"Musee des Beaux Arts" Comprehension Quiz

According to the speaker in “Musée des Beaux Arts,” while someone is “eating or opening a window or just walking,” (lines 4–5) someone else is

• painting a picture.

• experiencing suffering.

• causing them to suffer

• waiting for the miraculous birth.

. In lines 9–10 "They never forgot / That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course," the word they refers to the

• children.

• aged.

• sufferers.

• Old Masters

The speaker in the poem says that for the ploughman in Breughel’s painting, Icarus’s fall “was not an important failure” (line 17). What does this suggest about Auden's view of how people respond to the suffering of others?

• Failure is not an option when human suffering is involved.

• People must never become too busy to respond to suffering

• People often allow suffering to interfere with their work.

• People evaluate suffering by how it affects them personally.

According to lines 5–8, old people are “passionately waiting for the miraculous birth,” but why do children “not specially want it to happen?”

• Skating on a pond is less important.

• The event would have no effect on them.

• The Old Masters “were never wrong.”

• The children must still “go on with their doggy life.”

According to the speaker, suffering and miracles are alike because both

• occur in the midst of mundane events.

• can never attract attention to themselves

• follow a course that leads to dreadful martyrdom.

• elicit similar responses in people, dogs, and horses.

Which of the following quotes best reflects Auden’s idea about human nature?

• “Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky”

• “On a pond at the edge of the wood: / They never forgot”

• “disappearing into the green / Water; and the expensive delicate ship”

• “how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster”

What is it that the Old Masters mentioned in the poem clearly understood?

• the subjects of many old paintings

• the dreadful martyrdom of a dog's life

• the suffering involved in miraculous birth

• the human position toward suffering