___________________________________________
Franz Kafka
A Hunger Artist
___________________________________________
This translation by Ian
Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, Canada, (published in 2009,
last revised June 11, 2015) has certain copyright restrictions. For
information please use the following link: Copyright. For comments or question
please contact Ian Johnston.
For more links to Kafka
e-texts in English click here]
A HUNGER ARTIST
In the last decades interest in hunger artists has declined considerably.
Whereas in earlier days there was good money to be earned putting on major
productions of this sort under one’s own management, nowadays that is totally
impossible. Those were different times. Back then the hunger artist captured
the attention of the entire city. From day to day while the fasting lasted,
participation increased. Everyone wanted to see the hunger artist at least once
a day. During the later days there were people with subscription tickets who
sat all day in front of the small barred cage. And there were even viewing
hours at night, their impact heightened by torchlight. On fine days the cage
was dragged out into the open air, and then the hunger artist was put on
display particularly for the children. While for grown-ups the hunger artist
was often merely a joke, something they participated in because it was
fashionable, the children looked on amazed, their mouths open, holding each
other’s hands for safety, as he sat there on scattered straw—spurning a
chair—in black tights, looking pale, with his ribs sticking out prominently,
sometimes nodding politely, answering questions with a forced smile, even
sticking his arm out through the bars to let people feel how emaciated he was,
but then completely sinking back into himself, so that he paid no attention to
anything, not even to what was so important to him, the striking of the clock,
which was the single furnishing in the cage, but merely looking out in front of
him with his eyes almost shut and now and then sipping from a tiny glass of
water to moisten his lips.
Apart from the changing groups of spectators there were also constant
observers chosen by the public—strangely enough they were usually butchers—who,
always three at a time, were given the task of observing the hunger artist day
and night, so that he didn’t get anything to eat in some secret manner. It was,
however, merely a formality, introduced to reassure the masses, for those who
understood knew well enough that during the period of fasting the hunger artist
would never, under any circumstances, have eaten the slightest thing, not even
if compelled by force. The honor of his art forbade it. Naturally, none of the
watchers understood that. Sometimes there were nightly groups of watchers who
carried out their vigil very laxly, deliberately sitting together in a distant
corner and putting all their attention into playing cards there, clearly
intending to allow the hunger artist a small refreshment, which, according to
their way of thinking, he could get from some secret supplies. Nothing was more
excruciating to the hunger artist than such watchers. They depressed him. They
made his fasting terribly difficult. Sometimes he overcame his weakness and
sang during the time they were observing, for as long as he could keep it up, to
show people how unjust their suspicions about him were. But that was little
help. For then they just wondered among themselves about his skill at being
able to eat even while singing. He much preferred the observers
who sat down right against the bars and, not satisfied with the dim
backlighting of the room, illuminated him with electric flashlights, which the
impresario made available to them. The glaring light didn’t bother him in the
slightest. Generally he couldn’t sleep at all, and he could always doze off a
little under any lighting and at any hour, even in an overcrowded, noisy
auditorium. With such observers, he was very happily prepared to spend the
entire night without sleeping. He was ready to joke with them, to recount
stories from his nomadic life and then, in turn, to listen to their
stories—doing everything just to keep them awake, so that he could keep showing
them once again that he had nothing to eat in his cage and that he was fasting
as none of them could. He was happiest, however, when morning came and a lavish
breakfast was brought for them at his own expense, on which they hurled
themselves with the appetite of healthy men after a hard night’s work without
sleep. True, there were still people who wanted to see in this breakfast an
unfair means of influencing the observers, but that was going too far, and if
they were asked whether they wanted to undertake the observers’ night shift for
its own sake, without the breakfast, they excused themselves. But nonetheless
they stood by their suspicions.
However, it was, in general, part of fasting that these doubts were
inextricably associated with it. For, in fact, no one was in a position to
spend time watching the hunger artist every day and night without interruption,
so no one could know, on the basis of his own observation, whether this was a
case of truly continuous, flawless fasting. The hunger artist himself was the
only one who could know that and, at the same time, the only spectator capable
of being completely satisfied with his own fasting. But the reason he was never
satisfied was something different. Perhaps it was not fasting at all which made
him so very emaciated that many people, to their own regret, had to stay away
from his performance, because they couldn’t bear to look at him. For he was
also so skeletal out of dissatisfaction with himself, because he alone knew
something that even initiates didn’t know—how easy it was to
fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. About this he did not remain
silent, but people did not believe him. At best they thought he was being
modest. Most of them, however, believed he was a publicity seeker or a total
swindler, for whom, at all events, fasting was easy, because he understood how
to make it easy, and then still had the nerve to half admit it. He had to
accept all that. Over the years he had become accustomed to it. But this
dissatisfaction kept gnawing at his insides all the time and never yet—and this
one had to say to his credit—had he left the cage of his own free will after
any period of fasting. The impresario had set the maximum length of time for
the fast at forty days—he would never allow the fasting go on beyond that
point, not even in the cosmopolitan cities. And, in fact, he had a good reason.
