Like the dancer Nijinsky, Krzhizhanovsky was a Russified Pole, and like Nijinsky, beautiful strange and vivid. Living as he did in the Soviet Union, Krzhizhanovksky’s work wasn’t published until 1989, long after his death in 1950. ‘Journey of a Cage’ has something in common with the sad French film Balthazar, in that it tracks the tragic passing of an animal through many human hands, in this story, a grey parrot in a cage.
Written in Russian in the 1920s; First published in English in Unwitting Street, NYRB classics, 2020
A Personal Anthology 