The terrifying opening: About suffering they were never wrong, puts me in mind of two World Wars & the holocaust
I always think of Breughels as humorous paintings. Heart-warming. The cheerful ignoral of Icarus plunge is comic
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
The story of Icarus, at primary school, introduced me to the sin of pride, the importance of not thinking yourself a cut above the others, & the sins of pushy parents. No sympathy, just just deserts
So in truth I find the two parts of the poem do not really fit together
But perhaps that was Audens point
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