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Ello
quiere decir: la tragedia es ordinaria, cotidiana, trivial imperceptible.
Uno de sus poemas ms citados y tpicos Muse des Beaux Arts (en Another Time, 1940),
define ejemplarmente el modo de proceder de Auden y su idea de la poesa. El poeta viene
a nuestro encuentro como si visitara una pinacoteca. Observa un cuadro de Pieter Brueghel
el Joven, La cada de caro. Parece comunicarnos sus reflexiones confidencialmente, de
modo extemporneo, como lo hara con un amigo que lo acompaara en la sala. Examina
los detalles del lienzo y se remonta a una idea general: la naturaleza y la historia humana, la
vida cotidiana con sus distracciones y sus trabajos permanecen en aquello que son, incluso
si Jess nace o es crucificado, incluso si un desgraciado caro pierde las alas y cae en el
mar. Irona y sentido de lo trgico no se excluyen: cada uno tiene sus razones y sus fines y
esta constatacin es al mismo tiempo trgica e irnica. La realidad no obedece a una
racionalidad nica. El cosmos es una suma de microcosmos que no se reflejan
simultneamente y que muy raramente se comunican entre ellos. Es la visin premoderna
de los Viejos Maestros que cuestiona el monismo historicista. La historia no es un proceso
unitario que, comprendido en teora, pueda ser modificado en la prctica al mismo tiempo.
La realidad es descrita por Auden como un escenario ya existente (un cuadro ya pintado)
que puede ser observado pero no modificado. El poeta y el intelectual son testigos e
intrpretes, no son legisladores ni polticos Poesa y gnero lrico. Acontecimientos
posmodernos* por Alfonso Berardinelli
.
What Audens poem, and Brueghels paintings, focus attention on and celebrate are not the
extra-ordinary history-altering events but the ordinary everyday currency of life. For
Auden, tragedy must be this way. This is the ordinary and usual occurrence of things. And
the rhyme scheme contributes to this. If you look at the rhyming words you will see that
they couple together and link the tragedy with the banal. The only witness to Icarus fall was
literature, art, Brueghel and Auden. The ship and the plough go on. Industry continues with
its duties, only art pauses, observes and preserves.
The three Brueghel pictures covered by Auden's poem all have the same basic effect,
namely a turning away from and de-centralisation of suffering. Auden's poem does the
same thing. He is faithful to Brueghel's central idea by under-emphasising suffering. His
first two words tell us that the poem is "About suffering". He then tells us that the Old
Masters understood suffering best. But the first poem he deals with, Census, doesn't portray
suffering at all. He walks us through the museum of fine arts in the same way that a
museum-visitor would experience it - a dull walking along, viewing a picture and then
another in no particular order. When it comes to tragedy, we are not witnesses but, like the
ploughman and the shepherd in Icarus, we glance temporarily on the scene and then walk
away on the next. Auden imitates this meandering walk through a museum with the
irregular line lengths and the subtle, unobtrusive, irregular end-rhyme of the lines.
People are, in other words, not only apathetic of others suffering, but they cant even
comprehend it.
Indeed, unlike the Census and Christ paintings, it cannot be said that they dont notice it.
Rather Auden says they turn leisurely away, the ploughman may have heard the cry and the
splash. And, in fact, Auden says everything turns away and, indeed, when you look at the
painting, they do. And Auden tells us why they have this attitude. We are indifferent to
suffering not only because we cannot always understand it or its consequences but, more
importantly, because it has no consequence for us.
DAVID COLE - In "Musee des Beaux Arts," Auden does not try, contenting himself with
rueful recognition of the world's indifference to individual martyrdom. But Williams
achieves a more subtle, more faithful, more deeply felt response to the painting by means of
carefully controlled imagery, grammar and diction, punctuation (or rather the absence of
any punctuation whatsoever), and order. His method is evident first in the title of the poem.
We know the painting simply as The Fall of Icarus. Williams's revision of the title
grammatically subordinates the tragic event to "Landscape," just as the painting
subordinates the image of Icarus to all that surrounds him. Yet the last word in the title,
emphatic in its position, is "Icarus." The tension between grammatical subordination and
rhetorical emphasis is paralleled and amplified in the stanzas that follow.
Williams does not dwell on the images of the poem, showing us even less than Auden does.
The matter-of-fact language, the absence of any punctuation (which I take to indicate an
absence of expressive inflection), and of course the explicit assertion of the event's
insignificance, all work to understate, if not undercut, the pathos of Icarus's headlong
plunge to death. And yet the last words of the poem are "Icarus drowning." The words
resonate, and the splash is not quite unnoticed. The reader is forced to take notice, forced
paradoxically not only to see but to feel the painful irony of death in the midst of life.
Williams's remarkable, forceful understatement brilliantly captures the protest expressed
through the perspective of Brueghel's painting.
Hay un proverbio flamenco que dice Ningn arado se detiene porque un hombre muera.
Robert Walser: No hace falta ver nada extraordinario. Ya es mucho lo que se ve.
Benn, Icaro
Ah, y que furamos nuestros ancestros...
Una pella viscosa en un clido fangal.
Que vida y muerte, fecundacin y parto,
destilaran de nuestros mudos jugos.
La hoja de un alga o la colina de una duna,
alzada por el viento y gravitando pesada.
Cabeza de liblula, ala de gaviota,
ya sera ir muy lejos, sufrir demasiado.
Despreciables son los amantes, los
burlones.
Todo desesperacin, anhelo, y quin espera!
Somos dioses tan dolorosamente contagiados
y no obstante muchas veces pensamos en Dios.
La suave baha. Los oscuros sueos de los bosques.
Las estrellas, grandes como viburnos, y pesadas.
Las panteras saltan silentes entre los rboles.
Todo es orilla. Eterno llama el mar...
Entonces cay caro a nuestros pies,
grit Ayuntaos, hijos mos!
Internaos en la mal ventilada Termpila!...
nos arroj una de sus tibias mientras corramos,
se desplom, se acab.
y habr percibido
su relativa pequeez.
No obstante, loables son los dones
del espritu emprendedor; lo que he escrito aqu
se lo debo a un cuadro de Brueghel enraizado
en mi memoria
y al que tribut el mximo respeto
porque me pareci una esplndida pintura.
Cualquier afn
por elevarnos
sobre la vulgaridad
tiene un lmite en la vida.
sudando al sol
que derreta
la cera de las alas
insignificante
lejos de la costa
hubo
un chapoteo casi imperceptible
era
caro que se ahogaba.
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
his field
the whole pageantry
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
Icarus drowning