A Hunger Artist by Kafka
“To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.”
The last story written by Kafka, A Hunger Artist is again a deep metaphorical and symbolic story. It is a about a “hunger artist”- who is a performance artist in modern sense, whose art is fasting for long duration in public space. He is always being watched by guardians to make sure he is not eating, which frustrates the artist, because he chooses not to eat himself and doesn’t feel the need to be watched. After his fasting performance is over, he is then, taken to the streets like a parade and forcibly fed- and people would cherish it. After this, he takes some time to regain his strength and starts again a new fasting performance. This goes on for a long time and artist becomes famous, though he always feels misunderstood and unappreciated by the society and would often get in fights with spectators from his cage.
The hunger artist is employed by a contractor and he always makes his fasting performances 40 days long- and then the celebration for people. However the hunger artist doesn’t want to cease fasting at all- and this depresses him. Time goes by and people lose interest in hunger artist. He leaves his previous employer and takes a job in a circus, again as a hunger artist. But no one was interested in him anymore. He is left and forgotten. Frustration comes over him. One day circus manager encounters his cage, totally forgotten, and finds hunger artist there, on death bed. He then confesses that he fasts because he likes none of the food he is being served and thus it is not an art. He dies afterwards. His cage then replaced with a panther, who is perhaps the total opposite of hunger artist, well liked by people, eating merrily and strong; unlike him.
This story is also one for social alienation, depersonalization and it is said that the story is autobiographical. It is like a poem by E.A. Poe.
Alone:
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —
One could replace all “I”s in the poem with “hunger artist”; like in the poem, hunger artist could not get his nourishment from society; which is metaphorical and society never appreciates, accepts or tries to understand his hunger; he is a source of entertainment. And when he is out of fashion, he is replaced by something new- like Ziggy Stardust of David Bowie, he is fallen from the sky, became a perhaps rock-star of it’s age, and then dies. His death reminds me of another poem, this time by D.H. Lawrence, whose story I’ve covered earlier:
‘And then the fig has kept her secret long enough.
So it explodes, and you see through the fissure the scarlet.
And the fig is finished, the year is over.
That’s how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit
Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day.
Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.
That’s how women die too.’
https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Lawrence/figs.htm
