I have the opportunity or perhaps the privilege of many formal lessons in an academic career which has been lifelong. Frankly, I have forgotten the vast majority if them, often because those lessons have passed through me without touching anything vital or remotely interesting. However, some of those lessons have stayed with me, stuck to me in a way to suggest that they have been digested and absorbed in the manner of a nutritious meal. Such lessons often pop back up into my mind and I go over them again and again, turning them inside out, upside down until they recede once more into my mind, only to resurface again at some other point in time.
One lesson which keeps popping up in my mind from time to time was learnt in the primary school from a set English language textbook which I read at that stage of my exposure. Many of my contemporaries will no doubt remember a number of such lessons scattered throughout the English language lessons of our academic infancy even though we are separated from those lessons by a time span longer than six decades. In this respect, I am going to to revisit the story of Daedalus and Icarus as described in my English language textbook from more than sixty years ago.
What I remember about this story is that Daedalus, a very clever engineer was in the employ of a rich and powerful monarch. His services were considered by the king to be so valuable that Daedalus was not allowed to go back to his own country even though the engineer was longing very much to go back home. He was so closely guarded that there was no hope of escape by land or water. Most men would have given up any hope of escape from this open but well guarded prison, but not Daedalus. As far as he was concerned, if there was no avenue of escape by land or water, surely he could leave by flying through the air, a feat which was easily within the purview of the many birds which flew over his head everyday without let or hinderance. That those birds were equipped with wings was a consideration which was as obvious with birds as it was lacking in men, even very clever ones like Daedalus. Under the circumstance, it was clear that what was required was a pair of sturdy wings which would power his flight up and above his prison and across the sea to his native land for which his heart yearned with overpowering intensity. Was it possible that he was the first human to think of overcoming gravity and taking to the air like a bird? No matter, he was certainly going to try and he did. He collected bird feathers and joined them together with wax, enough of them to form the wings which were to make his escape possible.
With Daedalus in captivity was his son Icarus, a young man with boundless energy but restricted imagination who also had to be provided with wings and rudimentary lessons about how to use them. Providing him with wings was the easy part, preparing him for flight was the real challenge. As far as Daedalus was concerned, the only lesson that needed to be passed on to his son concerned the wax with which the wings were put together. The integrity of wax was reliable at low temperature and completely worthless as soon as it was exposed to heat. As long as this was taken to heart, all would be well. As soon as the wings were ready, Daedalus and Icarus took to the skies and flew out of their prison and were on their way home over the sea. Although Daedalus had warned his son about the danger of flying too close to the sun, the sheer joy of flying through the air in defiance of gravity flew into his head and like a potent drug and overcame his senses, removing all his inhibitions. Determined to test the limit of his new powers Icarus took off and headed for the highest reaches of the sky where the sun was hottest, forgetting the lesson which had been drummed into him by his father. What happened next was not only predictable but also inevitable, the wax whch held his wings together melted away in the heat and he lost power. He called out frantically to his father as the force of gravity kicked in and began to drag him back towards sea level and a fatal landing in the sea.
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The death of Icarus had a profound effect on my young mind which is why so many years later, I still find this myth unforgettable. My adult mind is still processing the tragedy of Icarus, trying to see beyond the myth and trying to understand the power of what appears to be a simple story of youthful exuberance. In the first place, this story is about longing. Man, for all his dominance of the earth was powerless in the grip of gravity which held him earthbound whilst birds had the freedom of the skies and could go wherever they wanted. This is a collective longing, a feeling shared by all men. To be able to fly is to be truly free of all forms of tyranny visited on anyone by a person or persons who have coercive power over them. And there is hardly anyone who is not in a position of subservience even if it is to a faceless government apparatus hell-bent on imposing the will of a so called majority on some hapless individual struggling to keep his head above water. To grow wings and fly is to be free to be whatever you want to be in the face of all attempts to cage you in the same way that Daedalus was caged by his employer. Man must envy the birds for their freedom to fly, to fly into the sun if that is their fancy.
It was the desire for freedom that triggered the invention of wings with which to escape through the air and plot a return to the land that Daedalus loved as much as life itself since failure meant certain death. It was a risk that he was willing to take since life in captivity even if it was in comfortable captivity is an insult to the soul. A cage is still a cage no matter how padded or gilded it is. Freedom in some instances may even mean a lowering of physical expectations but the suffering associated with physical wants could be more acceptable than the circumscribed opulence of a psychological prison where all physical wants are fulfilled almost as soon as they are conceived.
Even inside his prison, Daedalus was as inventive as ever but he was determined that his inventiveness was not going to be of benefit to his employer. This shows that even in a position of great disadvantage, the human mind, as long as it is not overwhelmed by despair, is still capable of thinking things through to a logical conclusion especially when the end result is self determination, the freedom to be what one really wants to be. Preparing for flight could not have been easy, after all, there was no set example to follow but as soon as the decision was taken, the ways and means were developed and all that was left was to create a flight path out of the prison within which hopes were buried and freedom put in bondage. There must have been deep anxiety but the thought of freedom overcame all the genuine fears which would have stood in the way of the execution of the planned flight.
The problem confronting Daedalus was immense but it was doubled by the presence of his son. Why Icarus was with his father at the time of the great escape was not mentioned in the story. However, his presence there shaped the outcome of the exercise in the most profound way possible as this is what brought about the failure of the enterprise and the loss of his son. The old man had freedom in his sights but the son, not appreciating the driving force behind the enterprise looked on the flight as a joy ride. It was simply an opportunity to roam the skies with the birds, leaving all cares, anxieties, doubts and whatever else that was bothering his young mind on the ground. This being the case his only responsibility was to himself alone. His lifetime experience was limited and actually the flight was likely to be one of his first encounters with reality, a reality which he was to reduce to a frolic in the skies. The rush of adrenaline which coursed through his veins as he took off was an intoxicant which drove all inhibitions from his mind in the way of young males who are face to face with the gritty realities of life for the first time. In the end, he turned out to be the excess baggage which aborted the execution of his father’s plans.
I have found out that there are a few versions of this tragic story but whichever version you come across, there are lessons to be learnt from this and other stories. They have their origins in the fertile imagination of the human mind in whichever period of human experience and from in all parts of the world where human beings have been born, lived, died and left something behind if only to confirm that they were here.