A Hunger Artist - Franz Kafka

12/17/2016 Kafka, A Hunger Artist

___________________________________________

Franz Ka‫ڜ‬a
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 Ka a 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
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm 1/13
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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12/17/2016 Kafka, A Hunger Artist

intending to allow the hunger artist a small refreshment, which,

the hunger artist, the orchestra conﬁrmed everything with a great

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