Franz Kafka\'s \"A Hunger Artist\"

Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist"

Another symbol for alienation, along so many others in Kafka's work, a Hunger Artist is one of the most explicit stories related to the condition of the artist in a world he does not feel he belongs to. It is also a reflection on the condition of the artist constantly needing attention, exhibitionist, but also willing to stay apart from the crowd.

The cage he willingly exposes himself in to the masses stands both for anathema and protection from direct contact to the rest of the world. Who were those exposed in a cage to the public opprobrium, in ancient times? The villains, the criminals, the thieves were subjects to such a treatment. And yet, the artist puts himself in a cage expecting the world's admiration and approval, or even more, its understanding. The Hunger Artist in the cage is not likely to be seen in reality, but it is the perfect image of alienation in a world that does no reflect anything of the artist's soul. Every artist is craving for understanding and for approval in this sense. The Hunger Artist also symbolizes the artist's love for sensational. The author himself seems to see the world through the Hunger Artist's eyes. He is aware that his existence is useless unless the world understands, approves and constantly admires him. On the other side, he seems unable to understand the world in his turn. He chooses fasting as a life career, admitting at one point, that it is easier than it seems. He chooses being different as a carrier, on the other side it seems that he cannot help it, it seems the carrier chose him. Anything can be brought to the rank of an art, so fasting is the art of the Hunger Artist. Art. As something superior to the human nature, it also includes the idea of honor. Art is also supposed to be contradictory: "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" (Kafka, a Hunger Artist). The Artist knows that without the recognition of his art it would not mean anything, on the other hand people around him are the very obstacles in his performing his art. The Hunger Artist can sleep only when put under the strongest light and in the middle of the noisiest crowd. His Hunger is in fact for attention, recognition and admiration.

The author's vision on the condition of the artist is that of someone being able to do what no one else can. This seems to be the art as the Hunger Artist "was fasting as none of them could"(Kafka, a Hunger Artist).

At one point, Kafka ponders the human character that makes the Artist pay tribute to the impossibility to catch attention "not even in the cosmopolitan cities" (Kafka, a Hunger Artist) for more then a limited period of time. People get bored with anything as interesting and spectacular as it may be, over long periods of time. The artist himself recognizes his condition of a martyr in a "completely different sense." The theatrical scene the show ends every forty days is grotesque and reveals the artist's recognition of the ridiculous state he finds in the show he is allowing himself to be put on. The number of days appears as a significant and holy period both in the Old and New Testament and the gravity of the comparison is balanced by his recognition of being completely different yet similar to what a martyr is.

The final scene of the show also reveals Kafka's reflection on his relationships to the women. He depends entirely on the support of a woman who agreed to the show not knowing that she will have to actually carry him all along. He frightens and disgusts her at the same time. The effect is exactly the contrary to what she might have expected in the first place.

Describing the Hunger artist's feelings towards the crowd, at the end of the forty days show, Kafka recognizes the audacity and absurd of the pretence: "no one had the right to be dissatisfied with the event, no one except the hunger artist -- he was always the only one" (Kafka, the Hunger Artist).

The spot light and people's recognition are not enough for the artist. It is consolation he is looking for and never finds it. The misunderstanding of his very art is the cause of his exhaustion. Like Kafka, the Hunger Artist is trapped in a vicious circle, unable to see the light of understanding in the world's eyes. What was always the cause of misery for an artist? Being misunderstood in his art was the worst that could happen. No one could bring consolation in his life and he acknowledged it as a condemnation of his state not able to give up his art and bound to it to the very end.

The story is written two years before Kafka's death and it is also one of the few he did not want to be destroyed after his death. It may be considered a reflection on his condition as an artist, unable to find consolation and condemned to a gloomy existence due to the progress of its alienation.

The story in itself is depicting a dream, nothing real, but the details are very realistically described, as Kafka used to do in his other stories. The setting is real: Europe, even if the time is uncertain. Despite the long periods of fasting that make the story unrealistic, the main character appears to be human when described drinking water that allows him to survive, for example the artist even has an impresario who arranges for the details of the show. In the beginning the "small barred cage" (Kafka, the Hunger Artist) the Artist would never willingly leave seems to be set somewhere in the dark, away from the open space, a small cage in another closed space, just like Kafka often found himself in. The cage inside a dark space, away from the open air are symbols of both his own mental constraints and those physically imposed by the living world, he could not avoid or escape. One could imagine a cave, but further on, the author describes the cage as being covered in flowers (already a tomb?), inside an amphitheatre. As beautiful as they were, they kept light from coming inside the cage and were symbols of death rather than life.

In the end, the grotesque show only finds a place in a circus and even there his days are numbered.

Kafka never found consolation or the will to live his cage, just like his Hunger Artist. The frail image of the Hunger Artist is according to his own physical state. Kafka was always different in his art, but as the Hunger Artist who confesses he would eat only he found something he liked, he was looking for consolation in normality, in a healthy life and a helpful physique. but, that was not the case. He was very fragile and too weak to fight tuberculosis that won the battle, in the end. Like the Hunger Artist, Kafka suffers of insomnia and sometimes has breakdowns. His nerves are as weak as his body.