IcarusDaedalus1.0020

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, "The Fall of Icarus," Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. 4030 (800)

ML p. 610; see also WHAuden's, "Musée des Beaux Arts" an eloquent riff on Brueghel's theme.

Brueghel's painting makes Icarus' fatal plunge a minor event in the broad landscape: a ploughman, a fisherman, and a shepherd all seem utterly ignorant of Icarus' trauma.
Ovid had told the story with the same characters, but much differently at Metamorphoses 8.217 ff. In Ovid's telling, a ploughman, a fisherman, and a shepherd are INTENTLY AMAZED by Icarus' flight: "An angler fishing with his quivering rod, // a lonely shepherd propped upon his crook, // a ploughman leaning on his plough, looked up // and gazed in awe, and thought they must be gods // that they could fly." — trans. Melville. Brueghel's painting overtly reverses the human observation that plays prominently in Ovid's narrative: nobody seems to notice Icarus' mortal plunge.

Auden observes that Brueghel offers a whole new world view. Exceptional things happen during unexceptional moments, and focus on daily pursuits can jade man's perspective, preventing us from noticing the remarkable. This seems to catch the narrative gain precisely. For Brueghel's witnesses, Auden observes, Icarus' failure is hardly worth noticing, hardly "something amazing".

William Carlos Williams took up the same strain as Auden in his own poem called "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus".