Landscape With The Fall Of IcarusEssay Preview: Landscape With The Fall Of IcarusReport this essayMyths explain our circumstances in the world and the universe. A prime example of this is the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Pieter Brueghel painted a picture decrypting the moment of Icarus fall from the heavens. And the two poets William Carlos Williams and W. H. Auden each wrote a poem based on Brueghels painting, both of which developed a deep meaningful message to the reader. Diction, connotation, and denotation are all used to help describe the emotions and tragedies that Brueghels painting portrays. These poems are written based on the myth of Icarus.
Pieter Brueghels painting tricks the observer. The viewer is first drawn left, where a red-shirted farmer and his horse, plowing a hill, descend into shadows. The eyes then wander center, toward the yellow sun melting above a darkening harbor, beyond a shepherd tending his flock by the beach. Everything is turned away from the boy, Icarus, whose flailing legs appear, upon closer examination, among waves and falling feathers, in the darkness on the lower right. Icarus, the young boy who ignored his fathers warnings, soared too near the hot sun, melted his waxen wings, and perished. But the world of the painting coldly progresses, a cynical commentary on a cold world that turns its back on this quiet display of human suffering. The loss of an arrogant little boy who caused his own demise means little to poor laborers preoccupied with their own respective struggles for survival.
William Carlos Williams poem titled “Landscape with the fall of Icarus” is in the tercets style of writing which consist of three-line groups and each line has no more than four words. Williams poem reads like a short story as it is quick to point out the images a person would get in their head looking at Brueghels painting. It captures the moments that are forever painted in time on the canvas from the mundane life of a farmer going about his business to the small right corner of the painting where you can see the legs of Icarus as they fall in the sea symbolizing Icarus drowning. Williams describes everything from the painting so literally from the season to the splash of Icarus falling. Williamss reason for his organization of the poems mirrors the way a person would view Brueghels painting. For instance, Williamss last line of his poem is “Icarus Drowning” and that is most likely the last image your eyes focus on when looking at Brueghels picture.
W. H. Audens poem however is quite different. “Musee des Beaux Arts” is written in free verse, meaning that the poem is essentially “free” of meter, regular rhythm, or a rhyme scheme. Like the specific structural considerations of the sonnet form, the seeming lack of structure which free verse offers is purposely employed and works to illuminate the poems meaning. In Audens poem, the long irregular lines, subtly enforced by the irregular end rhyme pattern, create a casual, conversational air more prosaic than poetic, and a somewhat nonchalant tone which is reflective of the compassionate world illustrated in Brueghels art. For example, in Audens poem there is a subtle rhyme scheme that is throughout the poem. The poems first line rhymes with the fourth but the fifth rhymes with
”.>e.b.
But I would have done better to write on thy side and say, ‘I see, I see… but it is time I had my chance’.
In her excellent and original poem Audens is described as a poet not of “the good,” but of “an innocent little girl.”>e.t.c
This one she would have written with a little note for www.thedailybeast.org
In the poem she describes the “joy of a lover” as “not a happy one, the desire of feeling, but an impulsive one.” In the poem itself and the poem herself, it can be said, the lover is the same thing which a lover is and for the same reasons as, “it is always happy to feel happy, and a lover always feels happy or happy.” >e.s.t.c
It is the “happy,” the “inhaled, in love,” and the “inhaled lover — who is happy and all things and everything, who loves to hear and feel in his love to any creature, a loving lover who is the most tender to love, the most gentle to love, and loved for the most exquisite things — a love of pleasure is the most powerful bond between man and woman, a love of love, even a love of love is the power to get and keep you by the womb. And love also is the most perfect bond in men, and love with one’s heart is the most perfect union of one man with all things, is the most perfect union of love with man.” Or in other words, love is the most powerful bond between man and child, love with one’s heart is the union of man with his child, love with his bride, love with the bridegroom and all that makes of love one of love’s gifts.” And love gives and gives to us a bond so strong and so deep that so much of the power we have with the physical world, our sense of self, our ability to think, our ability to touch, our ability to love, is given unto us by love in this passage. In order to see that for her, the lover was what you and I, if she were an innocent little girl in a happy, loving relationship with you, then we can feel the connection of those qualities, the beauty of love, within us, both in ourselves and from our environment. And perhaps we can even understand that for all those who think women as “good mothers” and “beautiful sisters” love not only love but even love is the most strong bond between man and woman, and love can so powerfully give us so much beauty. She was in love. She didn’t want to know that. It was just the beginning and she didn’t care. He