On going about your own life when a loved one is suffering: W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”

After I spent some time memorising Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, I decided to move on to learning W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” by heart.

There are a few reasons for this. One, it’s probably my favourite poem by Auden: I first encountered it during my second year of university, and the poem and my lecturer’s explanation of the consoling nature of some of Auden’s poetry after 9/11 stuck with me.

The poem was written by Auden in December 1938, after Kristallnacht on 9-10 November had shattered shop and synagogue windows, hopes, and lives in Nazi Germany.

The poem describes Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting by Pieter Brueghel, and it echoes how the old master depicts Icarus falling from the sky while everyone else, involved in other things or just simply not wanting to know, “[turn] away / quite leisurely from the disaster” and go about their day.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, now seen as a good early copy of Pieter Bruegel’s original.

When we are suffering, I think it might feel a bit like this: that others are now turning away from us, even if that isn’t entirely the case.

And when others are suffering, perhaps we sometimes feel ourselves turn away slightly too.

The poem begins, “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.”

I think Auden encapsulates something timeless here: that common human fear that something bad will suddenly happen at some meaningless time of day, when everything else is progressing as normal. And the concern is entirely grounded.

Perhaps the answer here is nurturing a greater sense of mindfulness, both in paying attention to the good stuff when life is going well, and noticing those that are suffering around us. It could also help us to approach harder times in a way that doesn’t necessarily make it easier for us, but rather helps us to take in all aspects in a more present way.

Will Schwalbe mentions the poem in The End of Your Life Book Club, a non-fiction biographical book I’ve mentioned so many times before. While his mother was facing cancer, he described how he felt like the “someone else” who was “eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” in Auden’s poem. As he writes, “Mom was suffering; I was going on with my life”.

Yet “Musée des Beaux Arts” somehow helped him to acknowledge this feeling – that it’s the normal response to feel like this – which, perhaps, may have allowed him to be more present with his mother. Finding simple understanding of our own feelings or fears in fiction can be a great help.

Enjoy more from me

• Retreat into my new book, Your Life in Bloom: Finding Your Path and Your Courage, Grounded in the Wisdom of Nature.


• I'm also the author of Mountain Song: A Journey to Finding Quiet in the Swiss Alps, a book about my time living alone by the mountains.


• If you love books, are feeling a little lost right now, and would love some gentle comfort and guidance, join The Sanctuary, my seven-day course to rebalance your life.