Today we’re kicking off a new series called ‘The Psychological Significance of the Classic Myths’, starting with the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
We’re about to deep dive into the greatest stories ever told in human history, extract their gold, their wisdom, and make the poetic practical.
Over the course of this series, in addition to Daedalus and Icarus, we’ll look at the Graeco-Roman myths of:
- Narcissus and Echo
- Apollo and Daphne
- Diana and Action
- Pyramus and Thisbe
- Perseus and Andromeda
- and many more.
If you have a favourite story you’d like to discuss, please go to iTunes and leave a review for the show along with your request.
Hardcore Literature is in its infancy, so I’m really grateful for reviews because they let me know you’re enjoying the show and would like it to continue.
Now, please enjoy the ‘Daedalus and Icarus Show’, in which we’ll discuss the dangers of creating your own reality, taking risks, hubris, arrogance, living a life of virtue, sin, the fall of Lucifer, the Dunning Krueger Effect, poetry from W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams, paintings by Titian and Brueghel, and much more.
The Psychological Significance of the Classic Myths: Ovid’s Daedalus and Icarus
Timestamps:
- 1:50 – talking about Hardcore Literature and branding
- 4:15 – Daedalus and Icarus discussion begins
- 5:10 – my tips on how to read and appreciate Ovid’s Metamorphoses
- 5:45 – do you need to learn Latin to read Ovid?
- 6:40 – what’s the best translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses?
- 7:25 – reading Daedalus and Icarus together
- 11:30 – the reading of the tale ends and poetry appreciation begins
- 17:00 – poetry analysis ends, practical life advice begins
- 17:30 – you are the architect of your own life
- 20:00 – the gatekeepers are gone (example from the book publishing world)
- 20:55 – discrimination against straight white male writers
- 21:15 – discrimination against black, asian, and ethnically minority people
- 21:45 – where discrimination, racism, sexism, prejudice, and hate come from
- 22:35 – how to get a book deal, despite being discriminated against
- 23:00 – how to build your own record label from the ground up
- 24:00 – could you get an hour TV show slot with the BBC?
- 24:45 – “I don’t agree with everything you say…”
- 25:25 – do you disavow?
- 26:00 – I disagree with you, but I love you (on echo chambers)
- 27:00 – Aristotelian friendship, and keeping the baby gloves off
- 27:50 – is it bad to criticise your country?
- 28:50 – can you make your own job?
- 29:35 – the difficulties of being a leader
- 31:35 – Icarus is “blithely unaware he plays with his own peril”
- 33:00 – going too low is as bad as going too high
- 33:45 – how to live virtuously
- 35:00 – Freud on the death of one’s father
- 36:00 – having an internal locus of control
- 37:00 – book burnings and making dangerous things
- 38:20 – hubris, pride, and arrogance
- 39:00 – the psychological cause of arrogance
- 40:45 – silence and being complicit
- 41:55 – why I took Maximilian Kolbe for my confirmation name
- 42:35 – abundance vs scarcity mindsets in relationships
- 43:15 – am I the asshole?
- 45:10 – most people won’t be happy for your good fortune
- 46:40 – the habit of gratitude
- 47:10 – you can’t say ‘I love you’ enough
- 48:55 – the Dunning-Kruger Effect
- 49:15 – the fallacy of learning languages/chess as a beginner
- 49:50 – maybe some of the best mindset advice you’ll ever receive
- 53:00 – Breughel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’
- 54:00 – ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ by W.H. Auden
- 55:35 – ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ by William Carlos Williams
- 56:16 – Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid (one of the greatest poems in English)
Recommended Translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
- Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid (Shakespeare used this one, and Ezra Pound called it the most beautiful display of English in the language)
- A.D. Melville translation (the one I’m working from for this show)
Mentioned in this episode:
- Great Courses Plus – Rubens & Caravaggio: Art History Course
- Forthcoming free video on working out for academic performance
- The tale of the Minotaur (also in Book VIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses)
- Plato
- Freud
- Nietzsche (podcast here)
- Schopenhauer
- Aristotle virtues (the pride podcast)
- Aristotle’s Rhetoric
- Maximilian Kolbe
- The Diary of Anne Frank
- The Gulag Archipelago
- Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception
- Breughel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’
- ‘Museux des beaux arts’ by W.H. Auden
- ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ by William Carlos Williams
My personal favourite lines from Ovid’s Daedalus and Icarus:
- Launches a tender fledgling in the air’ (feel that luscious assonance in your mouth)
- ‘Row upon row of feathers he arranged, | The smallest first, then larger ones, to form | A growing graded shape, as rustic pipes | Rise in a gradual slope of lengthening reeds’ (that imagery! those sounds!)
- ‘Fly a middle course, lest if you sink | Too low the waves may weight your feathers; if | Too high, the heat may burn them’ (parallelism expertly deployed!)
- ‘Though land and sea,’ he thought, | ‘The king may bar to me, at least the sky | Is open’ (that symbolic enjambment!)
- ‘An angler fishing with his quivering rod, | A lonely shepherd propped upon his crook, | A ploughman leaning on his plough, looked up’ (how cinematic!)
- ‘The wax melted; his waving arms were bare; | Unfledged, they had no purchase on the air!’ (gorgeous rhyming couplets!)
- ‘The boy was swallowed in the blue sea’s swell’ (the sound of the words conveying the imagery!)