People on the Bridge

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To reflect is “to express a thought or opinion” (Merriam-Webster) through quiet thinking or meditation. In essence, poems People on the Bridge by Wislawa Szymborska and Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H Auden are both reflective. Szymborska and Auden both were inspired from studying a painting, both discussed the painting’s story and its connection to reality, and both addressed themes “regarding humanity’s existence” (Viewpoints, 523). Firstly, Szymborska and Auden reflect through description and examination of a critical incident. In the case of both Szymborska and Auden, their ‘critical incident’ was a painting. Szymborska raised questions and drew conclusions from a Japanese print, Sudden Shower at Ohashi Bridge by Hiroshige Utagawa. Sudden Shower at Ohashi Bridge is a Japanese landscape from the ordinary person’s perspective of being caught in the rain. Auden explores Emmanuel Levinas’ theory “the face of the other” through the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a depiction of the Greek legend, in which Icarus’ flies too close to the sun, after being forewarned by his father that his wings of feathers and wax would melt, and drowns in the ocean. Szymborska and Auden’s poems are both reflective because they take a painting into consideration of a larger context. Secondly, Szymborska and Auden portray the paintings in a fashion that connects it to the point they are trying to make. Szymborska describes the painting in a literal approach but continues on to make his point by stating “the point is, nothing happens further/the cloud changes neither shape nor color…” (lines 13-14). Auden on the other hand, makes his point and goes on to use the depiction of the painting as further evidence, for example “in Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/quite leisurely from the disaster…”

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