Experience had shown that for about forty days one could increasingly whip up a
city’s interest by gradually increasing advertising, but that then the public
turned away—one could demonstrate a significant decline in popularity. In this
respect, there were, of course, small differences among different towns and
among different countries, but as a rule it was true that forty days was the
maximum length of time. So then on the fortieth day the door of the cage—which
was covered with flowers—was opened, an enthusiastic audience filled the
amphitheater, a military band played, two doctors entered the cage in order to
take the necessary measurements of the hunger artist, the results were
announced to the auditorium through a megaphone, and finally two young ladies
arrived, happy to have just been selected by lot, and sought to lead the hunger
artist down a couple of steps out of the cage, where on a small table a
carefully chosen hospital meal was laid out. And at this moment the hunger
artist always fought back. Of course, he still freely laid his bony arms in the
helpful outstretched hands of the ladies bending over him, but he did not want
to stand up. Why stop right now after forty days? He could have kept going for
even longer, for an unlimited length of time. Why stop right now, when he was
in his best form, indeed, not yet even in his best fasting form? Why did people
want to rob him of the fame of fasting longer, not just so that he could become
the greatest hunger artist of all time, which, in fact, he probably was
already, but also so that he could surpass himself in some unimaginable way,
for he felt there were no limits to his capacity for fasting.
Why did this crowd, which pretended to admire him so much, have so little patience
with him? If he kept going and kept fasting even longer, why would they not
tolerate it? Then, too, he was tired and felt good sitting in the straw. Now he
was supposed to stand up straight and tall and go to eat, something which, when
he merely imagined it, made him feel nauseous right away. With great difficulty
he repressed mentioning this only out of consideration for the women. And he
looked up into the eyes of these women, apparently so friendly but in reality
so cruel, and shook his excessively heavy head on his feeble neck. But then
happened what always happened. The impresario came forward without a word—the
music made talking impossible—raised his arms over the hunger artist, as if
inviting heaven to look upon its work here on the straw, this unfortunate
martyr (something the hunger artist certainly was, only in a completely
different sense), grabbed the hunger artist around his thin waist, in the
process wanting with his exaggerated caution to make people believe that here
he had to deal with something fragile, and handed him over—not without secretly
shaking him a little, so that the hunger artist’s legs and upper body swung
back and forth uncontrollably—to the women, who had in the meantime turned as
pale as death. At this point, the hunger artist endured everything. His head
lay on his chest—it was as if it had inexplicably rolled around and just
stopped there—his body was arched back, his legs, in an impulse of
self-preservation, pressed themselves together at the knees, but scraped the ground,
as if they were not really on the floor but were looking for the real ground,
and the entire weight of his body, admittedly very small, lay against one of
the women, who appealed for help with flustered breath, for she had not
imagined her post of honor would be like this, and then stretched her neck as
far as possible, to keep her face from the least contact with the hunger
artist, but then, when she couldn’t manage this and her more fortunate
companion didn’t come to her assistance but trembled and remained content to
hold in front of her the hunger artist’s hand, that small bundle of knuckles,
she broke into tears, to the delighted laughter of the auditorium, and had to
be relieved by an attendant who had been standing ready for some time. Then came the meal. The impresario put a little food into the
mouth of the hunger artist, now dozing as if he were fainting, and kept up a
cheerful patter designed to divert attention away from the hunger artist’s
condition. Then a toast was proposed to the public, which was supposedly
whispered to the impresario by the hunger artist, the orchestra confirmed
everything with a great fanfare, people dispersed, and no one had the right to
be dissatisfied with the event, no one except the hunger artist—he was always
the only one.
