| Titus Andronicus – Upon Viewing Bruegel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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the beginning of the song seems to be a meditation on Icarus, and this might be a stretch or just a really good model for thinking about why it could be Icarus, but Joyce's Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man seems quite analogous as well. That is, Stephen Dedalus' relationship with Icarus, his view of being father and son at once (Dedalus and Icarus), the tormentor and the tormented, the corrupter and the innocent. The latter part presents itself to me as a logical conclusion of the first, essentially getting at the futility of enjoying life in the face of everything terrible, and ends with him (whomever the narrator is) giving up to it all and going on, empty. It's also beneficial to ask how this relates the title painting. I think the assumption is that these thoughts follow from the profound sadness onset when seeing the painting and realizing we're all separate necessarily, everyone goes on living because they have to, ignoring the tragedies all around them. |
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