Tragedy in the Background: Bruegel, Auden, and the Art of Looking Away (Ad Navseam Ep. 9)

Meta Description: Join Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle in the Vomitorium as they analyze Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Discover how this Northern Renaissance masterpiece subverts Ovid, inspired W.H. Auden, and speaks to our modern “tragedy fatigue.”

Introduction: A “Bruggely” Afternoon in the Vomitorium

Welcome back to the “Vomitorium,” listeners! In Episode 9 of the Ad Navseam Podcast, hosts Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle gather once again for a delectable discussion of the classical tradition.

It is an overcast afternoon in Grand Rapids, Michigan—the kind of gray, flat light that the Dutch masters might have appreciated. However, inside the studio, the atmosphere is described as “warm and balmy,” a necessary contrast to the sometimes chilly reception the classics get in the modern world. Before diving into the heavy lifting, the hosts send a warm shout-out to loyal listener Ben Petersen, tuning in from the “wilds of Texas”.

Today, the podcast takes a slight detour. We are pivoting from the ancient texts of Rome to the canvas of Flanders. The topic is Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his enigmatic, tragicomic masterpiece, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1560s). As Dr. Winkle puts it, things are about to get “Full-on Bruggely”.

Why discuss a 16th-century Flemish painting on a classics podcast? Because this image is perhaps the most famous visual critique of classical mythology in existence. It forces us to ask a question that Ovid never considered: When a legend falls from the sky, does anybody actually care?

The Mythic Backdrop: Ovid’s Metamorphoses

To understand the subversion of the painting, we must first understand the “standard version” of the myth. This comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 8, a text the hosts discussed in the previous episode.

The story is one of high drama and hubris. Daedalus, the master craftsman and architect of the Labyrinth, is imprisoned on Crete. To escape, he fashions wings of wax and feathers for himself and his son, Icarus.

Before they launch, Daedalus gives his son the famous warning: “Fly the middle course” (medio tutissimus ibis). Do not fly too low, or the sea spray will clog your wings; do not fly too high, or the sun will melt the wax.

The Ovidian Reaction:

As they take flight, Ovid describes the reaction of the people on the ground. He explicitly lists three witnesses:

The Fisherman (piscator) angling for fish.
The Shepherd (pastor) leaning on his staff.
The Plowman (arator) guiding his plow.

In Ovid’s telling, these three men look up and are “struck with amazement” (obstipuit). They believe they are witnessing gods flying through the aether. The miracle stops their labor. The world pauses to acknowledge the epic event occurring above them.

The Visual Rebuttal: Bruegel’s Landscape

Enter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569). Bruegel was a master of the Northern Renaissance, known not for idealized gods and heroes, but for his bustling, earthy depictions of peasant life. In Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, he takes Ovid’s text and turns it completely upside down.

Dr. Winkle walks us through the visual details, noting how Bruegel deliberately minimizes the “mythic” element to elevate the “mundane.”

The Foreground (The Plowman): The largest figure in the painting is the Plowman (arator). He is wearing a bright red shirt and is driving a horse to cut a furrow into the earth. He is center stage, occupying the most visual real estate. Crucially, his gaze is directed downward at the dirt. He is completely absorbed in the economics of his own survival. He does not look up. He does not see the gods.

The Middle Ground (The Shepherd): We also see the Shepherd (pastor), leaning on his staff just as Ovid described. He is gazing up at the sky, but there is a twist. He seems to be looking away from the action—perhaps searching for Daedalus (who is not even depicted in the painting), or simply checking the weather. He misses the tragedy entirely.

The Background (The Event): So, where is the hero? Where is the fall? If you scan the painting, you might miss him completely. In the bottom right corner, near a magnificent merchant ship with billowing sails, there is a tiny splash. Two small, pale white legs are disappearing into the green water. That is Icarus. The “epic” death of a mythological hero is reduced to a minor detail in the corner of the canvas.

The Anti-Ovidian Stance: Bruegel includes all of Ovid’s characters—the plowman, the shepherd, the fisherman—but he changes their internal state. Instead of awe, there is indifference. The plowman continues to plow. The ship continues to sail. The sun continues to set. The death of Icarus is literally a drop in the ocean, unnoticed and unmourned.

The Poet’s Interpretation: W.H. Auden

This painting deeply affected the Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden, who visited the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1938. Seeing Bruegel’s work, he penned one of the greatest ekphrastic poems of the 20th century: “Musée des Beaux Arts.”

Dr. Noe reads excerpts from the poem, highlighting how Auden captures the painting’s chilling indifference.

The Old Masters:

Auden writes:

“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”.

Auden realized that Bruegel wasn’t just painting a funny landscape; he was making a profound statement about the isolation of suffering. When your world is falling apart (or when you are falling out of the sky), the rest of the world is usually just eating lunch.

The Expensive Delicate Ship: Auden pays particular attention to the ship in the painting. He writes that the ship “must have seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,” but it “had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on”. The ship represents commerce, business, and the momentum of daily life. It cannot stop for a drowning boy because it has a schedule to keep.

Tragedy Fatigue: A Modern Resonance

The hosts conclude the episode with a poignant reflection on why this 16th-century painting resonates so powerfully in the 21st century.

We live in an age of the 24-hour news cycle. We are constantly bombarded with “Icarus moments”—wars, natural disasters, political collapses, and scandals. Every time we open our phones, someone is falling out of the sky. Dr. Noe suggests that we naturally develop what he calls “Tragedy Fatigue”. We want to care. We want to stop plowing and look up in horror. But if we stopped our work for every tragedy that scrolled across our screens, we would never get anything done. We would starve.

Like the plowman in the red shirt, we sometimes have to keep our heads down just to survive. Bruegel’s painting suggests this isn’t necessarily cruelty; it is a survival mechanism. It acknowledges the friction between the “Epic” events of history and the mundane necessity of daily life. The sun shines just as brightly on a funeral as it does on a wedding.

Latin and Greek Language Spotlight

For the students of the classics and art history, here are the key terms to furnish your mental gallery:

Ecphrasis: A literary description of a work of visual art. Auden’s poem is a modern ecphrasis of Bruegel’s painting.
Arator: The Plowman. The central figure of Bruegel’s composition, representing labor.
Pastor: The Shepherd.
Piscator: The Fisherman.
Superbia: Hubris. The fatal flaw that led Icarus to fly too close to the sun.
Vanitas: The vanity of human ambition, reduced here to a splash.

The Gustatory Parting Shot

We leave you with a quote from George Bernard Shaw, reflecting on the sensory overload of mass dining—a perfect companion to the sensory overload of tragedy:

“The thought of 2,000 people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.”Let us hope your next meal is quieter than that. Until next time, Valete!