The Hunger Artist

What does Kafka’s hunger artist want, as he seeks from his circus cage to control his hunger, starving himself for his audience? On the one hand, to maintain his separateness in starvation – to show his audience, for example, that he never eats, even when they are not present; but on the other to have them acknowledge that starving for him is not so difficult – that starving is easy for one who can find nothing to eat: what choice does he have?

‘I had always wanted you to admire my fasting,’ says the Hunger Artist. ‘We do admire it,’ says the impressario who employs him. ‘But you shouldn’t admire it’ – ‘Well then we don’t admire it,’ says the impressario, ‘but why shouldn’t we admire it?’ – ‘Because I have to fast, I can’t help it.’ – ‘What a fellow you are,’ says the other, ‘and why can’t you help it?’ – ‘Because I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.

The artist is to be admired for his starvation – for his discipline, his tenacity, and reviled (is this the word?) for being unable to do anything but starve. Is he a fake, then? Or is it merely that he lives according to a gift that separates him from others? Strange, separating destiny.