Musée des Beaux Arts

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1939

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem is structured like an argument and is divided into two main parts. The first five lines of the opening section offer a thesis that suffering happens while others are going about their daily lives. The next 10 lines present supporting examples drawn from two Breughel paintings in the museum.

The second part of the poem offers the specific example of “Breughel’s Icarus, for instance” (Line 14) to illustrate the point. It stops short of offering a definitive conclusion and, as art so often does, leaves the audience to interpret and wrestle with the larger philosophical questions on their own.

“Musée des Beaux Arts” is written in free verse—there’s no fixed meter or rhyme scheme. However, traditional elements like rhythmic stresses and rhymes still appear throughout the poem; this neatly balances between the traditional and the unconventional, playing with expectation and undermining familiarity. This fluctuation expresses Modernist aesthetics and reflects the uncertainty of the times.

There is a good deal of fluidity in the poem. Enjambment allows the reader to flow from one line to the next, like in the close of the first stanza: “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree” (Lines 12-13). Most of the end-stopped lines break with a semicolon, colon, or comma. Only two periods exist in the poem, punctuating the ending lines of both stanzas. They mark the closing of a thought.

At the same time, the poem features some unconventional phrasing and rhythms. The first line employs unusual syntax: “About suffering they were never wrong” (Line 1). The emphasis is placed on suffering and leaves the reader briefly wondering who the referent is. The second line provides it—“The Old Masters: how well they understood” (Line 2)—and continues to force the reader to work to find meaning.

The rhythm of the opening line features strong accents on “suffering” and “wrong” and lighter stresses on “they” and “never” (Line 1). The bold meter contributes to the force of the observation. The long fourth line is filled with regular stresses—“While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”—which evokes a sense of plodding. The next line pushes the rhythm into the glide of “reverently, passionately waiting” (Line 5). The poem thwarts passive reading.

The poem builds on expectation and a shared tradition while it demands close attention. The form of the poem speaks to its themes and challenges its readers.

Voice

The voice in the poem is conversational and thoughtful. The speaker is learned enough to be able to speak about the art without fumbling for details. He not only recognizes the works’ allusions but folds them into conversation. He can mention “the miraculous birth” (Line 6), the “dreadful martyrdom” (Line 10), and the Icarus myth naturally. This isn’t a lecture or a sermon. The speaker is talking to an equal.

The tone is relaxed enough to allow for a touch of humor, like when he says, “the dogs go on with their doggy life” (Line 12). It’s a bit silly, but it also expresses the notion that humans have no real idea of what a dog’s day is really like. Such a moment balances the poem’s darker elements and softens the criticism of human failure by avoiding the rigidity of judgment. The speaker, too, is human.

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is the written description of a work of art. The rhetorical exercise thus explores the intersection between writing and visual art, offering a way to communicate more than just the physical details of the piece. The writer, or speaker, conveys their version of the core meaning of the artwork as well as the emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic experience of engaging with it. Ekphrastic structure is built on a relationship between the object, the speaker who describes it, and the auditor/reader.

The task of ekphrasis is in some ways an impossible one because “it may refer to an object, describe it, invoke it, but it can never bring its visual presence before us in the way pictures do” (Mitchell, W. J. T. “Ekphrasis and the Other.” University of Chicago Press, 1994)—and yet the form persists. It provides a unique space to explore the nature of perspective, perception, and art.

“Musée des Beaux Arts” describes paintings in the gallery and the experience of viewing them. It extends the discussion to questions about reacting to what is seen—or not seen—in the world.