Which sentence best describes Auden's response to the painting? Click here to view Auden's poem and Bruegel's painting.

It inspires him to reflect upon human suffering

It reminds him of what we can learn from mythology.

It prompts him to accept the notion the life must go on.

It encourages him to honor the great painters behind the paintings.

it inspires

The best option is letter A. It inspires him to reflect upon human suffering.

Explanation:

The poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden was inspired by Brueghel's painting of Icarus's fall after the sun melted his wax wings. According to the poem's speaker, certain artists were skilled when it came to capturing suffering and representing it in their work. The poem, then, proceed to contrast the feelings of those who are suffering and those who are not. People who are not suffering tend walk away from those who are, not wishing to inconvenience themselves with problems that are not their own. As the poem states:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

[ ... ]

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.