http://
www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
一般教卡夫卡的老師大概都拿〈蛻變〉當第一閱讀文本，因為它的經典特質和名聲，我自己對〈飢餓藝術家〉比較有感覺。前天上卡夫卡，問這些學藝術的學生：「忽然要你在完全沒有準備的狀況下表演一樣藝術，你會表演什麼？」
當然，大家能表演的都是才華、訓練、潛能.....都是「有」。
說到這兒 YV 不禁悲從中來.....
大家平常看我好像很好玩、有很多可以愛現的能力，可是只要換了一個場域，我就變成完全無能，被呼來喚去，像一隻無頭蒼蠅。
我本來一直覺得自己很棒。例如，我可以在一群唉聲嘆氣的學生中間坐下來，說幾個故事就逗得她們很開心，然後回家寫信告訴我她們有多開心；我也可以在一群陌生小朋友前面看她們玩，然後教她們一個更好玩的遊戲；我可以讓兩個暈車的小孩驗算高速公路上的車牌是不是二、三、五、十一的倍數，創造很多自己的規則哈哈大笑完全止暈.....可是這些到了過年的時候完全派不上用場。
例如：
「大嫂，麻煩你把那隻雞斬一斬端出來.....」
我看著那隻胖胖的、沒有羽毛、全身泛著油光、雞冠和眼睛都還在、
坐得挺挺的老公雞，就站在那兒發呆，一直到那位喊拜託的人進來解危：「那不然妳去把蒜頭拍碎好了....」
通常，我把蒜頭拍碎之後會順便切蔥花，然後把所有的碗盤和筷子、湯匙都洗乾淨。
人總是要找一些方法表演......
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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]
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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 daily. During the final 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 a 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,
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
something 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. The glaring light didn’t bother him in
the slightest. Generally he couldn’t sleep at all, and he could
always doze 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
very pleased to joke with them, to recount stories from his nomadic
life and then, in turn, to listen 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, so no one could know, on the basis of his own observation,
whether this was a case of truly uninterrupted, 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 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 people 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, seeking 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 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 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 just 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 and in
silence—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, then 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 mouth of the hunger artist, now half
unconscious, as if 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 him 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 that the hunger artist responded with an
outburst of rage and began to shake the bars 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,
something quite intelligible to well-fed people and capable of
excusing the behaviour of the hunger artist without further
explanation. 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 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 developed
everywhere. Naturally, it couldn’t really have happened all at
once, and people later remembered some things which in the days of
intoxicating success they hadn’t 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? A man whom thousands of people had cheered on could not
display himself in show booths at small fun fairs. 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, which the hunger artist in his
enthusiasm easily overlooked, only brought smiles from the experts.
However, basically the hunger artist had 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 the star attraction
somewhere 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
passage way, 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 at 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, again 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 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, here and
there, there could 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 got used to the strange notion 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 succeeding in achieving 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 a pole 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 spectators 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 I enjoyed. 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 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 throwing itself 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. It enjoyed the taste and never
seemed to miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with
everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also 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 to move on.
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