Reading Musée des Beaux Arts through I. A. Richards: Language, Meaning, and Society

This blog post was created as part of an academic assignment for Dr. Dilip P. Barad . A Richards-style close reading of W. H. Auden’s poem. Here is the link to the professor's blogs for background reading to understand: Click here

Introduction

The primary objective of this task is to study poetry through the critical framework of I. A. Richards, with a specific focus on how figurative language contributes to the construction of meaning. In accordance with the assignment guidelines, students were asked to select a poem from the reference blog, Just Poems, based on their assigned roll numbers. For this exercise, I will be analyzing W. H. Auden’s "Musée des Beaux Arts".

Analytical Framework

Using Richards’ method of close reading, this analysis explores how Auden employs figurative language to create complex, multi-layered meanings. Beyond the interpretation of the poem itself, this study also aims to refine essential academic skills, including:

• Linguistic Sensitivity: Developing a deeper awareness of word choice and imagery.
• Critical Interpretation: Learning to decode the "how" and "why" behind a poet's message.
• Academic Discourse: Building the foundation for informed and insightful classroom discussions.

Text of the Poem

Musée des Beaux Arts
By W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: 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

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

1. My Doubts While Reading the Poem

While reading "Musée des Beaux Arts", I face some challenges because the poem does not use typical emotional language. Usually, when a poet talks about tragedy, the words are designed to make the reader feel sadness or anger. Here, the poet seems unusually calm, and that calmness becomes part of the poem’s difficulty.

I am confused by the lack of emotion. When Auden mentions a "dreadful martyrdom", he immediately follows it with the ordinary detail of a horse scratching its back. This makes me wonder whether the speaker is being cold, or whether he wants the reader to notice how the world often refuses to pause for suffering.

I also struggle with the mix of important and unimportant things. The poem refers to a "miraculous birth" but then shifts to children skating on a pond. The effect is unsettling: a sacred event appears alongside casual play, as if history’s big moments and everyday life occur at the same time without agreement about what deserves attention.

The shift in focus is sudden in the Brueghel example. Instead of narrating Icarus’s fall in a dramatic way, the poem focuses on a farmer and a ship. I want to care about the boy falling, but the poem forces me to observe the people who do not care at all. That distance becomes part of the poem’s meaning.

Finally, the visual element is challenging without the painting. If the reader has not seen Brueghel’s image, it may be hard to realize that Icarus appears only as a tiny detail—just legs disappearing—near the edge of the scene. The poem depends on that perspective to show how tragedy can become small in the frame of society.

2. Sense, Feeling, Tone, and Intention through I. A. Richards

Using the ideas of I. A. Richards, we can approach the poem through four key aspects: Sense, Tone, Feeling, and Intention.

Sense: The main idea is that life continues no matter what. Auden suggests that even when someone experiences a terrible moment, the surrounding world often remains busy and indifferent. Brueghel’s scene becomes a central example: Icarus falls, but the farmer keeps working, and the sun shines “as it had to.”

Tone: The tone is calm and detached, like a quiet observation made while walking through a museum. Auden uses casual diction such as "anyhow" and "doggy", and this ordinary language placed beside words like "martyrdom" creates a controlled, almost documentary voice. The poem does not shout; it points.

Feeling: The strongest feeling is loneliness. Even though the poem shows a populated world—children, ships, farmers—the victim’s suffering remains isolated. The image of the "white legs disappearing into the green water" while the ship "sailed calmly on" creates a painful sense of abandonment.

Intention: Auden’s intention is to reveal a truth about human nature and society: suffering can occur in public, yet still be ignored. Written in the tense atmosphere before World War II, the poem also suggests that large-scale disasters and personal pain often happen in the background while ordinary life continues—people keep eating, opening windows, and moving toward their own destinations.

Conclusion

Through Richards’ framework, the poem becomes clearer. The sense explains that suffering is constant, the tone shows how the world speaks about it with distance, the feeling captures the victim’s loneliness, and the intention pushes the reader to reflect on human indifference.

“Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

The poem is challenging because it suggests we are often like the ploughman who does not look up when someone else is falling. Auden’s poem does not only describe suffering—it exposes how easily society places it at the edge of the frame.

Works Cited

• Auden, W. H. Musée des Beaux Arts. 
• Barad, Dilip. “I.A. Richards: The Figurative Language | Practical Criticism.” ResearchGate, Jan. 2024, Link.
• Barad, Dilip. “Just Poems.” Dilip Barad | Teacher Blog, 23 Sept. 2015, blog.dilipbarad.com.
• Richards, Ivor Armstrong. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment. Harper Perennial, 1956.