Posted by alexandra_k on February 4, 2005, at 3:16:44
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someon 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 speciallly 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 Brueghel's *Icarus,*(2) 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.W. H. Auden December 1938.
(1) "Museum of Fine Arts" The reference is to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, which contains Brueghel's *Icarus*.
(2) Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the cunning craftsman of ancient legend. Together they flew on artificial wings fastened to their shoulders with wax, but Icarus ventured too near the sun, which melted the wax, and he fell and perished. The painting of the fall of Icarus is by the Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel (ca. 1520-1569): Icarus' legs are disappearing into the sea in one corner of the picture, the rest of which has nothing to do with him.Taken (including footnotes) from "The Norton Anthology of English Literature" (6th Ed. Vol. 2) p. 2266.
- No Amazon link to that ed and vol.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:452970
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050118/msgs/452970.html