1 post tagged “icarus”
On viewing the first film footage of it, no one could agree on where the fire started. The film crew with the best view had stopped filming and didn't restart until the back quarter of the zeppelin was engulfed in flames. No one ever knows when tragedy is about to strike, and often no one is watching when it does. As W.H. Auden observed:
... 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.
So Icarus falls to his death while the farmer plows, and in the midst of the maelstrom of fire that consumes the Hindenburg in less than 30 seconds, startled cameramen race to capture the last few frames of death and destruction.
It's the blessing of modern technology. That we have the pleasure and horror of gasping along with Herbert Morrison's live radio broadcast: "Oh, the humanity!" To live that moment over and over. Taste tragedy like live theater gone wrong, where the stage knife has no spring and Romeo gouts real blood, not ketchup.
The curse of that technology is that it leaves us breathless, cell phone cameras in hand, waiting for tragedy. Waiting, not to live, but to document.
