Important Failure".: 1. W.H. Auden Musée Des Beaux Arts (Museum of Fine Arts)

1. W.H.
Auden Musée des Beaux Arts (museum of fine arts)

 ekphrastic poem→ description of the painting in the body of the poem:
 The poet uses Pieter Bruegel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" as a pretext to
broach the matter of suffering happening simultaneously with all the other actions left
unaffected, as that is exactly what the paining captures - how one's death has objectively no
impact on the world's order; everyone’s concerned with their own, internal matters, like the
ploughman who “may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an
important failure”.
 The poem is about the general indifference towards the suffering in the world, how tragedy of
the individual often lays unnoticed and sidelined as the world just goes on at its own pace
with no regard for personal tragedies. For some, ordinary events, like "opening a window" or
"walking dully along" are a part of life at the same time when another one meets with
something as horrible as death.
 subject: poem is about a painting; the fall of icarus; it is about the suffering; icarus as a
pretext to say something about suffering; painting is an inspiration; in this poem we move
from something that is particular (which is like a stimulus, a push), we move towards some
general conclusions, observations, remarks;
 suffering → comes unnoticed by other people; it has no impact on the natural order; other
people are unaffected; indifference of other people; it is natural; the world just goes on at its
own pace; tragedies in real life are quite often sidelined; its individual; they understood the
simultaneity of suffering
 The Old Masters: how well they understood → reference to the great painters of the past
Its human position: how it takes place
2. In Memory of W. B. Yeats - W. H. Auden

 For poetry makes nothing happen - This is often analysed as an admission of poetry’s
limitations as a tool for social and political change; BUT (!) although it doesn’t make anything
happen, it is itself a ‘way of happening’ - not something that makes history happen but part of
history itself, perhaps, and part of life.
 PART I: In the first section, W. H. Auden discusses the death of W. B. Yeats ‘in the dead of
winter’
 PART II: Auden begins to turn away from Yeats in particular to think about poetry more
generally. It is here that Auden makes his famous statement that ‘poetry makes nothing
happen’
 PART III: The poem concludes with an impressive summing up of Yeats’s achievement. It is
the funeral and the speaker asks the Earth to receive Yeats as “an honoured guest.” The
body, “emptied of its poetry,” lies there. The poem ends in an optimistic note that Yeat’s life
has not been lived in vain and that poetry is all powerful in the world of spirit.
3. D.H. Lawrence Snake

 Firstly, we see a man meeting a snake at a water-trough, accepting that the snake ' was at the
trough before me', so he the man, must wait. I happens in Sicily
 Then, the narrator poses the question of whether or not the snake should be killed—perhaps
the religious upbringing, the speaking voice has only negative associations with the snake,
maybe having in mind the Bible where Eve is tempted by a serpent to eat the apple.
 when the snake moved away towards the hole, the poet got hold of a piece of wood and
hastily threw it towards the snake. The snake was not hit but he vanished in the hoe at a
lighning speed.
 In the end, the poet is full of remorse for his uncivilized behavior towards the snake and
wishes the snake to come back to enable him to say sorry for his pettiness. He thinks that the
snake is the uncrowned king of the underworld. Due to his folly and narrow-mindedness,
he had lost the chance of his respectable company.
4. Elizabeth Jennings – Narcissus (1972)

 Ekphrasis (Caraviaggio’s painting)
 Not to look at oneself but at others as well
5. Elizabeth Jennings – Landscapes and Figures

 Claude Monet’s mentioned
 Painting which depict landscapes should teach us selflessness; that people sometimes do not
fit into the picture and nature is more glorious than them – “a background teaches a
moral you’d hardly expect”. The moral is to step back and appreciate the landscape, its
power and beauty, not only to focus on ourselves.
5. Thomas Hardy - "On the departure platform"

 It tells the story of a man who says goodbye to his lover on the train platform. The couple part
at the barrier, the woman moves away, and the poet watches her receding from sight until she
is just a moving spot.
 Words like "fitful" "apart" "disappear" "ceased" "nebulous" and "vanished" create powerful
feeling of loss, distance and uncertainty
 Internal monologue at the end with him old and present self

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1. W.H.

Auden Musée des Beaux Arts (museum of fine arts)

2. In Memory of W. B. Yeats - W. H. Auden

3. D.H. Lawrence Snake

4. Elizabeth Jennings – Narcissus (1972)

5. Elizabeth Jennings – Landscapes and Figures

5. Thomas Hardy - "On the departure platform"

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