Compare and contrast Wordsworth's Elegiac Stanzas and Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts. Show the way these poems convey the experience of human suffering. Explain which of the poems you find the most moving and consoling.

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Compare and contrast Wordsworth’s Elegiac Stanzas and Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts.  Show the way these poems convey the experience of human suffering.  Explain which of the poems you find the most moving and consoling.

        When looking at Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts and Wordsworth’s Elegiac Stanzas the reader can notice that both poems contain a strong reference to suffering and death but their similar subject matter has been obtained from very different paintings.  The reader can also find many points to contrast about the two poems, such as the very personal and romantic style of Wordsworth at a complete contrast to the colloquial and ironic tone of Auden.  I will analyse the poems by considering the circumstances of when and why they were written.  I will also look at which of the poems I find moving and consoling by looking at the truths behind the poems and the ways in which the poets communicate their ideas.

        After reading Wordsworth’s Elegiac Stanzas and Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts the reader can see many differences and similarities between the two poems.  It is noticeable that both poems contain human suffering and loss of life.  In the case of Auden, the reader sees that when Icarus drowns, ‘everything turns away’ and the death is believed to be ‘not important’, no- one cares.  Auden relates this to real life by showing that even if someone dies life ‘[sails] calmly on’.  This illustrates the proverb:  no plough ever stops because a man dies.  The relevance of this is shown as we see a man, continuing to plough in the foreground of Escape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting that the poem takes inspiration from.  

In a contrast to this we see Wordsworth take a much more personal tone to the suffering experienced during the death of his brother, John.  Wordsworth becomes very emotional about his loss and experiences suffering because of this:

“A deep distress hath humaniz’d my soul”.  Wordsworth shows that the death of a loved one is not always easy to dismiss, ‘the feeling of [his] loss will ne’er be old’, Wordsworth will continue to mourn for his brother.  Wordsworth realises that he has become at last a human being not a dreaming poet, because he is suffering a great deal.

        The reader, after doing some background research, can see that both poems were inspired by very different paintings.  Wordsworth’s Elegiac Stanzas inspired by “Peele Castle in a Storm” by Sir George Beaumont and Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts was inspired by “Escape with the fall of Icarus”, c.1558.  Brueghel’s “the numbering at Bethlehem” and “The massacre of the Innocents” are also looked at in the poem and bring in Christian ideals into the poem.  Despite these two paintings being very different the poets have managed to see the same subject matter in each, including the suffering and death of Icarus and John.

        Both poems look at reality and realism and relate the experiences of the poems to real life.  Wordsworth shows this as ‘[he] [has] submitted to a new control’ because of the death of his brother and the ‘delusions’ of the real world that he could not see through.  His bother’s death comes as a shock to him as he could not predict its occurrence.

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Auden, whilst looking at the suffering that Icarus experiences, shows that life’s struggles are insignificant:

        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.

A rare sight, a boy falling out of the sky, is ignored as life runs its course showing that the death was not ‘important’.

        It is noticeable that both poems have a turning point.  Wordsworth first went to Peele Castle in a summer break, a time when he knew Peele Castle to be a perfect ‘calm’:

“Thy ...

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