Study Questions

1. Unlike Williams's poem, which is based on ONE poem by Pieter Breughel, this poem by Auden seems to allude to three paintings. Of the three paintings reproduced above, which painting do lines 5-8 refer to? Which painting do lines 9-13 refer to? Which painting do the remaining lines refer to? How do the first four lines relate to all three of these paintings?
2. Briefly, what is the mythological story about Icarus? What part of that story is expressed in Breughel's painting about Icarus?
3. Both the first and the second stanzas are about the position of human suffering in life, or the concurrence of grand human suffering and the daily (and sometimes trivial) activities.  (The "its" and "it" in line 3 refers to human suffering and aspiration.)
   a. What are the examples of human suffering in the first stanza?  How are they set in contrast to the daily activities of human beings or even animals?   For the speaker, these two kinds of events concur and the "Old Masters" know it.  What is the speaker's attitude toward this concurrence, and toward the Old Master?  (Pay special attention to the depiction of the children, the dogs, and the horse.)
   b. The human suffering in the second stanza is Icarus's failed aspiration.   But in this stanza, as well as in Brueghel's painting, the focus is not so much on Icarus' aspiration/suffering (his "forsaken cry" and disappearing "white legs") as on the plowman's, the sun's and the ship's indifference to it.  Why?  And what do the speaker of the poem and the painter think about this indifference?
    
4. When you first read this poem, you probably did not notice the rhymes. Go back over the poem now and identify the rhyming words. How do these almost hidden rhymes relate to the meaning of the poem? Do they suggest something about the possibility for order in a world that appears disorderly?
5. Do you see other patterns of order in the poem?
6. What do the poem and paintings suggest about art and nature?