Dedit oscula nato
non iterum repetenda suo pennisque levatus
ante volat, comitique timet, velut ales, ab alto
(Ovid, Metamporphoses 8:211-213)

With wings raised before flying, Daedalus gave his own son kisses knowing that
they would never be repeated again, and he was afraid for him who was also his
fellow traveller, in the same way as a bird is on high . . .

(pron = DAY-dit OHS-koo-lah NAH-to nohn IH-teh-room reh-peh-TEN-dah SOO-oh
pen-NEES-kweh leh-WAH-toos AHN-tay WOH-laht koh-mih-TIH-kweh TIH-met WAY-loot
AH-lays ahb AHL-toh)

Comment: Every time I read this passage from the story of Daedalus and Icarus
in Ovid's Metamorphoses, I am filled with emotion. I came across it again
yesterday while preparing final exams for my students. The tears that came to
me interrupted my work, and so I had to stop and wonder again at the power of
ancient story, anciety poetry, ancient images that strike so close and deeply
in my heart, and perhaps even more amazing, in a language not my own. This
morning I have a whole new vigor for why studying this language is important to
me. The Latin words are so few and so powerfully loaded with meaning. I will
try and point out a few things that touch me so.

The interweaving of these two lives. For the few verses preceeding this one,
desperate father has worked to gain a way of escape for his son and himself
from the prison that king Minos has placed them in. They are imprisoned by an
angry king whom the father had worked for, and they are imprisoned in the
labyinth--the fathers's own work. The son, at times portrayed as just a child,
plays under his father's feet, innocently unaware of the "pericla", the dangers
he touches when he runs his fingers over the feathers of the wings.

The death and transformation. As this line demonstrates, the utter agony of the
father at having to let his child go--into the air, over the sea and land, under
the sun, into the four elements of life knowing full well that it means probable
death, but knowing that not to do so means certain death. There are
transformations here that only begin to make sense after being a parent. The
death is real and gut wrenching, and there are witnesses on land below who
watch it all take place. The parental warnings of "take the middle way between
sun and earth" have been given. And the child, unskilled in the middle way,
eventually falls to his death--but not before the reader must witness, the
agonizing cries of the father searching for his child--Icarus, where are you,
Icarus, Icarus. He finds the strewn feathers. And he finally finds his sons
body.

This scene, before morphing into another, shows us a father now laying his son
to rest in the earth. This man of the air (intelligence and cunning skill),
with a bird that flies up and mocks him. This bird was earlier his newphew
whom he killed out of envy for his own intelligence, and the gods had turned
him into the bird. Earth. Solid, grounding earth receives the boy who went
too close to the sun and fell into the sea. The fire of the sun was too much.
Intelligence of the air was not enough. The emotion of the sea overwhelms the
man, and he and his son come back to earth. They will never been the same
again.

And a father is left with his own lessons of transformation.