Ideas on Icarus, images and poems about Icarus have been occupying me for some time - it is the enigma of the whole story because the thrill, the feeling of flight before the fall fascinates me. Most of the stories we read fail to try and enter Icarus' story and that intrigues me - for the Ovid line, "Icarus was much taken by the pleasure of his wings..." flies just about as close to jouissance as a man can. I see this picture almost every day in life because I have it on my wall in my study - indeed I can see it now - it is by Jean-Michel Folon and I adore his work - especially the colours which seem to resonate with these colour-blind eyes of mine (can colours resonate - hmm). I posted the Auden poem before and here is another fave from William Carlos Williams - which like (and who I like) very much:According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
it was
Icarus drowning.
But like most views we have no idea how Icarus felt and I wanted to understand that, and also about falling and bruising and broken metaphors and bones and rhythm and rhymes that chime through stories. But in the interest of levity and just to show I can do postmodern - a country song from my younger days which I adore and from my favourite pop group too. But in listening to it I wonder if this is what Icarus was singing - "I had an arrangement to meet a girl, but I was kinda late, and I thought by the time I got there she'd be off with the nearest truck driver she could find..." was Icarus charmed? Was he running red lights, what was he thinking, was it a girl with faraway eyes? Hit it, Mick!
