Novel by Vincent Van Gogh

Published october 23, 2007 23:04

A bird in the cage in spring knows quite well that there is something he would be good at, he feels strongly that there is something to be done, but he can't do it. What is it? He can't quite remember, then he gets some vague ideas, and says to himself, "The others are building their nests and producing their young, and raising their brood." Then he bangs his head against the bars of his cage. And the cage is still there, and the bird is mad with grief. "There's a lazybones," says another bird who is passing. "He's comfortably off." However, the prisoner lives and does not die, nothing shows on the outside of what is going on inside him. He is in good health, he is more or less cheerful while the sun shines. Then the migration season comes and a bout of melacholy. "But," say the children who look after him in his cage, "he has everything he needs." Yet for him it means looking out at the swollen, stormy skies and feeling the revolt against his fate within himself. "I am in a cage, I am in a cage, and so I lack nothing, fools! I have everything I need! Oh, for pity's sake, give me freedom, to be a bird like other birds." That idle fellow is like that idle bird.