He lived this way, taking small regular breaks, for many years,
apparently in the spotlight, honored by the world, but for all that, his mood
was usually gloomy, and it kept growing gloomier all the time, because no one
understood how to take it seriously. But how was he to find consolation? What
was there left for him to wish for? And if a good-natured man who felt sorry
for him ever wanted to explain to him that his sadness probably came from his
fasting, then it could happen, especially at an advanced stage of the fasting,
that the hunger artist responded with an outburst of rage and began to shake
the cage like an animal, frightening everyone. But the impresario had a way of
punishing moments like this, something he was happy to use. He would make an
apology for the hunger artist to the assembled public, conceding that the
irritability had been provoked only by his fasting, which well-fed people did
not readily understand and which was capable of excusing the behavior of the
hunger artist. From there he would move on to speak about the equally
hard-to-understand claim of the hunger artist that he could go on fasting for
much longer than he was doing. He would praise the lofty striving, the good
will, and the great self-denial no doubt contained in this claim, but then
would try to contradict it simply by producing photographs, which were also on
sale, for in the pictures one could see the hunger artist on the fortieth day
of his fast, in bed, almost dead from exhaustion. Although the hunger artist
was very familiar with this perversion of the truth, it strained his nerves
every time and was too much for him. What was a result of the premature ending
of the fast people were now proposing as its cause! It was impossible to fight
against this lack of understanding, against this world of misunderstanding. In
good faith he still always listened eagerly to the impresario at the bars of
his cage, but each time, once the photographs came out, he would let go of the
bars and, with a sigh, sink back into the straw, and a reassured public could
come up again and view him.
When those who had witnessed such scenes thought back on them a few
years later, often they were unable to understand themselves. For in the
meantime that change mentioned above had set in. It happened almost
immediately. There may have been more profound reasons for it, but who bothered
to discover what they were? At any rate, one day the pampered hunger artist saw
himself abandoned by the crowd of pleasure seekers, who preferred to stream to other
attractions. The impresario chased around half of Europe one more time with
him, to see whether he could rediscover the old interest here and there. It was
all futile. It was as if a secret agreement against the fasting performances
had really developed everywhere. Naturally, the truth is that it could not have
happened so quickly, and people later remembered some things which in the days
of intoxicating success they had not paid sufficient attention to, some
inadequately suppressed indications, but now it was too late to do anything to
counter them. Of course, it was certain that the popularity of fasting would
return once more someday, but for those now alive that was no consolation. What
was the hunger artist to do now? The man whom thousands of people had cheered
on could not display himself in show booths at small fun fairs, and the hunger
artist was not only too old to take up a different profession, but was
fanatically devoted to fasting more than anything else. So he said farewell to
the impresario, an incomparable companion on his life’s road, and let himself
be hired by a large circus. In order to spare his own sensitive feelings, he
didn’t even look at the terms of his contract.
A large circus with its huge number of men, animals, and gimmicks, which
are constantly being let go and replenished, can use anyone at any time, even a
hunger artist, provided, of course, his demands are modest. Moreover, in this
particular case it was not only the hunger artist himself who was engaged, but
also his old and famous name. In fact, given the characteristic nature of his
art, which was not diminished by his advancing age, one could never claim that
a worn-out artist, who no longer stood at the pinnacle of his ability, wanted
to escape to a quiet position in the circus. On the contrary, the hunger artist
declared that he could fast just as well as in earlier times—a claim that was
entirely credible. Indeed, he even affirmed that if people would let him do
what he wanted—and he was promised this without further ado—he would really now
legitimately amaze the world for the first time, an assertion which, however,
given the mood of the time, something the hunger artist in his enthusiasm
easily overlooked, only brought smiles from the experts.
