Added: Aug 19, 2008
From: poetryanimations
Duration: 1:42
Heres a virtual movie of WH Auden reading his much loved poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" This time voiced by myself and set to a bit of Twilighty zone type music. I love this poem it is my favourite WH Auden poem,and I must admit when I made this recording I had never heard the recording of Auden himself reading his poem so this is how I imagined he might have read it,and I rather like the sound of my reading.Auden was one of the better poets for reading his own work. Alas some of the great poets were not that great at reciting their own works,but Auden was one of the most experienced and media savvy poets of his era,but enjoyable as his reading is I reckon even he doesnt get the full potential out of his many layered, thought provoking little homage to a fine painting and the human condition so in my reading I try to extract a little more of the the Pathos in Audens very knowing words. W.H. Auden's best known poem 'Musee des Beaux Arts' is about the reaction of people to the suffering of other persons and the relation of art to human response to suffering. The poem makes a reference to the mythological character Icarus who falls to the ocean after the wax wings made by his father Daedalus melt, and who subsequently drowns. 'Musee des Beaux Arts' and its portrayal of human apathy to suffering, the physical universe and redemptive death are evaluated. You can see the painting he is refering to here.. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/... Kind Regards Jim Clark All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2008 Musee 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 dully 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 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.
Channel: Music
Tags: animation arts auden beaux bruegel cecil day des eliot ezra lewis musee poem poetry pound tennyson ts
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