Musee des Beaux Arts
By W. H. Auden
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
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
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
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.
Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” discusses the arguably unfortunate yet true fact that the world goes on without you there (Sorry!). The speaker of the poem begins by stating that the “human position” takes place while everyone else is going about their daily tasks such as “opening a window” or “just walking dully along.” Even the dogs are going on with their “doggy life”….which I have to assume consists of peeing, chasing cats and humping everything.
The speaker goes on to give an example of this concept by presenting the well-known story of Icarus, who, in Greek mythology, flew too close to the sun. His wax wings melted causing him to fall to his death. Breughel’s Icarus, as the speaker talks about, is a painting made by Breughel entitled, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Check it out. Google images. It’s not hard to find. It’s even in this article, for all you lazy kids like me. What will be hard to find, however, is Icarus in the painting. The eye concentrates on all of the other people and events occurring in the painting, and thus Icarus’ legs and death are ignored.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but is this our fate? Over the winter break, which basically consisted of me working, then sitting on the couch every day, I thought a lot about life passing by me. I may only be 20 years old, but I think that sometimes I take the backseat in the metaphorical car of life. Is the car driving me? Or am I driving the car?
I wanted to start out this semester with this conversation because I want to urge everyone to drive their own cars (Enough with the car metaphor already). I mean, no matter what, life is going to pass you by and eventually you will die and rot in the ground, hanging out with the worms while everyone you once knew and everyone you never even met goes on drinking, celebrating, and having an awesome time.
The point I’m trying to make is we should all just try to take an active part in our lives. For most of us, that has already begun, with that whole process of applying to colleges and deciding where to go and making friends and all that stuff. Just make sure what you’re doing, you’re doing for you, and not to please other people or meet some invisible expectations. Either way, you’re stuck in your body with your life and all that matters is making it yours.
