![]() In Virgil’s version of the myth ( Aeneid VI, 14-42), the story is portrayed upon the gates of a temple of Apollo that allows one to enter into the underworld and discover truth. The act of flying itself was a defiance, and those who witnessed the two soar through the skies believed that they must be divine due to their ability to resist the laws of nature (“Some angler catching fish with a quivering rod, or a shepherd leaning on his crook, or a ploughman resting on the handles of his plough, saw them, perhaps, and stood there amazed, believing them to be gods able to travel the sky.”). His predisposition to enjoy nature turned out to be his downfall. His innocence (“not realising that he was handling things that would endanger him”) allowed him to find pleasure in his father’s works (“caught laughingly at the down that blew in the passing breeze”), but it also interfered with it (“in his play, hindered his father’s marvellous work.”). Icarus, however, is a child who cares only to enjoy nature without seeking to understand it. He is a proto-Francis Bacon who seeks to dominate nature (“he applied his thought to new invention and altered the natural order of things”) by understanding its incontrovertible laws (“Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. In Ovid’s version of the tale ( Metamorphoses VIII, 183-235), Daedalus is a master of invention and represents man’s ability to conquer nature. In particular, the Roman poets Ovid and Virgil focus on the social context of Icarus’s fall to emphasize the moral lesson of the story. To understand this dramatic rejection of the myth’s lesson, it is important to first look at the Classical understanding of the myth. In essence, Icarus’s fall is transformed into a meaningless loss, one that has no benefit as an event or even as a story to warn others. Instead, their Modernist focus was on a mundane world that has no place for mythic events, filled with individuals who were too wrapped up in their daily business to consider the larger world around them. Auden and William Carlos William rejected the moral lesson of the myth by rejecting the authority of myth itself. Daedalus, the father, can represent both a patriarchal law bringer and a wise teacher, and his son is a metaphor for disobedience against society’s guidance. By its framing as a father attempting to seek freedom for him and his son, the lesson of this myth takes on a social and moral dimension. Tragedy is thus presented as a question of perspective, something that depends on how close one is (literally and emotionally) to the event in question.The tale of Icarus, the boy who flew too high and fell into the sea, is an ancient lesson on the need for moderation. ![]() ![]() Both Bruegel's painting and this poem depict the death of Icarus, the mythological figure who died after flying too close to the sun, in a rather unusual way: in both works, Icarus's death-caused by a fall from the sky after the wax holding his artificial wings together melted-is hardly a blip on the radar of the nearby townspeople, whose attention is turned instead toward the rhythms of daily life. ![]() The poem is a work of ekphrasis-writing about a piece of visual art-and is part of a cycle of 10 poems inspired by the paintings of 16th-century artist Pieter Bruegel (or Brueghel) the Elder. "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is a poem by one of the foremost figures of 20th-century American poetry, William Carlos Williams, first published in Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems in 1962. ![]()
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