Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Have you ever looked at a piece of artwork and felt moved enough to write about it? What about a whole book of poems about paintings by just one painter? William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), American poet and medical doctor, was so inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s (c. 1530-1569) paintings that he wrote a book of poetry concerning 10 pieces of Bruegel’s artwork. In 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' (1960), Williams compliments Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1560) brushstrokes by immortalizing the painting in verse.

'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' Poem

'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' is an ekphrastic poem by American poet William Carlos Williams. The poem is a description of the oil painting of the same name by Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1530-1568).

Williams originally published 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' in the journal The Hudson Review in 1960; he later included it in his poetry collection Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962). With Pictures from Brueghel, Williams was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

William Carlos Williams: Background

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was an American poet and medical doctor. Williams was born and raised in Rutherford, New Jersey; he attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Rutherford after graduation where he began his own medical practice. Williams drew inspiration from his patients and neighbors in Rutherford and sought to represent American patterns of speech, dialogue, and cadence in his poetry.

Williams is a poet of both the Modernist and Imagist movements. Imagism is a poetic movement in which poets utilized clear, concise vocabulary in order to represent sharp images. Modernism is an artistic movement of the 20th century; Modernist poets sought new and innovative ways to write and convey poetry. In Williams’s case, that meant having poetry reflect the idiom of everyday American people. His poems often focused on the small joys and everyday moments of life.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560): Painting

To understand the context of Williams's poem, it is important to understand Bruegel's painting. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a landscape oil painting that depicts a pastoral scene. The viewer sees, from closest to furthest, a plowman with a horse, a shepherd with his sheep, and a fisherman gazing into the water.

Fig. 1 - Peter Bruegel the Elder's painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus inspired Williams' poem.

The foreground is a rural coast leading down into the blue sea atop which are some ships. In the distance, we see a coastal town. In the bottom right part of the sea, two legs stick out of the water where our protagonist, Icarus, has fallen into the water, completely unnoticed by the three other figures.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: background

Bruegel was a Master painter of the Dutch Renaissance artistic movement. He is an interesting choice of artistic muse for Williams, as the two, separated by centuries and medium as they are, share many similarities.

Bruegel is lauded for bringing “genre paintings” to prominence in the 16th century. This undertaking served to elevate genre paintings and landscape scenes representing pastoral life to new heights, as the prevailing hierarchy in the artistic world lauded historical paintings, those of prominent public or political figures. Rather than adhere to this artistic hierarchy, Bruegel’s paintings announced the importance of genre paintings in art and the inherent artistic merit of paintings that depicted the scenes of everyday life for the vast majority of people.

Who is Icarus?

Icarus is the tragic protagonist of Greek myth, expanded upon in Roman poet Ovid’s (43 BCE - 8 CE) epic poem Metamorphoses (8 CE). In the myth, Icarus is the son of Greek craftsman Daedalus. In order to escape Crete, Daedalus fashions wings out of beeswax and feathers for him and his son; before taking flight, he warns Icarus not to fly too high toward the sun or too low toward the sea or else his wings will melt or clog up.

Despite his father’s warnings, Icarus enjoys the flight so much he soars ever higher until he gets too close and the sun’s heat melts his wax wings. He falls into the ocean and drowns.

Fig. 2 - Sculpture of Icarus.

In Ovid’s retelling, the plowman, shepherd, and fisherman are all present and watch, stunned, as Icarus tumbles out of the sky to his death. In Bruegel’s version, however, the three peasants take no notice of the man drowning after falling out of the sky. Instead, Bruegel’s emphasis is on these peasants and their pastoral ways of life. The fall of Icarus is a cautionary tale of overambition, and Bruegel juxtaposes that with the simple lives of the peasants.

The main themes Williams explores in ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ are that of life and death. In pointing out that the fall of Icarus occurred during spring, as visualized in Bruegel’s painting, Williams first writes about life. He goes on to describe that landscape as “awake tingling” (8), and the world beyond the confines of the canvas as “pageantry” (6).

This contrasts with the plight of Icarus, and his unnoticed death. The main theme in ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ is thus the cycle of life—even as a tragedy such as Icarus’s death after his great flight occurs, the rest of the world continues living and working without taking note.

Williams's use of language is consistent with his position as a Modernist poet. Brief but effective, in 21 lines Williams distills the essence of Bruegel's painting. Williams eschews the grandiosity of Greek myth and instead chooses to spend the majority of the poem describing the natural surroundings and the farmer plowing. Icarus is mentioned in just the very first and very last stanzas.

