10: Precipice

Read the introduction to this series.

I have been thinking about Icarus’s father, Daedalus, and about the often persistent impasse between adults and adolescents that is hardly unique to Greek myth. Unspoken rivalries. Complex legacies. A parable of a different sort.

Icarus: Son (sun?) at the center of his father’s universe

Daedalus : Dad, designer, control freak. 

Measure twice, cut once. 

I wonder about the origin of this proverb, and discover that it was introduced in the sixteenth century by John Florio, a translator and linguist in the Court of James I, who translated Montaigne and might have been a friend of Shakespeare’s. (Not to be compared with John J. Florio, who designed model airplanes.)

Interesting that it all comes back to flight, however.

For his part, Daedalus was more than the sum of his many talents. 

He was also, as it turns out, quite a bit less.

Grieving the loss of his child Icarus, and envious of his sister’s twelve-year-old son, Perdix—whose skills were beginning to rival his own—Daedalus pushes Perdix off the Temple of Minerva, at the top of the Athenian Citadel. 

Perdix is also the mother’s name. Confusing! In Greek mythology, Perdix is also sometimes referred to as Talos, Calos, or Attalus.

In any event, as he is tumbling to his death, his mother turns him into …  a partridge. Perdix grows wings mid-flight, softening his landing, thus protected from harm. 

I do a little digging. Partridges have short lives and high mortality rates. 

Also? They don’t, in general, fly.

What was Daedalus thinking about when he shoved his nephew off the mountaintop? And why did the mother privilege the softness of a landing over the security of longevity? Honestly, she could have turned her child into a cockatoo, and he would have lived another ninety years.

This portrait of Perdix sporting a feathered helmet was my attempt to merge a partridge and cockatoo. I deliberately made him look as skeptical about this imposed hybridity as I feel painting it. 

Next:

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

11: Propeller

Read the introduction to this series. David Moolten imagines Icarus as an immigrant, adrift on a wayward voyage: He doesn’t fall into the sea, but back Toward Russia Bill Callahan imagines him in hiding: Young Icarus flew at night for years He flew and flew and flew …  As obsessed with evolution as ever From a … Continued