On suffering
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W. H. Auden, in the second stanza of his “Musee des Beaux Arts,” refers to Pieter Brueghel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus to illustrate his insight into human suffering and death.
In the painting, Auden points to the farmer plowing his field and to ship (and its crew) turning away from the sight of a boy falling down from the sky and splashing into the water. For them, the sight may be quite extraordinary but not that significant to make them stop what they are doing. Even the fisherman, seen on the lower right of the painting, does not seem to be surprised by the sight. He does not even look at the boy falling into the water, and goes on with his fishing. And why would they?
Even the “sun shone / as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green / water”; but only because it HAD TO, and not because such human drama is worth its special attention. What may have happened to the boy would be the concern really of Icarus himself or his father Daedalus (or perhaps to high school students and their teachers who study the mythic tale in class for its lesson on overreaching).
But that is the nature of misfortune, right? It is earthshaking only to the people who suffers from it. The rest of humanity it seems could not care less. Or do they?
more entries like these sir and you can spank me for life!
Bwahahahahahahahaha!
a companion piece to this would be frost’s out,out:a death does not cause the rest of the world to stop. in fact, everyone else gets on with his or her life. instead of a painting, frost is inspired by shakespeare’s macbeth and dramatizes the soliloquy. “Life is full of sound and fury…signifying nothing” now takes physical or narrative shape in the sudden and casually nihilistic death of a boy in a rustic community. however, the theme of ambition provides the death of lady macbeth and eventually macbeth himself with causality. there is none of it in frost’s hardworking farm boy. which makes his death more of a ‘nothing’ than macbeth’s. and from the perspective of ‘regular’ folk like him (as opposed to ‘thanes’), it is a tragedy all the more sadder because it is more common.
Yes, how common is death in our contemporary literature. No grand tragedies to frame the loss of a life. Everything seems expendable. No wonder we have a term today like collateral damage.
this is actually a great painting that encourages me to be happy and contented of what i have right now. thet in this world we need to survive and learn to fight by ourselves, nothing more nothing less. this gives us the value of confidence and trust and without these things we will never be successful….. this simply explains that life is too short, so let’s live it to the fullest. let’s change not for our self gratification but fo the better.