Ein Käfig ging einen Vogel suchen.
A cage went in search of a bird.
Commentary
This one is translated identically in both editions.
The search is paradoxical. A bird is free, and if its freedom is considered a part of its essence, then a bird deprived of its freedom isn't the same bird anymore. I don't think the primary point here is that one may have an idea of some thing only to find that possessing that thing isn't the same as possessing that idea. Kafka is pointing out how the search for something pushes it away from you.
You want the bird, but why do you want the bird? Because it's free. So you catch a bird. Now it isn't free any more. How do you "have" a free bird?
The cage is formed around the bird, roughly in keeping with its dimensions, needs, and habits. Kafka may be saying that certain ideas are like this; they are attempts to trap something.
Searching, the cage becomes more like a bird; it would have to go where birds go, flying from branch to branch. So the cage may end its search by turning into a bird. Then again, it may turn into something entirely new, neither a bird nor a cage.
This means that the search does not always push the object away, but that when it doesn't, it also does not result in capture.
3 comments:
A cage is made for keeping a bird inside, depriving it of its freedom. A cage without fulfilling this function ceases to be a cage worthwhile to be a cage.
A bird symbolises freedom and movements. The movements, in relation to freedom, must be given sufficient space. So what if the cage is infinitely huge? Is the bird inside it enjoying freedom, after all?
Is not our life in some sense living inside a cage? Is not our world a cage?
Or, is it the other way around? What if the world is the bird, and we are the cage that goes in search of it? If so, perhaps we should learn to transform ourselves from a cage into, perhaps, a tree with strong branches, lush foliage and nutritious fruits, so that the bird can build its nest, linger and let its offspring develop.
I wonder if Kafka might have meant that a specific or generic punishment, imprisonment, or situation of servitude is created first, before the creature or person who will later be subjected to it?
For example, perhaps Kafka is suggesting that someone first built a prison, and then looked for criminals, or even criminalized behavior in order to fill it?
Or if a politician first thought of the idea of building a wall, and then made straw men & scapegoats and claimed the wall was to keep them out. Could Kafka have been talking about a situation like that?
“A cage went in search of a bird.” My favorite Kafka aphorism, may be the most famous too. I have read it in another form:”I am a cage in search of a bird”. But the former version appears more striking. What does it mean? Cage symbolizes emptiness. Also, the purpose of the cage is to possess the bird. Man is empty and he is looking to fill that emptiness with something. That is his nature, his purpose. And what he is looking for is elusive and shifting — like the bird. Like the Bob Dylan song goes: “the answer is blowing in the wind”. But the moment one grabs that answer, it is no longer blowing in the wind, and it is no longer the answer. The bird is not really a bird if it is caught and captured. May be the cage won’t even want it. It will gaze at the sky and look for another bird soaring and want that.
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