ICARUS
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Bruegel, Pieter the Elder. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. c. 1558, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Classical Mythology, 12th ed., by Mark P. O. Morford et al., Oxford University Press, 2022, p. 590.
Icarus
Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.
Edward Fields, Icarus, 1963, Field, E. (2013). Icarus. Cultural Daily. https://www.culturaldaily.com/icarus/
Anthony Tong
The myth of Icarus is one of the most well-known myths in greco-roman mythology. The myth warns people about the dangers of disobedience and overconfidence. In this remark, I argue that Pieter Bruegel the Elder's “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” reinterprets the myth by shifting the focus away from Icarus to depict the indifference of the world around him. The myths are usually directed at the consequences of human disobedience and overconfidence, but I see another perspective in the artwork that revolves around the world.
In the textbook, it goes over the original myth of Icarus with Daedalus (Icarus’s Father) creating wings of feathers and wax for Icarus to escape imprisonment on Crete (Morford et al. pp 590). When giving Icarus the wings, Daedalus warns him not to fly too low, causing moisture on the wings, or too high, close to the sun, which burns all of the wax. With a sense of overconfidence and ignorance, Icarus proceeds to fly high to the point where the wax of the wings burn causing his plunge into the sea (Morford et al. pp 590). The sea would be named after him due to the tragedy.
In the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Icarus is barely noticeable with only his leg sticking up in the water after the fall in the lower corner of the canvas. Within the canvas, the ordinary people, animals, and ships are more amplified and presently shown than Icarus whos tragedy goes unnoticed by the others in the painting. Interestingly, rather than highlighting the tragedy occurring, Bruegel makes it almost insignificant.
Icarus’s little significance within the canvas hints at other interpretations of the painting itself. Instead of focusing on the moral lesson of disobedience and overconfidence shown by Icarus, Bruegel hints more towards how society views individual failures/tragedies. In the canvas, the plowman continues work as usual with no sense that anything happened. Along with the ships continuing to sail. Icarus’s ambitious flight and fatal fall do not disrupt the natural order. Bruegel used the ordinary people in the canvas to hint towards another lesson that life goes on, even after individual tragedy.
From my perspective, the interpretation makes the myth more relatable to the real world. Bruegel does a nice job connecting myth to the real world by incorporating the ordinary people as the focal point of the painting. While the original story emphasizes divine justice and punishment, the painting emphasizes human indifference. In the painting, Icarus is depicted more as a vulnerable human than a legendary figure. After the tragic fall, there seemed to be more normality with life continuing rather than lightning or recognition that would happen for a legendary figure. Instead, there was silence, which suggests that ambition and failure are deeply personal experiences, even if the world does not pause to acknowledge them. Tying together a timeless reality with an ancient myth.
Nye Mabale
The Story of The Flight of Icarus ended as Icarus ignored his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, and as the wax on his wings melted he fell into the sea, which thereafter was called Mare Icarium (Morford, pg. 590). There is a human desire built on curiosity and imagination to achieve what might be deemed as impossible or improbable. The myths studied in class are made so the reader can identify with the story. As readers look through these myths they are looking at how they can identify with it and the significance it holds. A childlike curiosity and imagination is similar to these stories. Kids often play pretend and fall into the fun of fantasy. Society and institutions drill this imagination away from us by constructing limitations of “realistic” mindsets. The fall of Icarus shows the limitations faced when we explore the possibilities of life and shoot for the stars. Edward Field transforms this story into a poem in a contemporary modern setting. After the fall of Icarus he moves into an average suburban life. Icarus by Edward Field examines how modern society has put limitations on us to meld the world down into a place of mediocrity and a tarnished sense of normality.
Why should we have to fear the fall when we want to fly? The poem makes us consider whether living in the safety of mediocrity is better than the attempt for a better life. We have deemed that limiting ourselves to safety is the proper way to live. If the point of society is to constantly progress and to dream of a better future, not moving forward will get us nowhere. In a section of Field’s poem he writes:
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. (Field, line 11-14)
The words Field uses in this section like gray, concealed, sad, and defeated evoke emotions of mediocrity and apprehensiveness. These juxtapose and challenge the statements of “huge wings” and “compelled the sun” and sets this limiter on Icarus's feelings. This limiter is shown to suppress the flight and challenging nature that Icarus once had. Shooting for greatness and settling for mediocrity is an unsettling reality that Fields is depicting in his poem.
As children we come into this world with imagined reality but as we grow we are taught what the societal limitations of normality are. The formation of hegemony creates normality for things that should upon deeper look should not be considered normal. This brings to question what is considered normal and how it is determined by society. Field’s opens his poem by stating:
Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. (Field, line 1-3)
Starting the poem with this sentence sets the tone as a viewer reads the rest. Drowning is deemed as a usual thing and no spectacle is given to the reminisce of Icarus’s fall. On a more abstract level it is a commentary on the perception of normality. Deeming drowning as usual is something that is obviously not a positive thing. Field is setting the standard for the rest of his poem by asserting what the limits of normality are. The flight and the fall of Icarus are no longer relevant and we are left with just Icarus. The poem gives Icarus a normal life but is not a life that a reader would want. Transitioning the epic of The Flight of Icarus into the life of an average person today inspires the question of normality as Icarus is polarized from his original story.
Icarus is a character that many viewers can identify with because nearly everyone has faced the fall of failure in the attempt to achieve something. Field creates a reflective poem in which Icarus goes on to live a life that might be similar to a reader's own experiences. The poem is extremely easy to identify with and it challenges the perceptions of mediocrity and normality that a reader has. Field’s placement of Icarus illustrates the constructed limitations modern society has developed in the pursuit of possibility.
WORK CITED
Field, E. (2013). Icarus. Cultural Daily. https://www.culturaldaily.com/icarus/
Morford, Mark P. O., et al. Classical Mythology. 12th ed., Oxford University Press, 2022.