Question

2. What is emphasized in W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" but not in Pieter Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus? From the differences in emphasis, what conclusions can you draw about the similarities or differences between the two works' them

Answer 1

Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus points that our individual suffering doesn't matter compared to the whole world since a single individual is just a grain of sand compared to the whole world. This leaves the viewer with his or her own opinion. In the painting, the idea of over prideful suffering is shown in only a tiny splash that we know from the title of the work must be Icarus falling into the ocean. The rest of the scene is quiet and calm, as if the whole world continued without a care. Rather in Auden's poem, it obsesses about suffering and seems to grieve at the idea that our individual suffering isn't more important. The poem takes on a very powerful vocabulary using words like "suffering", "martyrdom", "disaster", and "forsaken". Many readers can agree that they both have very similar ideas.