothing especially significant.

In class, we were asked to think about what Auden might be trying to say about human suffering, and mainly two different interpretations were offered, both very appropriate.  One interpretation is that tragedy is simply one part of the larger picture of life; suffering happens, and life goes on through it.  The other interpretation, the one that came first in my mind, is that Auden is using the poem like Bruegel was using the painting:  to highlight the unawareness of humans to suffering that does not directly affect their own lives.  The ploughman in the picture gives no sign of even noticing the fall; the shepherd has his back turned and his face up to the sky.  The fisherman doesn't even glance up.  The ship in the water has perhaps the best perspective on the tragedy, yet Auden writes, “…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” (19-21).  Point being, we as humans tend only to notice that which has some bearing to our own lives, and we struggle to be aware of and compassionate to the pain and suffering of others.

I write all of this to relate something interesting that one of my classmates posted regarding this poem.  In a small experiment with the poem’s interpretation, she asked her mother to look at the painting and see if she noticed anything unusual about it.  It wasn’t until this student pointed her mother to the water that her mother noticed the legs of the drowning boy.  I thought this was a great experiment, seeing as I had to admit that I had a difficult time identifying the boy myself, and I knew what I was looking for from the content of the poem.  I’m not sure if I would have seen the drowning Icarus otherwise.  While not seeing something in a painting probably does not prove conclusively that her mother and I are oblivious to human suffering, it is still so interesting to me that Bruegel painted his scene in such a way that the people within the painting are not the only ones that do not notice the tragic end of Icarus.  This may not prove that I’m indifferent to others’ suffering, but it does get me to thinking about it, and that’s possibly the whole point of the painting… and the poem.

So what about you?  Did you see the drowning boy in the painting right off, or did you only look for the scene after reading some of this post?