Franz
Kafka
A Hunger Artist
(1924)
This
translation by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, 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 honour 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 amphitheatre, 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 about the fact that they were the
ones who had 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 honour 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, honoured 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 behaviour 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 always strained his nerves again 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 always still 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 it. 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 still re-discover 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 feelings, he didn’t even
look at the terms of his contract at all.
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—something 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.
However,
basically 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 nothing
preventing these people any more 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 any more. 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 had 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 which 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 thinking about it for any length of time, 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 seem 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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