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  • Essay / Tragedy and artistic detachment at the “Museum of Fine Arts”

    In the “Museum of Fine Arts”, WH Auden explores human responses to tragedy across cultures through the details of paintings in the “Museum of Fine Arts ". Although the poem can be read as an ode to human resilience in the face of tragedy, the constant fluctuating description between the tragic event and mundane activities suggests that humans can never truly detach themselves from disaster. Additionally, the dissonance between the high culture theme and the simplistic format of the poem is created by Auden to criticize the tendency of "old" artistic masters to emotionally dissociate themselves from the tragic events they depict. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayAuden, throughout the verse, uses frequent allusions to the world outside the "Museum", to present both the humanity and natural forces as capable of overcoming the suffering caused by tragic events, but nevertheless, neither proves to be completely separable from tragedy. There is a semantic field of everyday activity throughout the poem, including and especially the described actions of people during a tragic event, even if it is "eating or opening a window or just walking boringly." Here, the catalog of present participles coupled with the list form is indicative of the capacity of human beings to pursue mundane activities in the midst of ongoing tragedy, and the subsequent declarative stating that "there must always be children who do not particularly wish to do so. "It Happened" further celebrates the human capacity to remain impervious to "suffering", with the deliberate allusion to youth through the collective noun "children", reinforcing the impressive capacity of young and old to pursue their daily life after a traumatic event. just as a painting cannot exist without a frame, by similarly "framing" the poem with reference to suffering, it suggests that neither humans nor the natural world can be completely detached from the trauma of tragic events, and that this These are the experiences that actually shape their existence. An example is the expression "the sun shone/As it should on the white legs disappearing into the green/The water": positioning the moment of suffering between allusions to the natural world further gives the suffering human a important role in the movement of water. , which is presented as passive rather than active, and the enjambment promotes a sense of movement and activity created by the moment of tragedy, and the enjambment is used again to similar effect in the declarative "the horse of the executioner / scratches his innocent bottom on a tree' in which the horse is defined as an orchestrator of the tragedy to suggest that even those who perceive themselves as uninvolved in the tragedy cannot escape its effects. By placing this phrase in an emphatic position in the last line of the first stanza, Auden supports assertions of human detachment from tragedy, foregrounding the poem's overall message that the impact of tragedy is always felt at a unconscious or conscious level, by everyone and by everything. The series of references to different cultures, from the untranslated French title ("Musée des Beaux Arts") to the Greek myth of "Icarus", to the English language of the poem, further amplifies the tragedy's capacity to expand across cultures and continue to affect lives even today. Through the extensive use of ekphrasis, the poet critiques the artist's ability to detach himself from the emotional meaning of his work.