The fall of icarus wh auden biography

Discussion

‘About suffering they were never wrong,/The Old Masters,’ is the arresting opening to Auden’s poem. It is as if the reader has stumbled upon Auden’s train of thought or that he has deliberately stopped us in our tracks with his musings.

The fall of icarus wh auden biography

The poem masquerades as something conversational and so technically it is free verse (although there is a detectable, if lackadaisical, rhythm and rhyme scheme). The form of this poem – the continuous present of the verb in the first stanza (especially line 4); the flow of one line into the next (enjambment) – reflects and simultaneously reinforces the reverie-like state of the poet.

The second stanza constitutes a sonnet-like ‘turn’ (the volta which marks a change in direction, pace or tone) as the poet stands in front of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Auden’s commentary on the Brueghel painting has been prefaced then by the common message he has found in a gallery of representations tha