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. 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. However, Auden highlights the momentous nature of Icarus’s tragedy in contrast to this indifference, while Williams’s work minimizes the tragedy.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Excerpt) William Carlos Williams the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning
Musée Des Beaux Arts (Excerpt) W.H. Auden In Breughel'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.
In “Musée des Beaux Arts,” the speaker describes Icarus’s fall as “the disaster” (Auden l. 15) that nearby tradesmen actively ignore. Characters such as the ploughman “heard the splash . . . but for him it was not an important failure” (ll.16–17). 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). Despite Icarus’s moving fate, he is simply unimportant to his surroundings. 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). Even the sea—nature itself—was busy, “concerned with itself” (ll.11–12) rather than Icarus. In the end, the boy’s death was but a “splash quite unnoticed” (l.19). 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) Anne Sexton Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings! Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea? See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.
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. Both works minimize the significance of Icarus’s actual death. Nonetheless, in doing so, Sexton ascribes vitality, audacity, and admirability to Icarus’s life. 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). 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). 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. 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. The three poets demonstrate the interpretive variation that inevitably arises when myth is transcribed into a recorded art form, whether visual or literary.
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