In essence, however, the hunger artist had also not forgotten his sense
of the way things really were, and he took it as self-evident that people would
not set him and his cage up as some star attraction in the middle of the arena,
but would move him outside in some other readily accessible spot near the
animal stalls. Huge brightly painted signs surrounded the cage and announced
what there was to look at there. During the intervals in the main performance,
when the general public pushed out towards the menagerie in order to see the
animals, they could hardly avoid moving past the hunger artist and stopping
there a moment. They would perhaps have remained with him longer, if those
pushing up behind them in the narrow passageway, who did not understand this
pause on the way to the animal stalls they wanted to see, had not made a longer
peaceful observation impossible. This was also the reason why the hunger artist
began to tremble before these visiting hours, which he naturally used to long
for as the main purpose of his life. In the early days he could hardly wait for
the pauses in the performances. He had looked forward with delight to the crowd
pouring around him, until he became convinced only too quickly—and even the
most stubborn, almost deliberate self-deception could not hold out against the
experience—that, judging by their intentions, most of these people were, time
and again without exception, only visiting the menagerie. And this view from a
distance still remained his most beautiful moment. For when they had come right
up to him, he immediately got an earful from the shouting and cursing of the
two steadily increasing groups, the ones who wanted to take their time looking
at the hunger artist, not with any understanding but on a whim or from mere
defiance—for him these ones were soon the more painful—and a second group of
people whose only demand was to go straight to the animal stalls. Once the
large crowds had passed, the late-comers would arrive, and although there was
no longer anything preventing these people from sticking around for as long as
they wanted, they rushed past with long strides, almost without a sideways
glance, to get to the animals in time. And it was an all-too-rare stroke of
luck when the father of a family came by with his children, pointed his finger
at the hunger artist, gave a detailed explanation about what was going on here,
and talked of earlier years, when he had been present at similar but
incomparably more magnificent performances, and then the children, because they
had been inadequately prepared at school and in life, always stood around still
uncomprehendingly. What was fasting to them? But nonetheless the brightness of
the look in their searching eyes revealed something of new and more gracious
times coming. Perhaps, the hunger artist said to himself sometimes, everything
would be a little better if his location were not quite so near the animal
stalls. That way it would be easy for people to make their choice, to say
nothing of the fact that he was very upset and constantly depressed by the
stink from the stalls, the animals’ commotion at night, the pieces of raw meat
dragged past him for the carnivorous beasts, and the roars at feeding time. But
he did not dare to approach the administration about it. In any case, he had
the animals to thank for the crowds of visitors among whom, now and then, there
could also be one destined for him. And who knew where they would hide him if
he wished to remind them of his existence and, along with that, of the fact
that, strictly speaking, he was only an obstacle on the way to the menagerie.
A small obstacle, at any rate, a constantly diminishing obstacle. People became accustomed to thinking it strange that in these times
they would want to pay attention to a hunger artist, and with this habitual
awareness the judgment on him was pronounced. He might fast as well as he
could—and he did—but nothing could save him anymore. People went straight past
him. Try to explain the art of fasting to anyone! If someone doesn’t feel it,
then he cannot be made to understand it. The beautiful signs became dirty and
illegible. People tore them down, and no one thought of replacing them. The
small table with the number of days the fasting had lasted, which early on had
been carefully renewed every day, remained unchanged for a long time, for after
the first weeks the staff grew tired of even this small task. And so the hunger
artist kept fasting on and on, as he once had dreamed about in earlier times,
and he had no difficulty at all managing to achieve what he had predicted back
then, but no one was counting the days—no one, not even the hunger artist
himself, knew how great his achievement was by this point, and his heart grew
heavy. And when once in a while a person strolling past stood there making fun
of the old number and talking of a swindle, that was in a sense the stupidest
lie which indifference and innate maliciousness could invent, for the hunger
artist was not being deceptive—he was working honestly—but the world was
cheating him of his reward.
Many days went by once more, and this, too, came to an end. Finally the
cage caught the attention of a supervisor, and he asked the attendant why they
had left this perfectly useful cage standing here unused with rotting straw
inside. Nobody knew, until one man, with the help of the table with the number
on it, remembered the hunger artist. They pushed the straw around with poles
and found the hunger artist in there. “Are you still fasting?” the supervisor
asked. “When are you finally going to stop?” “Forgive me everything,” whispered
the hunger artist. Only the supervisor, who was pressing his ear up against the
cage, understood him. “Certainly,” said the supervisor, tapping his forehead
with his finger in order to indicate to the staff the state the hunger artist
was in, “we forgive you.” “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the
hunger artist. “But we do admire it,” said the supervisor obligingly. “But you
shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Well then, we don’t admire it,”
said the supervisor, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because
I have to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist. “Just
look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?” “Because,”
said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as
if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he wouldn’t
miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me. If had
found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would
have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.” Those were his
last words, but in his failing eyes there was still the firm, if no longer
proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.
“All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And they buried the
hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a young panther.
Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing to see this
wild animal prowling around in this cage, which had been dreary for such a long
time. It lacked nothing. Without having to think much about it, the guards
brought the animal food whose taste it enjoyed. It never seemed once to miss
its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the
point of bursting, even appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seemed
to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came with
such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep
watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage, and
had no desire at all to move on.
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