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'"A Hunger Artist"' (''Ein Hungerkünstler''), also translated as '"A Fasting Artist"', is a short story by Franz Kafka published in ''Die Neue Rundschau'' in 1922. The protagonist is an archetypical creation of Kafka, an individual marginalised and victimised by society at large.

Contents

Plot

Adaptations

Notes

References

External links

Plot

The story opens with a description of the old-fashioned hunger or fasting-artist, who spends his time on public display, a caged spectacle starving for a cause or for art. He lives his life there, with ribs protruding, allowing young children to look, poke, and fear his awe, strength, and courage. However, there has been a large decline in these fasting-artists in recent decades. The fasting-artists used to persist in a cage lined with straw, watched over by volunteers selected by the public, typically and ironically, local butchers. The artist disdains those 'watchers' who do not pay close attention to him and believe that they are giving him opportunity to sneak eatables from a secret cache. He sings to them to dispell any notions that he has any food, yet his fast-induced suspicions cause him to believe the inattentaive watchers think he is, artfully, eating and singing simultaneously. The artist prefers those who watch him up close under the scrutiny of the torchlights provided to the volunteers, to whom he tells his nomadic life-story, and discusses his special ability of fasting and the ease with which he does it. When the spectacle is brought to full effect, after forty days of fasting, the artist is brought to a ring in which crowds of people - especially women - pay to watch him. Eventually, two young women lead him out of his cage to a meager meal, followed by an orchestrated collapse by the artist's manager, an impresario, at which the designated ladies burst into tears, adding to the drama for the crowd's pleasure. However, why would he accept food after such a long fast when he can make it longer? Eventually, the manager spoonfeeds the fasting-artist, after he had reached his forty days, and the crowd cheers and disperses. In what seems like a flick of the switch, there is no longer a desire, no audience, for fast-staging in the towns and cities of Europe. The artist leaves his manager and is downgraded to a travelling circus attraction, where he believes, vain-gloriously, that he can return to the limelight by fasting for an impossible length and feigns humility by not being a main-ring attraction, instead choosing to be outside on the way to the menagerie, with his intention of forcing all to pass him by and give him and his art attention. This actually causes him to lose his prospective audience who are pushed on by those only interested in the animals. The artist and the number of days of his record-setting fast are forgotten until an overseer believes a perfectly good cage is in disuse and finds the artist on his dying breath. The artist dies with the belief in his eyes that he is still fasting into fame and eternity. He is uncermoniously buried, straw and all, by circus attendants, and the cage is filled with an attractive and lively panther which struts before the keen, attentive crowd.^[1]

Adaptations

★ A comics adaptation of the story, illustrated by Peter Kuper, is included in ''Give It Up!''.

★ A short American film based on the story was made in 2002.

★ Introducing Kafka, a graphic novel that examined Kafka's life and work, included a retelling of "A Hunger Artist". The story was written by David Zane Mairowitz and illustrated by R. Crumb.

★ The Hunger Artists Theatre Company staged an adaptation of the story entitled "The Pledge Drive: Ruminations On The Hunger Artist", written by Jason Lindner. In the play, The Hunger Artist was the host of a pledge drive in which the guests were other people who were bound by their identities.^[2]

Notes

1. http://www.bookrags.com/notes/kaf/PART6.html [Accessed December 10, 2006].
2. The Pledge Drive: Ruminations On The Hunger Artist

References

★ Kafka, Franz (1996). ''The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'', trans. Donna Freed. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 1-56619-969-7.

External links

★ A public domain translation of the story

★ Amy Pearce - Anorexics and Angels Essay on "A Hunger Artist".

★ Efraim Sicher - "The Semiotics of Hunger" Essay on "A Hunger Artist" and the concept of artistic hunger.