"Musee des Beaux Arts" and "Before the Mirror"

1. These poems are not merely descriptions of paintings. How do Updike and Auden use the paintings? Why do you think they refer to the paintings instead of writing poems without them?

3. Do you think having the paintings right there to refer to helps you or hinders you as you are reading the poems? Do you rely too much on them, or do they help you to understand the poets' angles of vision? Explain.

2. Discuss the significance of these lines:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

3. What is the "human position" of suffering, according to Auden?

4. "Before the Mirror" is about more than one kind of "reflection." There is the literal reflection in the mirror, but in what other ways is "reflection" important to the poem?

5. Updike uses sexual imagery in "Before the Mirror." Do you think the sexuality is in Picasso's painting as well? And, perhaps more importantly, why is the sexual element in the poem at all?

6. Talk about Updike's poem in terms of the theme of innocence vs. experience.

7. Why does it matter to Auden that it is Icarus in Breughel's painting and not some random swimmer?

8. If Picasso's painting says, "Enter here/and abandon preconception," does Updike's poem say the same thing? Explain.