Icarus
Icarus or Ikaros ( ancient Greek Ἴκαρος , Latinized Icarus ) is the son of Daidalos in Greek mythology .
myth
Icarus and Daedalus were held captive by King Minos in the labyrinth of the Minotaur on Crete - as a punishment because Daedalus had given Theseus helpful hints on the use of Ariadne's thread . Since Minos controlled the sea and the land, Daedalus invented wings for himself and his son. To do this, he attached feathers to a rod with wax. Before taking off, he told Icarus not to fly too high or too low, as otherwise the heat of the sun or the moisture of the sea would lead to a crash. At first everything went well, but after passing Samos and Delos on the left and Lebinthos on the right, Icarus became cocky and climbed so high that the sun melted the wax on his wings, whereupon the feathers came loose and he fell into the sea. The desperate Daedalus named the island on which he had buried his son in memory of his child Ikaria .
The Icarus myth is generally interpreted to mean that the fall and death of the cocky is the punishment of the gods for his insolent reach for the sun. According to Ovid , the gods let Icarus die out of revenge because Daedalus had murdered his nephew and pupil Perdix out of envy of his skills.
reception
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The figure of Icarus has repeatedly been the stimulus and object of artistic, scientific and technical creations in European culture. For example in the painting in the picture Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder . In the more recent German painting of Fantastic Realism , the painter Werner Holz portrayed the “cocky” and foolish man of today as Icarus in several paintings.
In the GDR , critical painters like Wolfgang Mattheuer used the motif of Icarus to thematize the end of the dream of socialist heroism.
The lunar crater Icarus is named after him.
The Swiss writer Eveline Hasler designed a female Icarus in her novel “Die Wachsflügelfrau”, the story of which refers to the biography of the first Swiss lawyer, Emilie Kempin-Spyri . Because this ultimately failed because she wanted to go too high. Earning a living as a lawyer and also gaining recognition in this profession was not intended for a woman at that time.
See also
Source collection
- Achim Aurnhammer , Dieter Martin (ed.): Myth of Icarus. Texts from Ovid to Wolf Biermann. Reclam, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-379-01646-2 .
literature
- Otto Höfer : Ikaros 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, Col. 114-117 ( digitized version ).
- Jacob E. Nyenhuis: Daidalos et Ikaros . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume II, Zurich / Munich 1984, pp. 313–321.
- Bernhard Greiner , Joachim Harst: Daidalos and Ikaros. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 191-198.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ovid , Metamorphoses 8.183 to 235 ( German and Latin ).
- ↑ Eveline Hasler: The wax wing woman, story of Emily Kempin-Spyri. Dtv, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-42312087-8