The Census

In the poem "Musee des Beaux Arts," W.H. Auden describes a world full of suffering and self-involved people paying little or no attention to their surroundings. The poem describes three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder-a Flemish artist active in Antwerp and Brussels: The Census, The Massacre of the Innocents, and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. The description of these three paintings creates visual images that communicates Auden's concern that as individuals we are not doing our part to solve the suffering that takes place in the world. For the great majority of people, life is like a bubble that floats around in a routinely path with no gust of wind strong enough to blow it off course. As in most other poems, the message in "Musee des Beaux Arts" becomes increasingly evident and powerful the more time one devotes to the poem. Through the use of imagery, symbol, and allusion, Auden manages very successfully to convey his message that the great majority of the masses are self-involved and only concerned or amazed by important events momentarily.

Auden uses visual imagery and symbol to strengthen his theme that for the masses it is business as usual even when disaster strikes. As the poem comes to a conclusion, the theme becomes evident. Auden writes:

Auden paints a visual image of murderous killings juxtaposed with the trivial and routinely action of dogs-play and a horse "scratch[ing] its innocent behind on a tree." Whether we are looking at the painting or not, we are able to experience the painting and the scene through his vivid description. It becomes apparent that not everybody is emotionally affected by this atrocity.

Throughout the last stanza, Auden continues by describing the mythical scene Icarus, also painted by Peter Brueghel. Here Auden again uses imagery and symbol to explain his concern with man's self-involvement. We feel, hear, and visualize the scene by his choice of words: In line 16, we vividly experience the "splash" and "the forsaken cry"; in line 17, we feel "the sun shone"; in line 18 and 19, "white legs disappearing in green Water" and "expensive delicate ship" creates a visual image; and certainly, "a boy falling out of the sky" creates a feeling of amazement that is apparent to any reader. While imagery allows us to experience the situation, it is not until we stop to reflect that we understand fully how serious the problem of our self-involvement has become. "[A] boy [is] falling out of the sky" and neither the plowman nor anyone on the "expensive delicate ship" is taking notice. A "forsaken cry," says Auden, is not enough to make people react anymore. How does this translate into today's society? Well, we need to be less concerned with our selves and more in-tune with what is taking place around us. How often, for example, do we react with more than a sigh when we hear on the news that people are dying of starvation in some African country? Or, to bring the problem closer to our own little bubble, how good have we become at ignoring the enormous homeless population in our own neighborhoods? These are among the issues that Auden is referring to when he writes that "suffering" is taking place all around us while "we are "just walking dully along."

Although this poem's theme is made evident through the very literal description of the images painted by the artist, Auden uses symbol to further reinforce his theme. For example, in line 10 he uses only a single line to describe the brutality and seriousness of a barbaric strike against the innocent while at the same time dedicating the three following lines to relatively unimportant acts-"play" and "[s]cratch[ing]"-performed in daily life. This may be interpreted as a symbol of the relation of time we dedicate to non self-involved issues. It somehow seems a waste to dedicate three lines in a poem, where every word is so carefully chosen, to dogs-play and the backside of a horse. This, however, may be exactly the way Auden feels about the masses' time-management.

Auden continues his use of symbol when he writes:

Here, again, Auden describes the painting very literally; however, the "expensive delicate ship" may also be thought of as a symbol of human life. The body is, indeed, an "expensive delicate ship" that carries us from one point to another. We may therefore read from the above quote the following: Even when the majority of people are faced with "something amazing," it is business as usual; the majority of people pay attention only momentarily, if at all. This further amplifies the poem's underlying theme, that mankind is self-involved.

More than any other element of style, Auden uses allusion to convey the importance and magnitude of mankind's egocentric thinking. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find three different paintings that illustrate the poem's theme more effectively. The Census depicts the birth of Christ in a village where only the elderly stop to pay attention. The Massacre of the Innocents illustrates the story of Herod's murderous promise to kill every first-born son. Even in this scene, amidst all the chaos, the painter managed to find evidence of life unaffected by the massacre. And finally in the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which depicts the myth about something as extraordinary as a man who could fly, people are too involved in their personal business to react. The masses' self-involvement has become so extreme that the birth of Christ, the slaughter of children, and the vision of a flying man don't move people anymore.

In "Musee des Beaux Arts," Auden uses imagery, symbol, and allusion to emphasize the underlying theme that most people are too concerned with their own lives to recognize even momentous events happening around them. Imagery allows us to experience the poem through our senses and thereby leave us with a more lasting impression. Symbol helps us to understand the poem's deeper meaning and to recognize that there is more to this poem than just the description of three pretty paintings. And allusion allows us to see how extreme the masses' self-involvement has become. We learn that unless an event is somehow personal, no matter how momentous it may be, it won't cause a reaction.

Upon doing a little research on W. H. Auden, I quickly learned that he was a very religious man who dedicated a large portion of his life to fighting the larger social issues, which I believe is the purpose of "Musee des Beaux Arts." The poem is a slap in the face with the remark: WAKE UP! We need to react when disasters strike. We need to be concerned with more than just our own "ship." We cannot just turn away and sail calmly on.

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