And if thou mount too hie, The Sunne will sindge them. For if thou hold too low a gate, the dankenesse of the deepe Will overlade thy wings with wet. I warne thee (quoth he) Icarus, a middle race to keepe. Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of the passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes both the miraculous moment of first flight and the specificity of Daedalus’ parental concern: arion 29.3 winter 2022 2 meditation on the fall of icarus As soon as that the worke was done, the workman by and by Did peyse his bodie on his wings, and in the Aire on hie Hung wavering: and did teach his sonne how he should also flie. When he later wished to escape from Crete with his son Icarus, Daedalus devised wings for both of them, feathers sized just like the coverts of birds’ wings and held together with stitching and wax. In Greek mythology, after having murdered his nephew Talos in a fit of jealousy, the celebrated inventor Daedalus took refuge on the island of Crete and made his skills available to King Minos. His present visit may be his last, for although he lives now in a world beyond time, I do not. He died twelve years before I was born, but he has paid me posthumous visits every fifteen or twenty years. He was, according to the usual custom, listed as missing for a year, and then he was declared dead. Navy ship bombarding the island-and crashed into the sea. On June 15, 1944, his plane was shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire-or it may have been brought down by friendly fire from a U.S. He was a member of Fighting Squadron Ten, called “The Grim Reapers,” the logo for which was a skeleton in a steep dive wearing a flying helmet and goggles, holding a blood-stained scythe. He was a Lieutenant (junior grade) killed at the age of twenty-two during the first day of the invasion of the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas.
The uncle for whom I am named, my father’s younger brother by two years, was a Navy fighter pilot flying off the aircraft carrier U.S.S. It is possible that this interest is genetic. all my life, I have been fascinated by aviation and the history of human flight. Kirchwey, Jr., 1944 Meditation on the Fall of Icarus KARL KIRCHWEY I. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: