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mono

05-18-2006, 01:59 AM

Hello, lazanya, welcome to the forum. ;)
Firstly a copy of "Who's Who" by W.H. Auden:

A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day;
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.
I have read this poem only once before, and find it quite difficult to analyze, to tell all honesty. Hopefully, when my mind seems to work a little better rather than attempting this so late at night, I will try to write a few words of this later, perhaps tomorrow.

As for 'Musee des Beaux Arts,' firstly a copy:

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.
It seems very important to know that Auden refers entirely to a painting by Pieter Brueghel, called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, making an obvious allusion to Metamorphoses by Ovid; you can find a copy of the painting here (http://www.csupomona.edu/~jelerma/icarus/icarus.jpg).
None of Auden's poetry can seem necessarily easy to understand, but I feel much more familiar with this work. The first stanza refers greatly to the condition of human suffering - the dread of aging, the possible desire never to have entered the world through birth, but realizing that even sufferers of common life must continue life's course, regardless of any troubles. Thus proceeds the life that Auden describes - everyone has problems that may cause them to regret living, yet everyone continues their everyday tasks in the most perfunctory manner.
The second stanza alludes more to the fall of Icarus in Ovid's Metamorphoses and to the painting cited. Pre-occupied with one's own distraction from his/her troubles, as discussed in the first stanza, either no one realizes, or everyone ignores the violent and dreadful fall of Icarus into the sea. No doubt, at least one person could have noticed the sight, heard the splash or 'forsaken cry,' but the day carried on as usual, as if nothing out-of-the-ordinary occurred. The poem, I believe, in a depressingly cynical manner, mostly places emphasis on the desire for people to help themselves by all mean necessary, including if the process involves facing a voluntary ignorance of others' problems, even if life-threatening.
In the painting, which I recommend viewing on the link provided in conjunction to the poem, you will notice legs flinging themselves in the sea near the large, wooden ship, and, looking very close, you can see a skull hidden among the bushes and shrubs toward the left of the painting, possibly further depicting the chosen ignorance of others' violence, problems, conflicts, etc. that had carried on long enough for a body to have long-since died.
Hopefully this has helped, and I will try writing about "Who's Who" as soon as I can. :)
Good luck!