Book 8
Daedalus, the father of Icarus, is a master craftsman. A celebrated figure for over 1400 years before Ovid, in Metamorphoses he is the archvillain whose technological genius leads to one disaster after another. In the face of these, Daedalus’ response is always to apply more technology. Or to kill his own nephew, Perdix, and steal his ideas. Daedalus’ final invention is human flight, using wings of feather and wax to escape the island on which he and his son had been imprisoned. Icarus’ wings have a design fault, however. The wax melts in the sun’s heat, and he falls headlong from the sky and drowns in the green waters of the Aegean.
This event is portrayed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting that is the subject of W H Auden’s poem, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’.
The Fall of Daedalus
I am Daedalus
known before Homer
stone and woodcarver
inventor gizmo-cobbler
collaborator fixer backstabber
biohacker
lab-leak monster maker
[parental advisory alert]
pervert
scientist
species splicer
monstrous Minotaur project supervisor
quarantine enforcer
labyrinth architect
construction site manager
power broker victim seeker
side switcher prison breaker
mechanic magician metallurgist
for whom every answer to a hitch
is always more
Vorsprung Durch Technik
why steal fire from the gods
like Prometheus
I am Daedalus
I can make it with a *click*
materialist
envious devious genius
copyright stealing
death dealing
nephew killing
as in: Hey Perdix
come and take a look at this
then pushed him off the Acropolis
saw him transform into a bird
a partridge flying just above the ground
even with a pea-brain his ideas were sound
each one a little gem
stole them
feather and wax wing assembly worker
aeronautical pioneer
flight instructor
pilot cabin crew
is there anything I can’t do
justice dodger
technologist
sky walker
fugitive
father
exile
liar
ex-father.
O Icarus, Icarus, my son,
what have I done?