In the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” W. H. Auden scrutinizes the position of human suffering in everyday life. The first stanza of the poem is a general depiction of the indifference society exhibits toward the distress of others. Opening the poem from the perspective of the “Old Masters”, the poet states that the artists of the Renaissance period understood the nature of human suffering: “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 (lines 2-5)”. These lines indicate that human suffering is predominantly perceived as an individual burden, insignificant and unimportant to the rest of society. The poet notes how an extraordinary event, such as the “miraculous birth (line 7)”, seems less significant from the point of view of those who are not concerned with it: children skating on a pond. To the waiting aged, however, the miraculous birth is of utmost importance as......
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Approximate Word Count: 423
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |