As mentioned in my last roundup, I’m planning a series of episodes for the Books Are Burning! podcast which will feature discussions of literature related in one way or another to David Bowie. The first text in this prospective “Bowie Books” series is Walter Tevis’ sci fi novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was later the basis for Nicolas Roeg’s film of the same name. Both the book and the movie associate the protagonist Thomas Jerome Newton—an alien from the planet Anthea played by Bowie on the big screen—with the Greek mythological character Icarus as depicted in Breughel’s well-known painting and W. H. Auden’s equally well-known poem on the painting. Press play above for my dramatic reading of “Musée des Beaux Arts,” which is the focus of this installment of “A Defense of Poesy” (formerly called “Poem of the Week”):
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Auden’s interpretation of Breughel’s painting emphasizes the indifference and even obliviousness which we self-involved humans often exhibit when confronted with the suffering of others. Life goes on, Auden suggests, and in fact must go on, despite the tragedies and sorrows which occur all around us on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Tevis’ novel, inspired by poem and painting alike, alludes both to Auden’s “boy falling out of the sky” (in the title of the book as well as a section thereof called “Icarus Descending”) and to Breughel’s visual representation of the myth’s denouement (in a section of the book called “Icarus Drowning”).
Another “Old Master,” the Flemish painter Jacob Peter Gowy, contrasts Icarus with his father Daedalus, who unlike the impetuous youth had the good sense not to fly too close to the sun with his wings of wax:
Daedalus, with his mature sense of caution and restraint, survives the flight and lives to tell the tale. But is his glory as great as that of the doomed adolescent? Is he as beautiful in life as Icarus is in death? It is the son, descending and then drowning, rather than the father, high and dry, that Henri Matisse celebrates in his famous cut-and-paste colored paper portrait:
Matisse’s more optimistic take on the Icarus myth is echoed by American poet Jack Gilbert in “Failing and Flying”:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.
What do you think? Is it better to burn out than to fade away? Would you rather be Icarus or Daedalus? For that matter, would you rather be Kurt Cobain or David Bowie? Let your favorite author, songwriter, and publisher in permanent exile know.
Team Bowie!