This One Goes Out to All You Art History Majors
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
this was
Icarus drowning
William Carlos Williams, [couldn't find the date], written immediately after seeing Breughel's Landscape With the Fall of Icarus.
posted by Ben Grad at 3:43 AM
4 Comments:
It's a beautiful painting. Thanks for considering the art history majors.
For ya'll, anything.
Ben, I just tried to kill my brain with 48 hours of alchohol. My brain survived.
What is the significance?
In the beginning of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce quotes from Ovid's retelling of the Icarus-Daedalus myth. The specific quote is "He sets his mind to work on unknown arts..."; Joyce omits the second half of that line, "...and changes the laws of nature".
Within the novel, Stephen, the universal artist, embodies two characters. One, Daedalus, symbolizing the "classical" approach to art - hard work, and the process of both gathering and synthesizing meaning from information. Obviously, neither of these qualities can make one an artist.
Icarus, Daedalus's sun, forms the second half of Stephen's artistry, opposing Daedalus's steady "classicism" with his own "romanticism". [I put those words in quotes because I'm referring to Joyce's definition, very different (especially regarding classicism) from the conventional meanings.]
So, perhaps a bit less Icarus, a bit more Daedalus?
Also, in Ovid's version of the story, Daedalus flies ahead of Icarus.
In the poem, Icarus's death is insignificant because it is unnoticed. In the story, Daedalus actually watches his son die.
Perhaps the significance of your binge is that you actually perceived it?
I dunno, it's a toughie.
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