Up and Away

By Peter Stoler

THE COMPLEAT BIRDMAN by PETER HAINING 160 pages. Illustrated. St. Martin's Press. $8.95.

"O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?" So wrote Dante 600 years ago. Even in his age, the idea of individual flight was an ancient desire. Today no fantasy remains more universal than that of the airborne human, riding updrafts like a bird. Most people restrict their air travel to those steelbound auditoriums shuttling back and forth between continents or coasts, an experience that comes no closer to free flight than watching a rerun of Twelve O'Clock High. But as British Science Writer Peter Haining relates in his delightful chronicle of man-powered flight, a handful in every epoch have defied gravity without the aid of motor or jet.

The Compleat Birdman wittily analyzes the unearthly urge that inspired biblical figures, Leonardo da Vinci and just about everyone else who ever wanted to trade the land for the wind. Here is Simon Magus, an early Roman necromancer who rose skyward (possibly by means of a balloon) before a crowd that included St. Peter. To the relief of the early Christian spectators, Magus suffered an instant--and fatal--crash. Haining wistfully relates the tale of Bladud, a doomed 9th century British king, who borrowed a page from Greek mythologies and perished like Icarus with a pair of feather-and-wax wings. George Faux, a 19th century English eccentric was more fortunate. In 1862 he jumped from a roof, flapped his arms violently and plummeted, bruised but undiscouraged, to the ground. "I'm really a good flyer," he explained as he staggered from the crash site. "But I cannot alight very well."

Man-powered flight has come a short way since then. In the late 19th century German Designer Otto Lilienthal built the kitelike device that led to modern-day hang gliders. Several other visionaries constructed pedal-powered planes that, in a very few cases, actually got off the ground. But as Haining shows, persistence is as enduring as failure. A contest held annually in Selsey,

England, draws hundreds of birdmen every year. In a recent event, no paraphernalia better demonstrated the timeless desire to fly than a team consisting of two men in white robes caparisoned in large, dovelike wings and halos. Launching themselves from the starting platform, the aspiring angels enjoyed the friendly skies for a few seconds -- then plunged like devils into the sea.

As the historian sees it, such airborne misadventures have a social as well as personal function. They externalize a deep, ineradicable fantasy, and behind the vain, comic flap there flies -- however briefly -- a valuable purpose. Concludes Peter Haining: "The bird-man is, after all, always there to remind us of his intent ... he flies on as ever in our dreams, on our televisions and radios, and even through our day-to-day conversations. We should surely miss him deeply if he were not there." We should, like Dante, have to dream him all over again.

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