In four pages this paper contrasts and compares Icarus' fall as depicted in Muriel Rukeyser's Waiting for Icarus, W.C. Williams' Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and W.H. Auden's Musee des Beaux. Four sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: AM2_PPicarus.rtf
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mind of the world for centuries. Icarus, was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman and inventor. Held prisoner by King Minos Icarus and his father managed to escape
using wings of wax and feathers which Daedalus crafted. Icarus escape, however, was abbreviated when he flew too close to the sun. The hot rays of the
sun melted the wax which held his wings together and Icarus plummeted into the ocean below. The tale of his demise has been retold again and again throughout history.
It has been memorialized in art, song, poetry and literature innumerable artists, with one seemingly inspiring the other to explore the tale in one different approach or the other.
Three of the most fascinating of these renditions of the tale of Icarus can be found in the poems "Musee des Beaux" by W.H. Auden, "Landscape With the Fall
of Icarus" by W. C. Williams, and "Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser. Interestingly the first two of these poems were inspired by the painting "Fall of Icarus" by
Peter Breughel. It is not clear when either of these poets were first exposed to the tale of Icarus. We do know
that Auden visited the sixteenth century painting by Peter Breughel when it was displayed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1938. We know that Williams too
was inspired by this same painting because he mentions Breughel by name in his poem. This painting, therefore, is central to each of these poets renditions of the tale
of Icarus. Interestingly, it was the only painting in which Breughel featured a mythological subject. In the painting we see a tranquil seaside scene. A farmer is