To become airborne — that’s where the poetry lies.
In order to escape from the labyrinth in which they had been imprisoned, Daedalus made a pair of wings for himself and for his son Icarus. Flying would make them free. In his enthusiasm, after taking flight Icarus got too close to the sun, as a result of which the heat melted the wax that held the feathers on his back and he ended up falling into the sea and drowning.
Over the course of history, a liaison has been forged between human beings and the sky; between the desire to fly and the physical and symbolic meaning entailed by flying. As a result, flight brings together contrary and complementary elements: the eternal and ascending as opposed to the perishable and descending, the hope and distress in the act of learning to fly and thus rising or plunging to the ground; life and death. Our desire to fly responds to our need to move one place to another, although we very often plunge into an abyss, as did Icarus.
And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls. – Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
