너무 높이 난 날개

Daedalus looked down at the sea from a high room in Crete. Every ship out there belonged to King Minos, and every road there was had been closed.

Then he lifted his head, and a gull went past without asking anybody’s leave. “Minos holds the land and the sea. But he does not hold the sky.”

From that day Daedalus gathered feathers. His son Icarus played beside him, letting feathers fly, and did not yet know what was going to be fitted to his own body.

The Man Who Built the Labyrinth

Daedalus was a craftsman who had come from Athens. There was almost nothing his hands could not make. That skill was why Minos, king of Crete, had called him over.

The king had him build a labyrinth, a house you could go into and never come out of.X-ray Inside it he shut the Minotaur, who had the head of a bull.

When the work was done the king would not let Daedalus go. A man who knew the paths of the labyrinth could not leave the island.X-ray The maker had been shut into what he had made.

The Sky Alone Was Open

Daedalus laid the feathers out in order of length. Set from short to long they made a slope like a hillside. It looked something like the reed pipe a herdsman plays.

He bound the middles with thread and fixed the lower ends with wax, and when all of it was joined he bent it gently into the shape of a real wing. Two pairs of wings were finished.

Icarus had been playing beside his father all the while. He ran about catching the feathers the wind carried off, and pressed the yellow wax flat with his thumb.

Fly Down the Middle

Daedalus fitted the wings onto his son’s shoulders, and his hands kept shaking so that he had to take hold again and again. Then he looked into the boy’s eyes and spoke.

“Fly down the middle, Icarus. Fly low and the spray soaks your wings and they grow heavy. Fly high and the heat of the sun softens the wax.”

“Do not try to set your course by the stars. Only follow behind me.” He kissed his son on the cheek, and it was the last kiss.

The two of them threw themselves off the cliff. A man fishing below dropped his rod, and a man ploughing let go of the plough and looked up, taking them for gods.

Calling His Father’s Name

Samos went past on the left, and Delos and Paros fell away behind. Icarus liked the flying more and more.

The sky seemed to be calling the boy, and he went up past his father. The nearer the sun came the softer the wax grew.X-ray

The feathers came away one by one. Icarus beat his bare arms, and there was no wind to hold. He fell, calling his father’s name.

“Icarus, where are you?” Daedalus shouted it out, and only knew when he saw feathers floating on the water.

A Name Called Icaria

Daedalus buried his son on the nearest island. The island became Icaria and the sea around it the Icarian Sea. That day was the first time he hated his own skill.

From a tree a partridge watched the scene for a long time. That bird does not fly high, and nests only in low bushes.

Today, The Middle Way

People remember this story as do not fly too high. But Daedalus said two things equally, and one of them was that you fall by flying low as well.

There are just as many who go down under soaked wings. Shrinking your own share out of fear is a way of falling too. What the story points at is not a height but a span.

The middle way is not a fixed altitude. How much a person’s wings can hold differs from person to person. Coming to know that is the homework Icarus leaves us today.