The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy.
Hwang Sok-yong, The Old Garden
hwang-sok-yong, idealism, perspective, pieter-bruegel, the-fall-of-icarus, the-old-garden, tragedy