PARTISAN REVIEW
I do put
him
in. I have tramped all the roads of logic. On their hori–
zontal plane I have wandered all too often. I crawl, and I would rather
take wings. To lose my shadow, to lose the filth of my body, to throw
off the weight of the past! The infinite calls me! I have the sensation of
being drawn up:-vards from a great height. 0 mind of man, I shall climb
to your topmost height. My father, with his great knowledge of mech–
anics, will provide me with the means to go. I shall travel alone. I'm
not afraid. I can pay my way. It's my only chance to escape. 0 noble
mind, too long entangled in the confusion of my problems, an un–
chartered road is waiting for you now. I cannot define what it is that
summons me; but I know that my journey can have only one end in
God."
And he backed away from us as far as the arras, which he raised,
and afterwards let drop behind him.
"Poor dear boy," said Daedalus. "As he thought he could never
escape from the labyrinth, and did not understand that the labyrinth
was within himself, at his request I made him a set of wings, with which
he was able to fly away. He thought that he could only escape by way
of the heavens, all terrestrial routes being blocked. I knew him to be
of a mystical turn, so that his longing did not surprise me. A longing,
however, which has not been fulfilled, as you will have been able to
judge for yourself while listening to him. In spite of my warnings, he
tried to fly too high, and overtaxed
his
strength. He fell into the sea.
He
is
dead."
"How can that be?" I burst out. "I saw him alive only a moment
ago."
"Yes," he answered. "You did see
him,
and he seemed to be alive.
But he is dead. At this point, Theseus, I am afraid that your intelligence,
although Greek, and as such subtle and open to all aspects of the truth,
cannot follow me; for I myself, I must own, was slow to grasp and
concede this fact; those of us whose souls, when weighed in the supreme
scale, are not judged of too little account, do not just live an ordinary
life. In time, as we mortals measure it, we grow up, accomplish our
destiny, and die. But there is another, truer eternal plane on which time
does not exist; on this plane the representative gestures of our race are
inscribed, each according to its particular significance. Icarus was, be–
fore his birth, and remains after his death, the image of man's disquiet,
of the impulse
to
discovery, the soaring flight of poetry-the things of
which, during his short life, he was the incarnation. He played out
his hand, as he owed it to himself
to
do; but he didn't end there. What
happens, in the case of a hero, is this: his mark endures. Poetry and the
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