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Musée des Beaux Arts (poem) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Auden collection where the poem first appeared in book form Landscape with the Fall of Icarusin the Musée des Beaux Arts Musée des Beaux Arts (French for Museum of Fine Arts) is a poem written by?W. H. Auden?in December 1938 while he was staying inBrussels,?Belgium?with?Christopher Isherwood.[1]?It was first published under the title Palais des beaux arts (Palace of Fine Arts) in the Spring 1939 issue of?New Writing, a?modernist?magazine edited by?John Lehmann.[2]?It next appeared in the collected volume of verseAnother Time?(New York: Random House, 1940), which was followed four months later by the English edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1940).[3]?The poems title derives from the?Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique?in Brussels, famous for its collection of?Early Netherlandish painting. Auden visited the Musée and would have seen a number of works by the Old Masters of his second line, includingPieter Bruegel the Elder?(ca.?1525–1569). Contents ??[hide]? 1Synopsis 2Bruegels influence 3Cultural legacy 4References 5External links Synopsis[edit] Audens?free verse?poem is divided into two parts, the first of which describes scenes of suffering and dreadful martyrdom which rarely break into our quotidian routines: While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully / along. The second half of the poem refers, through the poetic device of?ekphrasis, to the painting?Landscape with the Fall of Icarus?(ca.?1560s), at the time thought to be by?Bruegel, but now usually regarded as an early copy of a lost work. Audens description allows us to visualise this specific moment and instance of the indifference of the world to suffering, how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster ... the white legs disappearing into the green. The disaster in question is the fall of?Icarus, caused by his flying too close to the sun and melting his waxen wings. Auden achieves much in the