Auden's 'Musée des Beaux Arts': Icarus' 'Wings' Dancing Shadow'

In Musée des Beaux Arts (1939), W.H. Auden describes Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. He adds a detail absent from Ovid's myth: Icarus' "wings' dancing shadow" on the water.

Ovid (Metamorphoses) focuses on Icarus' hubris, wax melting, and fatal plunge. Auden's poetic invention—the graceful shadow—creates a poignant contrast: beauty and indifference coexist. The ploughman, ship, and sun ignore the tragedy. The shadow underscores the fragility and fleeting elegance of the doomed flight.