Williams's choice of words to describe Icarus's plight include "unsignificantly" (16) and "unnoticed" (19). Rather than focus on the incredible feat that was Icarus in flight, Williams instead focuses on Icarus's fall and subsequent drowning. By contrast, the farmer ploughs his field as spring awakens and life thrives.

Like the majority of Williams poems, 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' takes pleasure in the small facets of the daily life of working people. While the farmer ploughs, content with his plot in life and completing honest work, Icarus plunges unnoticed to his death after soaring too close to the sun.

‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ Meaning

Why would Williams be so interested in this painting? What is so special about Bruegel’s interpretation of this classical myth? Bruegel's interpretation was important for its relegation of Icarus's fall to the background of a pastoral scene rather than placing it at the forefront.

Williams was likely intrigued by this interpretation that focused on the lives of everyday people, much of the same focus that Williams utilized in his poems. For this reason, Williams likely took an interest in Bruegel's painting and sought to textualize Bruegel's visual interpretation of the myth.

In ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,’ Williams takes a well-known epic of Greek myth and, inspired by Bruegel’s painting, places it within a real-world context. While Ovid’s original poem is an emotional tale of ambition and consequence, in Williams’s hands Icarus’s fall is a non-event.

The overall meaning of the poem is that, even after a tragedy such as the death of Icarus, life goes on. His main focus is that of the farmer and the landscape while Icarus’s fall is but a background event unnoticed by the rest of the inhabitants of the painting. Farmers plow, winter turns into spring, Icarus falls from the sky—and life goes on.

Literary devices in Williams’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’

Williams uses literary elements such as enjambment, juxtaposition, tone, and imagery in his interpretation of Bruegel’s painting.

Enjambment

Williams uses enjambment, a poetic device in which each line of a poem continues into the next without punctuation. In this way, Williams doesn’t tell the reader where to pause, and each line of his poem runs into the next. Williams is well-known for his Modernist-style poetry in which he sought to diverge from established poetic conventions. His use of enjambment within a free-verse poetic form is one example of how he rejected classical poetic forms in favor of new, innovative structures.

The second and third stanzas exemplify this effect: "a farmer ploughing/his field/the whole pageantry" (3-6) right into "of the year/was awake tingling/near" (7-9). In this case, 'the whole pageantry' can be read as ending the second stanza and describing the farmer ploughing his field as a scene of pageantry but it also leads directly into the next line, where the whole pageantry is expanded to include 'of the year.'

Juxtaposition

Williams’s poem utilizes juxtaposition throughout. He notes that in Bruegel’s painting, it is spring, the season that represents birth and life. He continues and states that the year was “awake tingling” (8), emphasizing the vitality of the landscape. By contrast, he ends with Icarus’s death, “unnoticed” (19) and insignificant as it may be.

This further serves the interpretation that life goes on regardless of tragedy. Additionally, while Icarus's gravity-defying flight is a worthy spectacle and feat of technology, it is merely a splash in the sea against the backdrop of the activity of daily life. It might be a feat worth remembering, but caught up in the movement of everyday activity, no one paused long enough to notice it.

‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ Tone

In ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,’ Williams adopts a very matter-of-fact, detached tone. He starts the poem with a reiteration of a fact, “According to Bruegel…” (1). The rest of the poem continues in the same vein; despite his use of imagery and other poetic devices, Williams utilizes a tone of detachment.

Just as Icarus’s death was insignificant in the context of the painting and the poem, Williams’s retelling is dry and realistic. His use of this detached, factual tone serves to underscore the nature of the poem's subject—Williams is indifferent to Icarus's fall, as is the rest of the world.

Fig. 3 - Detail of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Peter Bruegel the Elder.

Imagery

While the poem is quite brief, Williams utilizes clear imagery to convey the meaning of the poem. In transcribing Bruegel’s painting, Williams emphasizes the farmer and the landscape. He notes that it is spring, and the land “awake tingling” (8). He uses alliteration to emphasize specific vivid images, “sweating in the sun” (13) which melted the “wings’ wax” (15). His stanzas-long inclusion of descriptions about the landscape, the farmer, the sea, and the sun serves to emphasize his brief, insignificant notice of Icarus’s drowning.

1. William Carlos Williams, 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,' 1960.