The three poets demonstrate the interpretive variation that inevitably arises when myth is transcribed into a recorded art form, whether visual or literary. In this departure from the original myth, Sexton emphasizes the heroic nature of Icarus’s actions, placing her poem in between Auden’s reading of Icarus’s importance (but only in death) and William’s version that minimized him completely. Sexton closes the poem with an amusing criticism of Daedalus, Icarus’s father, or in this poem, the “sensible daddy” who goes “straight into town” ( l.14) as his son rises and falls. Sexton centers Icarus’s bold attempt to fly as high as possible as the locus of meaning in his life, asking, “Who cares that he fell back to the sea?” ( l.12). With a sly, irreverent tone, she encourages readers to “admire his wings” (Sexton l.9) as the boy is “wondrously tunneling into that hot eye” ( ll.11–12). Nonetheless, in doing so, Sexton ascribes vitality, audacity, and admirability to Icarus’s life. Both works minimize the significance of Icarus’s actual death. In 1960, Anne Sexton published To Bedlam and Part Way Back, which contained “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph.” In the same year, Williams published “Landscape” in the Hudson Review. While his sensible daddy goes straight into town. See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down He glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling Admire his wings!įeel the fire at his neck and see how casually
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast Is Williams interpreting the myth (as Bruegel portrayed it) as being inconsequential, if not even the main character’s death is noticeable? Is he critiquing the attention we pay to myth as a way of commenting upon the lack of attention we pay to one another? To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph (Excerpt) In the end, the boy’s death was but a “splash quite unnoticed” ( l.19). Even the sea-nature itself-was busy, “concerned with itself” ( ll.11–12) rather than Icarus. Williams expresses the same notion in “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” but he instead draws attention to “the whole pageantry/ of the year” (Williams ll.6–7) and the spring ( l.3). Despite Icarus’s moving fate, he is simply unimportant to his surroundings. The speaker further calls attention to the significance of Icarus’s fall, characterizing it as “something amazing” ( l.20) that the ship ignored and “sailed calmly on” ( l.21). but for him it was not an important failure” ( ll.16–17). Characters such as the ploughman “heard the splash. In “Musée des Beaux Arts,” the speaker describes Icarus’s fall as “the disaster” (Auden l. 15) that nearby tradesmen actively ignore. Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Quite leisurely from the disaster the ploughman mayīut for him it was not an important failure the sun shoneĪs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Icarus drowning Musée Des Beaux Arts (Excerpt) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Excerpt) However, Auden highlights the momentous nature of Icarus’s tragedy in contrast to this indifference, while Williams’s work minimizes the tragedy. Auden and Williams both draw inspiration from Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, so Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Williams’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” emphasize the indifference of bystanders to Icarus’s plight. Can the interest poets such as Auden, Williams, and Sexton have for the Icarus myth be explained by the Roman poet Horace’s assessment ut pictura poesis, or “as is painting, so is poetry”? While Horace’s analogy does capture one facet of Auden and Williams’ interest in the Icarus myth-visual analysis-the three poets featured in this exhibition offer differing interpretations of the myth and its resonance for their contemporary audiences.