We Wear Our Own Wax Wings
Icarus and the societal ill of ignorance
In the mid-to-late sixteenth century, Belgian painter Pieter Bruegel painted an oil piece that has long been the center of poetic discussion.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus sits today in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. The painting’s admirers include the poets W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams, both of whom wrote poems on the piece.
A Feathered Fool’s Fate
Readers of mythology are familiar with Icarus, the ill-fated son of Daedalus. An inventor, Daedalus makes two pairs of wax wings for his son to escape their imprisonment on the isle of Crete.
Daedalus warns his son not to fly too close to the sun. But Icarus’ hubris outweighs his father’s admonition—to his detriment. The wax melts in the heat of the sun, and Icarus plummets to Earth, drowning in the sea.
Daedalus mourns his son’s demise, naming the nearest island Icaria in his memory. Today the body of water where Icarus supposedly drowned is called the Icarian Sea.
A Tragic Protagonist in Paint & Poetry
It is no wonder that painters and poets are so drawn to this tragedy. When I first saw Bruegel’s work, I was mesmerized by the intricacies. For the first five minutes of gazing at the piece, I couldn’t find Icarus.
But he is there, floundering in the lower right corner, white legs disappearing into the green broth of the sea, followed by trail of feathers.
I first stumbled upon Bruegel’s beautiful painting in a Modern Poetry class, when my colleagues and I read W. H. Auden’s ekphrastic poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” [“Museum of Fine Arts”].1
Ekphrastic poetry is a poem written about a work of art. Before we read Auden’s verbal description of the painting, my professor posited, we ought to take a look at the painting itself.
And what a painting.
Auden’s Ode against Ignorance
W. H. Auden’s poem on Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is striking for two reasons.
First, where most critics and writers hear “Icarus” and immediately launch into pretentious soliloquies about hubris, Auden does not. He combines observations of not one, but two paintings by Bruegel into one expertly woven commentary on ignorance.
This composition reveals the second point of Auden’s genius: the theme itself. Like any good poet, Auden reveals his theme implicitly, through attention to one crucial detail:
Every ship and every living thing has turned its face from the disaster.
Musée des Beaux Arts 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 duly 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 can go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 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.
One of the foremost Modern poets, Auden writes much about societal tragedies and injustices. In his well-known “The Unknown Citizen,” for instance, Auden memorializes every common man and woman who dies without fanfare, as a simple cog in the machine of the world that keeps turning without acknowledging or even suffering the loss.
In “Musée,” Auden’s social commentary still centers on the common man, but this time, Auden chastises him. The greatest societal ill, Auden posits, is that we are indifferent to the suffering of fellow human beings.
To write a poem about Icarus with the theme of pride is too obvious. Auden trusts that the viewers of Bruegel’s painting and the readers of “Musée” understand the context of Icarus’ tale already. Building on what is already apparent, Auden rebukes the farmers, sailors, and shepherds who see Icarus fall and do nothing.
Bruegel’s Visual Denouncement
Before Auden even mentions Icarus, he comments on a second painting, also by Pieter Bruegel: Massacre of the Innocents, a painting about a tragedy recorded in Matthew 2:16–18.
After King Herod receives the word from the wise men about Jesus’ birth, he orders the deaths of all the infant boys in Bethlehem who are aged 2 or younger. Jesus and His parents escape to Egypt, but many innocent Bethlehemite children are slaughtered.
In the liturgical calendar, the Massacre of the Innocents is commemorated on December 28, days after the celebration of Christ’s birth. Likely familiar with the tradition, Bruegel painted his own rendition of the event.
Instead of depicting an ancient Middle Eastern setting, Bruegel’s piece is set in a sixteenth-century Flemish village, where Spanish and German soldiers are murdering the helpless residents. Many art critics believe this piece also shows Bruegel’s interpretation of the Dutch revolt against Spanish occupation, a deadly uprising that preluded the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648).
Auden’s commentary on the piece includes notes about the dogs, of which there are several, and about a soldier’s horse scratching its posterior on a tree trunk.
Despite the fact that I have never been able to locate this “torturer’s horse” nor its “innocent behind,” I understand Auden’s point: the animals in the scene are unknowing participants in senseless killing (ll. 12–13). As “the dreadful martyrdom . . . run[s] its course,” so does ignorance (l. 10).
The dogs of Massacre “go on with their doggy life” (l. 12). And the sailors, farmers, and other villagers of “Musée” go on without a second thought for the boy plummeting from their sky and drowning in their waters.
William Carlos Williams on Insignificance
Auden is not the only shrewd observer of Bruegel’s unassuming masterpiece. The doctor-poet William Carlos Williams takes notice of the calamity in his poem “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.”2
A leading poet of the Imagist movement, Williams does not mince his words. Taking his title directly from Bruegel, Williams writes not of ignorance, but of insignificance—mirroring Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” more than “Musée des Beaux Arts.”
Frank and almost flippant, Williams introduces his unserious tone in the first line: “According to Bruegel / when Icarus fell / it was spring” (ll. 1–3).
Far be it from Williams to tell the story. He instead shares his glib observations of the painting. The poem is so factual, and the observations so obvious, that the work is almost comical.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus William Carlos Williams According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling 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
“Landscape” reads like a shrug, a tired yawn after a short and boring story. The volta is less like the crest of a mountain peak and more like a barely noticeable speedbump: “unsignificantly / off the coast / there was // a splash / quite unnoticed” (ll. 13–16).
Unsignificantly, of course, is not an official word in the English language, though several dictionaries now list the term as a variant of the correct one: insignificant. Even though the speaker of the poem holds an apathetic attitude, the astute reader will notice Williams’s use of a variant term to grab attention, and which also creates pleasant assonance with unnoticed.
The poem’s final lines are a shocking statement of fact: “this was / Icarus drowning” (ll. 17–18). The line of thought is cut off; the piece abruptly ends. Williams can’t even be bothered to include punctuation to set off the conclusion of the matter.
But, of course, Williams is not, as the speaker of the poem seems, an uncaring idiot. The genius of Williams’s composition is that form reveals theme: the whole piece is one long sentence that rambles to its unassuming denouement. How quick and unimportant the story. How insignificant the death.
Paired with Auden’s condemnation of ignorance, Williams’s piece is powerful in its simplicity, an understatement that urges its readers to remember the value and dignity of human life.
Consider Icarus, who was once as able and alive as you are. Open your eyes, your hands and heart.
Our Wax Wings
We are so willingly blind to injustice; we readily fall into the temptation to view people’s deaths as a statistic. What Auden and Williams urge readers to do, and what we must do, is confront our selfishness.
Readers of “Musée” can identify not only with the willingly clueless villagers, but with Icarus himself—intentionally disregarding wisdom, suffering even as they turn their faces from others’ suffering. So often we are the same wax-winged ignoramuses that we accuse Icarus of being.
Ignorance is bliss, because it softens the weight of the affliction that enshrouds human existence. People are not good, nor very often kind, and Auden and Williams know this “human position” firsthand, criticizing society’s shortcomings (“Musée,” l. 3). But what they also offer is an invitation to be better.
Ignorance is bliss, but empathy is honorable. Consider Icarus, who was once as able and alive as you are. Open your eyes, your hands and heart.
Auden, W. H. “Musee des Beaux Arts.” Emory University, https://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html.
Williams, William Carlos. “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Emory University, https://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/williams.html.